Modernist At Work

Part Two

by Thomas A. Droleskey

Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict is quite noted for his celebration of pluralism as a "profound" expression of "progress" in the history of civilization. A new book that is a compilation of his "thoughts," such as they are, on "inter-religious dialogue" contains a passage that demonstrates that the heart and mind and soul of the man accepted by most people in the world as the Successor of Saint Peter and the Bishop of Rome is far removed from that of the Catholic Faith, expressed as It has been by the Fathers and Doctors of the Church and by our true popes:

In an address on Oct. 21, 2007, Benedict XVI said "we are all called to work for peace and to a concrete commitment to promote reconciliation between peoples."

"This is the authentic 'spirit of Assisi,' which is opposed to every form of violence and the abuse of religion as a pretext for violence,” he added.

In fact, the Holy Father continued, "in the face of a world lacerated by conflicts, where at times violence is justified in the name of God, it is important to reaffirm that religions can never be vehicles of hatred; never, invoking the name of God, can evil and violence be justified.”

The Pontiff said "religions can and must offer precious resources to build a peaceful humanity, because they speak of peace to the heart of man." (Book Collects Pope's Thoughts on Dialogue.)

 

False religions are from the devil. They do not speak to the heart of man. They are designed to lead men into Hell for all eternity by their false doctrines and false, blasphemous and sacrilegious rites of "worship." False religions can never contribute to the "betterment" of man or of the world. While Holy Mother Church realizes that her children must live in the same country with unbelievers, she does not heap any kind of praise or respect upon false doctrines and false liturgical ceremonