Home Articles Golden Oldies Speaking Schedule About Christ or Chaos Links Donations Contact Us
September 23, 2011

 

Modernist At Work

Part One

by Thomas A. Droleskey

The ringmaster of the multi-ring conciliar circus, Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, has arrived in his homeland, the Federal Republic of Germany, at the beginning of a four day visit, which comes three hundred seventy-one days after his arrival in the United Kingdom for what turned out to be a predictable Modernist exercise in ecumania and a all-around deconstruction of the Catholic Faith to attempt to make It conform once and for all to the exigencies of conciliarism. Well, the Modernist who parades around as "Pope" Benedict XVI started right off the bat upon his arrival in his homeland yesterday to do precisely what he did in England and Scotland fifty-three weeks ago now: to make complex that which is simple, the truths of the Catholic Faith.

Ratzinger/Benedict's first address yesterday was given at Bellevue Castle in Berlin, which is the residence of the President of the Federal Republic of Germany, Christian Wulff, who was elected by the Federal Convention (an assembly of all six hundred twenty-two members of the Bundestag, the lower house of the German national  legislature, and and equal number of delegates from the the legislatures of the sixteen Lander, the German states), was very similar to two that he gave in the United Kingdom last year, one addressed to Queen Elizabeth II in the grounds of the Palace of Holyroodhouse, Edinburgh, September 16, 2010, and other to the representatives of British Society, including the Diplomatic Corps, politicians, academics and business leaders at Westminster Hall, City of Westminster, September 17, 2010). Here are a few excerpts from yesterday's address, interspersed with a few brief comments as I know that the "vast" readership of this site is quite busy with other things to do with their time than to waste it on conciliar absurdity:

As you mentioned, Mr President, we are witnessing a growing indifference to religion in society, which considers the issue of truth as something of an obstacle in its decision-making, and instead gives priority to utilitarian considerations.

All the same, a binding basis for our coexistence is needed; otherwise people live in a purely individualistic way. Religion is one of these foundations for a successful social life. “Just as religion has need of freedom, so also freedom has need of religion.” These words of the great bishop and social reformer Wilhelm von Ketteler, the second centenary of whose birth is being celebrated this year, remain timely.[1]

Freedom requires a primordial link to a higher instance. The fact that there are values which are not absolutely open to manipulation is the true guarantee of our freedom. The man who feels a duty to truth and goodness will immediately agree with this: freedom develops only in responsibility to a greater good. Such a good exists only for all of us together; therefore I must always be concerned for my neighbours. Freedom cannot be lived in the absence of relationships

In human coexistence, freedom is impossible without solidarity. What I do at the expense of others is not freedom but a culpable way of acting which is harmful to others and hence ultimately also to myself. I can truly develop as a free person only by using my powers also for the welfare of others. And this holds true not only in private matters but also for society as a whole. In accordance with the principle of subsidiarity, society must give sufficient space for smaller structures to develop and, at the same time, must support them so that one day they will stand on their own. (Welcoming ceremony at Bellevue Castle, Berlin, September 22, 2011.)

 

Brief Comment: The one and only foundation of personal and social order is Catholicism. Nothing else. There can be no kind of "coexistence" or "solidarity." Disorder and chaos and social ruin must occur whenever men do not believe in the true Faith and do not have belief in or make use of the Sanctifying Graces won for us on the Holy Cross by Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ by shedding of every single drop of His Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross and that flows into our hearts and souls through the loving hands of Our Lady, she who is the Mediatrix of All Graces. Yes, there is one other point: there is one and only one standard of true human freedom:

 

Yes, just one other point here: guess who was in the audience as the false "pope" gave his address? Come on, guess? Yes, none other than the president of the conciliar "bishops" in Germany, "Archbishop" Robert Zollitsch of the Archdiocese of Freising and Breisgau, who still remains in the "pope's" "good graces" despite having denied on April 11, 2009, Holy Saturday, that Our Lord died on the wood of the Holy Cross in atonement for our sins. That was, for those of you keeping score out there in cyberspace, eight hundred ninety-four days ago. No, apostasy matters not to apostates.

Ratzinger/Benedict closed his brief remarks by calling once again for a "rediscovery of fundamental values," something that could be supported any self-respecting Freemason. Pope Leo XIII explained form which the confusion of modernity arose: the Protestant Revolution and the naturalistic "philosophies" that sprung up inevitably within a short period of time:

But that harmful and deplorable passion for innovation which was aroused in the sixteenth century threw first of all into confusion the Christian religion, and next, by natural sequence, invaded the precincts of philosophy, whence it spread amongst all classes of society. From this source, as from a fountain-head, burst forth all those later tenets of unbridled license which, in the midst of the terrible upheavals of the last century, were wildly conceived and boldly proclaimed as the principles and foundation of that new conception of law which was not merely previously unknown, but was at variance on many points with not only the Christian, but even the natural law. (Pope Leo XIII, Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885.)

 

Truth is simple. Modernism looks for complexity. 'Tis the difference between Catholicism and conciliarism.

Ratzinger/Benedict proceeded from Bellevue Castle to the Federal Reichstag building in Berlin to give an address whose substance he has given numerous times in the past six years, five months, four days. In essence, the "pontiff" spoke about the pursuit of justice in politics as though it is possible to ignore the teaching authority of Catholic Church, which is the authoritative, infallible teacher of the binding precepts found in the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law. Here is the first excerpt from that address:

 

 

 

Allow me to begin my reflections on the foundations of law [Recht] with a brief story from sacred Scripture. In the First Book of the Kings, it is recounted that God invited the young King Solomon, on his accession to the throne, to make a request. What will the young ruler ask for at this important moment? Success – wealth – long life – destruction of his enemies? He chooses none of these things. Instead, he asks for a listening heart so that he may govern God’s people, and discern between good and evil (cf. 1 Kg 3:9). Through this story, the Bible wants to tell us what should ultimately matter for a politician. His fundamental criterion and the motivation for his work as a politician must not be success, and certainly not material gain. Politics must be a striving for justice, and hence it has to establish the fundamental preconditions for peace. Naturally a politician will seek success, without which he would have no opportunity for effective political action at all. Yet success is subordinated to the criterion of justice, to the will to do what is right, and to the understanding of what is right. Success can also be seductive and thus can open up the path towards the falsification of what is right, towards the destruction of justice. “Without justice – what else is the State but a great band of robbers?”, as Saint Augustine once said. We Germans know from our own experience that these words are no empty spectre. We have seen how power became divorced from right, how power opposed right and crushed it, so that the State became an instrument for destroying right – a highly organized band of robbers, capable of threatening the whole world and driving it to the edge of the abyss. To serve right and to fight against the dominion of wrong is and remains the fundamental task of the politician. At a moment in history when man has acquired previously inconceivable power, this task takes on a particular urgency. Man can destroy the world. He can manipulate himself. He can, so to speak, make human beings and he can deny them their humanity. How do we recognize what is right? How can we discern between good and evil, between what is truly right and what may appear right? Even now, Solomon’s request remains the decisive issue facing politicians and politics today. (Visit to the Federal Parliament in the Reichstag Building, Berlin, September 22, 2011)

 

Brief Comment: Two quick points here: the Nazi regime of Adolf Hitler arose precisely as consequence of the overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King wrought by Martin Luther's Protestant Revolution, an overthrow that was institutionalized by the forces of Judeo-Masonry. The Talmudists who rejoiced at the overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King and exploited it at every turn to diminish and then to eradicate the temporal power of the Catholic Church became the instruments of their own persecution as the national socialist regime of Hitler was what must happen in a world where men no longer live for the honor and glory of God as He has revealed Himself through His true Church. 

Secondly, although we can know what is right and wrong as a result of human reason as the Natural Law has been written by God on the very flesh of our hearts, we need an authoritative teacher to answer all questions pertaining to the moral law and we need the supernatural helps to keep that law. In other words, we need the Catholic Church. Pope Leo XIII made this clear in Tamest Futura Prospicientibus, November 1, 1900:

As with individuals, so with nations. These, too, must necessarily tend to ruin if they go astray from "The Way." The Son of God, the Creator and Redeemer of mankind, is King and Lord of the earth, and holds supreme dominion over men, both individually and collectively. "And He gave Him power, and glory, and a kingdom: and all peoples, tribes, and tongues shall serve Him" (Daniel vii., 14). "I am appointed King by Him . . . I will give Thee the Gentiles for Thy inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for Thy possession" (Psalm ii., 6, 8). Therefore the law of Christ ought to prevail in human society and be the guide and teacher of public as well as of private life. Since this is so by divine decree, and no man may with impunity contravene it, it is an evil thing for the common weal wherever Christianity does not hold the place that belongs to it. When Jesus Christ is absent, human reason fails, being bereft of its chief protection and light, and the very end is lost sight of, for which, under God's providence, human society has been built up. This end is the obtaining by the members of society of natural good through the aid of civil unity, though always in harmony with the perfect and eternal good which is above nature. But when men's minds are clouded, both rulers and ruled go astray, for they have no safe line to follow nor end to aim at. (Pope Leo XIII, Tametsi Futura Prospicientibus, November 1, 1900.)

 

Ratzinger/Benedict is incapable of speaking this way. That is because he is a Modernist.

To the next excerpt from the speech to the German parliament:

For most of the matters that need to be regulated by law, the support of the majority can serve as a sufficient criterion. Yet it is evident that for the fundamental issues of law, in which the dignity of man and of humanity is at stake, the majority principle is not enough: everyone in a position of responsibility must personally seek out the criteria to be followed when framing laws. In the third century, the great theologian Origen provided the following explanation for the resistance of Christians to certain legal systems: “Suppose that a man were living among the Scythians, whose laws are contrary to the divine law, and was compelled to live among them ... such a man for the sake of the true law, though illegal among the Scythians, would rightly form associations with like-minded people contrary to the laws of the Scythians.”[1]

This conviction was what motivated resistance movements to act against the Nazi regime and other totalitarian regimes, thereby doing a great service to justice and to humanity as a whole. For these people, it was indisputably evident that the law in force was actually unlawful. Yet when it comes to the decisions of a democratic politician, the question of what now corresponds to the law of truth, what is actually right and may be enacted as law, is less obvious. In terms of the underlying anthropological issues, what is right and may be given the force of law is in no way simply self-evident today. The question of how to recognize what is truly right and thus to serve justice when framing laws has never been simple, and today in view of the vast extent of our knowledge and our capacity, it has become still harder.

How do we recognize what is right? In history, systems of law have almost always been based on religion: decisions regarding what was to be lawful among men were taken with reference to the divinity. Unlike other great religions, Christianity has never proposed a revealed law to the State and to society, that is to say a juridical order derived from revelation. Instead, it has pointed to nature and reason as the true sources of law – and to the harmony of objective and subjective reason, which naturally presupposes that both spheres are rooted in the creative reason of God. Christian theologians thereby aligned themselves with a philosophical and juridical movement that began to take shape in the second century B.C. In the first half of that century, the social natural law developed by the Stoic philosophers came into contact with leading teachers of Roman Law.[2] Through this encounter, the juridical culture of the West was born, which was and is of key significance for the juridical culture of mankind. This pre-Christian marriage between law and philosophy opened up the path that led via the Christian Middle Ages and the juridical developments of the Age of Enlightenment all the way to the Declaration of Human Rights and to our German Basic Law of 1949, with which our nation committed itself to “inviolable and inalienable human rights as the foundation of every human community, and of peace and justice in the world”. (Visit to the Federal Parliament in the Reichstag Building, Berlin, September 22, 2011)

 

Brief Comment:  Although Ratzinger/Benedict condemned positivism (the belief that moral right is defined by what is legal, that morality is defined by legality), the confusion as to what is "right" and thus may be given the force of law has been caused, as noted above, by the overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King that has been ratified by the counterfeit church of conciliarism in favor of the talk of the "rights of man" and "human solidarity" and a "civilization of love," talk that is at the heart of the very ethos of Judeo-Masonry. The so-called "Age of Enlightenment" was from the devil to substitute naturalistic concepts of the state and of law for that taught by Holy Mother Church, who, though never proposing specific structures of government by which men can be governed (there are even different types of monarchical systems), has always taught that the civil state must be subordinate to Catholic Church in all that pertains to the good of souls while according her official recognition as its true religion. Ratzinger/Benedict does not believe this.

The purpose of civil government is foster the common temporal welfare in light of man's Last End, the possession of the glory of the Beatific Vision of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost for all eternity in Heaven. Numerous popes have spelled this out, including Pope Saint Pius X in Vehementer Nos, February 11, 1906:

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. (Pope Saint Pius X, Vehementer Nos, February 11, 1906.)

The "rights of man"? How about the rights of God?

The world has heard enough of the so-called "rights of man." Let it hear something of the rights of God. That the time is suitable is proved by the very general revival of religious feeling already referred to, and especially that devotion towards Our Saviour of which there are so many indications, and which, please God, we shall hand on to the New Century as a pledge of happier times to come. But as this consummation cannot be hoped for except by the aid of divine grace, let us strive in prayer, with united heart and voice, to incline Almighty God unto mercy, that He would not suffer those to perish whom He had redeemed by His Blood. May He look down in mercy upon this world, which has indeed sinned much, but which has also suffered much in expiation! And, embracing in His loving-kindness all races and classes of mankind, may He remember His own words: "I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all things to Myself" (John xii., 32).  (Pope Leo XIII, Tametsi Futura Prospicientibus, November 1, 1900.)

 

Ratzinger/Benedict said man must respect his nature, which is quite true. However, he also said that t the Natural Law is not to be identified with the Catholic Church and that it has been wrong for man to do so. He is wrong. The Natural Law, although knowable by reason, has been entrusted to the Catholic Church by God Himself for its eternal safekeeping and infallible explication. Individuals need the Catholic Church. Men need the Catholic Church. The Incarnation has occurred. Men will never agree on the meaning of the precepts of the Natural Law any more than they can believe in the meaning of Sacred Scripture and the Divine Positive Law without an authoritative interpreter. And that authoritative interpreter happens to be the Catholic Church.

To Pope Leo XIII:

This generative and conservative power of the virtues that make for salvation is therefore lost, whenever morality is dissociated from divine faith. A system of morality based exclusively on human reason robs man of his highest dignity and lowers him from the supernatural to the merely natural life. Not but that man is able by the right use of reason to know and to obey certain principles of the natural law. But though he should know them all and keep them inviolate through life-and even this is impossible without the aid of the grace of our Redeemer-still it is vain for anyone without faith to promise himself eternal salvation. "If anyone abide not in Me, he shall be cast forth as a branch, and shall wither, and they shall gather him up and cast him into the fire, and he burneth" john xv., 6). "He that believeth not shall be condemned" (Mark xvi., 16). We have but too much evidence of the value and result of a morality divorced from divine faith. How is it that, in spite of all the zeal for the welfare of the masses, nations are in such straits and even distress, and that the evil is daily on the increase? We are told that society is quite able to help itself; that it can flourish without the assistance of Christianity, and attain its end by its own unaided efforts. Public administrators prefer a purely secular system of government. All traces of the religion of our forefathers are daily disappearing from political life and administration. What blindness! Once the idea of the authority of God as the Judge of right and wrong is forgotten, law must necessarily lose its primary authority and justice must perish: and these are the two most powerful and most necessary bonds of society. Similarly, once the hope and expectation of eternal happiness is taken away, temporal goods will be greedily sought after. Every man will strive to secure the largest share for himself. Hence arise envy, jealousy, hatred. The consequences are conspiracy, anarchy, nihilism. There is neither peace abroad nor security at home. Public life is stained with crime. (Pope Leo XIII, Tametsi Futura Prospicientibus, November 1, 1900.)

 

Human law and the administering of the affairs of government must fall apart absent the teaching and sanctifying offices of the Catholic Church.

By way of contrast, of course, Ratzinger/Benedict did not even hint that Catholicism was the sole foundation of personal and social order at the close of his address yesterday:

At this point Europe’s cultural heritage ought to come to our assistance.  The conviction that there is a Creator God is what gave rise to the idea of human rights, the idea of the equality of all people before the law, the recognition of the inviolability of human dignity in every single person and the awareness of people’s responsibility for their actions.  Our cultural memory is shaped by these rational insights.  To ignore it or dismiss it as a thing of the past would be to dismember our culture totally and to rob it of its completeness.  The culture of Europe arose from the encounter between Jerusalem, Athens and Rome – from the encounter between Israel’s monotheism, the philosophical reason of the Greeks and Roman law.  This three-way encounter has shaped the inner identity of Europe.  In the awareness of man’s responsibility before God and in the acknowledgment of the inviolable dignity of every single human person, it has established criteria of law: it is these criteria that we are called to defend at this moment in our history. (Visit to the Federal Parliament in the Reichstag Building, Berlin, September 22, 2011.)

 

Brief Comment: It could be asked whether Ratzinger/Benedict is going recapture the memory of the Catholic Faith and simply proclaim the simple truth that Our Lord Jesus Christ is the Sovereign of both men and their nations.

Leave it to a Modernist to make complex that which is simple.

Ratzinger/Benedict's also addressed an audience of Talmudists in a room in the Reichstag prior to staging a Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo service at Berlin's Olympiastadion, which was the site of the 1936 Olympics. His remarks to adherents of the Talmud reflected those that has made so many times in the past six year, five months, four days. Here is just an excerpt:

Alongside these important initiatives, it seems to me that we Christians must also become increasingly aware of our own inner affinity with Judaism, to which you made reference.  For Christians, there can be no rupture in salvation history.  Salvation comes from the Jews (cf. Jn 4:22).  When Jesus’ conflict with the Judaism of his time is superficially interpreted as a breach with the Old Covenant, it tends to be reduced to the idea of a liberation that mistakenly views the Torah merely as a slavish enactment of rituals and outward observances.  Yet in actual fact, the Sermon on the Mount does not abolish the Mosaic Law, but reveals its hidden possibilities and allows more radical demands to emerge.  It points us towards the deepest source of human action, the heart, where choices are made between what is pure and what is impure, where faith, hope and love blossom forth.

The message of hope contained in the books of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament has been appropriated and continued in different ways by Jews and Christians.  “After centuries of antagonism, we now see it as our task to bring these two ways of rereading the biblical texts – the Christian way and the Jewish way – into dialogue with one another, if we are to understand God’s will and his word aright” (Jesus of Nazareth. Part Two: From the Entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection, pp. 33f.).  This dialogue should serve to strengthen our common hope in God in the midst of an increasingly secularized society.  Without this hope, society loses its humanity.

All in all, we may conclude that the exchanges between the Catholic Church and Judaism in Germany have already borne promising fruits.  Enduring relations of trust have been forged.  Jews and Christians certainly have a shared responsibility for the development of society, which always includes a religious dimension.  May all those taking part in this journey move forward together.  To this end, may the One and Almighty, Ha Kadosch Baruch Hu, grant his blessing.  I thank you. (Meeting with representatives of the Jewish community in a room of the Reichstag Building Berlin, September 22, 2011.)

 

Brief Comments: Perhaps the following commentary found in the Haydock Commentary on the New Testament pertaining to the context of Our Lord's saying that "salvation comes from the Jew will help to instruct readers that Our Lord was not ratifying the eternal nature of the Old Covenant or the Mosaic Law with its ritual prescriptions that were necessary for men to keep as they had not been liberated by His own Redemptive Act on the wood of the Holy Cross:

Ver. 22. The Israelites, on account of their innumerable sins, had been delivered by the Almighty into the hands of the king of Assyria, who led them all away captives into Babylon and Medea, and sent other nations whom he had collected from different parts, to inhabit Samaria. But the Almighty, to shew to all nations that he had not delivered up these his people for want of power to defend, but solely on account of their transgressions, sent lions into the land to persecute these strangers. The Assyrian king upon hearing this, sent them a priest to teach them the law of God; but neither after this did they depart wholly from their impiety, but in part only: for many of them returned again to their idols, worshipping at the same time the true God. It was on this account that Christ preferred the Jews before them, saying, that salvation is of the Jews, with whom it was the chief principle to acknowledge the true God, and hold every denomination of idols in detestation; whereas, the Samaritans by mixing the worship of the one with the other, plainly shewed that they held the God of the universe in no greater esteem than their dumb idols. (St. Chrysostom in St. Thomas Aquinas)

Ver. 23. Now is the time approaching, when the true adorers shall adore the Father in spirit and in truth, without being confined to any one temple or place; and chiefly in spirit, without such a multitude of sacrifices and ceremonies as even the Jews now practise. Such adorers God himself (who is a pure spirit) desires, which they shall be taught by the Messias. (Witham) --- Our Lord foretells her that sacrifices in both these temples should shortly cease, giving her these three instructions: 1. That the true sacrifice should be limited no longer to one spot or nation, but should be offered throughout all nations, according to that of Malachias; (i. 11.) 2. That the gross and carnal adoration by the flesh and blood of beasts, not having in them grace, spirit, and life, should be taken away, and another sacrifice succeed, which should be in itself invisible, divine, and full of life, spirit, and grace; 3. That this sacrifice should be truth itself, whereof all former sacrifices were but shadows and figures. He calleth here spirit and truth that which, in the first chapter, (ver. 17) is called grace and truth. Now this is not more than a prophecy and description of the sacrifice of the faithful Gentiles in the body and blood of Christ; for all the adoration of the Catholic Church is properly spiritual, though certain external objects be joined thereto, on account of the state of our nature, which requireth it. Be careful then not to gather from Christ's words that Christian men should have no use of external signs and offices towards God; for that would take away all sacrifice, sacraments, prayers, churches and societies. &c. &c. (Bristow) (Haydock Commentary on Saint John's Gospel, Chapter 4, Verses 22 and 23.)

 

The Mosaic Law did not give Sanctifying Grace. It did not wash away the stain of Original Sin. It did not feed human beings with the very Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of the Most Holy Redeemer Himself. Our Lord did indeed liberate men from the prescriptions of the Old Law as the Old Covenant was forever abolished when He breathed His last breath on the wood of the Holy Cross. Context is everything. Our Lord specifically foretold the end of the validity of the old Mosaic rituals, which have the power to save no one as both Biblical Judaism is a dead religion and its Talmudic ape has been entirely false from its origins.

"The message of hope contained in the books of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament has been appropriated and continued in different ways by Jews and Christians"? "Appropriated" in different ways? Our Lord is God in the very Flesh. He has revealed that He alone is the Way, the Truth and the Life. The Jews rejected Him when He told them this. The Talmudists reject it now, and it is the job of a true pope to invite everyone, including Jews into the true Church, outside of which there is no salvation and without which there can be no true social order.

"Jews and Christians certainly have a shared responsibility for the development of society, which always includes a religious dimension"? Apostasy. Jews have no mission from God to do anything other than to convert to the true Faith. Blasphemy. It is a sin against charity for the eternal welfare of the Talmudists who were being addressed by Ratzinger/Benedict for him to say such a thing. The very man who claims to be opposed to religious indifferentism encourages religious indifferentism. Such must ever be the paradox of a Modernist mind trained in the Hegelian ways of the "new theology" that he told Bishop Bernard Fellay on August 29, 2005, he wanted to have taught in the seminaries of the Society of Saint Pius X, probably to serve as a "counterweight" to the "school of thought" that "belonged" to Saint Thomas Aquinas, Scholasticism. Ratzinger/Benedict lives in a world of confusion and contradiction that produces apostate and blasphemous assertions almost without cease, mixing in occasional elements of truth now and again as Modernists are wont to do.

Finally, one will notice that the false "pontiff" closed his address to the Talmudists by making a generic reference to God. He mentioned Our Lord's Holy Name twice in his address, neither time in a way that would present Him as anything other than a "equal" to the Jewish "tradition."

Pope Pius XII reminded us in Mystici Corporis, June 29, 1943, that the Old Covenant has been abolished. It is dead:

28.That He completed His work on the gibbet of the Cross is the unanimous teaching of the holy Fathers who assert that the Church was born from the side of our Savior on the Cross like a new Eve, mother of all the living. [28] "And it is now," says the great St. Ambrose, speaking of the pierced side of Christ, "that it is built, it is now that it is formed, it is now that is .... molded, it is now that it is created . . . Now it is that arises a spiritual house, a holy priesthood." [29] One who reverently examines this venerable teaching will easily discover the reasons on which it is based.

29.And first of all, by the death of our Redeemer, the New Testament took the place of the Old Law which had been abolished; then the Law of Christ together with its mysteries, enactments, institutions, and sacred rites was ratified for the whole world in the blood of Jesus Christ. For, while our Divine Savior was preaching in a restricted area -- He was not sent but to the sheep that were lost of the house of Israel [30] -the Law and the Gospel were together in force; [31] but on the gibbet of his death Jesus made void the Law with its decrees, [32] fastened the handwriting of the Old Testament to the Cross, [33] establishing the New Testament in His blood shed for the whole human race. [34] "To such an extent, then," says St. Leo the Great, speaking of the Cross of our Lord, "was there effected a transfer from the Law to the Gospel, from the Synagogue to the Church, from many sacrifices to one Victim, that, as our Lord expired, that mystical veil which shut off the innermost part of the temple and its sacred secret was rent violently from top to bottom." [35]

30. On the Cross then the Old Law died, soon to be buried and to be a bearer of death, [36] in order to give way to the New Testament of which Christ had chosen the Apostles as qualified ministers; [37] and although He had been constituted the Head of the whole human family in the womb of the Blessed Virgin, it is by the power of the Cross that our Savior exercises fully the office itself of Head in His Church. "For it was through His triumph on the Cross," according to the teaching of the Angelic and Common Doctor, "that He won power and dominion over the gentiles"; [38] by that same victory He increased the immense treasure of graces, which, as He reigns in glory in heaven, He lavishes continually on His mortal members it was by His blood shed on the Cross that God's anger was averted and that all the heavenly gifts, especially the spiritual graces of the New and Eternal Testament, could then flow from the fountains of our Savior for the salvation of men, of the faithful above all; it was on the tree of the Cross, finally, that He entered into possession of His Church, that is, of all the members of His Mystical Body; for they would not have been united to this Mystical Body. (Pope Pius XII, Mystici Corporis, June 29, 1943.)

 

Let those who have the eyes to see the truth do so. Others will never be convinced of the fact that Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, who quotes from his "unofficial" book, Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week: From the Entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection, is a Modernist to the core of his being. (For a consideration of how "Papa" Ratzinger has distorted Catholic doctrine in his Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week: From the Entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection, please see Coloring Everything He Says and Does, part one and Coloring Everything He Says and Does, part two.)

Ratzinger/Benedict put on what passes for his "Catholic" hat when he gave a "homily" during that Novus Ordo service at Olympiastadion last evening, speaking about the necessity of each Catholic being grafted onto the true Vine Who is Our Lord Himself:

To abide in Christ means, as we saw earlier, to abide in the Church as well. The whole communion of the faithful has been firmly incorporated into the vine, into Christ. In Christ we belong together. Within this communion he supports us, and at the same time all the members support one another. We stand firm together against the storm and offer one another protection. Those who believe are not alone. We do not believe alone, we believe with the whole Church of all times and places, with the Church in heaven and the Church on earth.

The Church, as the herald of God’s word and dispenser of the sacraments, joins us to Christ, the true vine. The Church as “fullness and completion of the Redeemer”, as Pius XII expressed it (Pius XII, Mystici Corporis, AAS 35 [1943] p. 230: “plenitudo et complementum Redemptoris”), is to us a pledge of divine life and mediator of those fruits of which the parable of the vine speaks. Thus the Church is God’s most beautiful gift. Therefore Saint Augustine could say: “as much as any man loves the Church, so much has he the Holy Spirit” (In Ioan. Ev. Tract. 32:8 [PL 35:1646]). With and in the Church we may proclaim to all people that Christ is the source of life, that he exists, that he is the great one for whom we keep watch, for whom we long so much. He gives himself, and thus he gives us God, happiness, and love. Whoever believes in Christ has a future. For God has no desire for what is withered, dead, ersatz, and finally discarded: he wants what is fruitful and alive, he wants life in its fullness and he gives us life in its fullness. (Novus Ordo service at the Olympiastadion Berlin, September 22, 2011.)

 

To be engrafted onto the true Vine Who is Christ the King and to love His Holy Church, however, requires one to believe in everything that He has revealed without any exception or any shadow of change or alternation. Catholics do no reject the Social Reign of Christ the King. Catholics do not speak of the Old Covenant as having never been abolished. Catholics seek with urgency the unconditional conversion of non-Catholics to the true Faith. Catholics do not treat dogmatic pronouncements and papal writings of the "past" as having been but the products of the historical circumstances of their times that are in need of "further adjustments" with the passing of time. Catholics adhere to everything that Holy Mother Church teaches as a failure to do so expels one form her maternal bosom, something that was taught, as was noted by Pope Leo XIII, by Saint Augustine himself:

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). (Pope Leo XIII, Satis Cognitum, June 29, 1896.)

 

Saint Francis de Sales taught the same thing:

With reference to its object, faith cannot be greater for some truths than for others. Nor can it be less with regard to the number of truths to be believed. For we must all believe the very same thing, both as to the object of faith as well as to the number of truths. All are equal in this, because everyone must believe all the truths of faith--both those which God Himself has directly revealed, as well as those he has revealed through His Church. Thus, I must believe as much as you and you as much as I, and all other Christians similarly. He who does not believe all these mysteries is not Catholic and therefore will never enter Paradise. (Saint Francis de Sales, The Sermons of Saint Francis de Sales for Lent Given in 1622, republished by TAN Books and Publishers for the Visitation Monastery of Frederick, Maryland, in 1987, pp. 34-37.)

 

As Catholics, we continue to pray Our Lady's Most Holy Rosary with fervor and devotion each and every day without fail, trusting that the Immaculate Heart of Mary will indeed triumph as her Fatima Message is fulfilled and the errors of Modernity and Modernism are washed away with the restoration of the Church Militant on earth and the restoration of the Social Reign of Christ the King in the City of Mary Immaculate.

Isn't it truly time to pray a Rosary now?

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 John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

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

Pope Saint Linus, pray for us.

Saint Thecla, pray for us.

See also: A Litany of Saints





© Copyright 2011, Thomas A. Droleskey. All rights reserved.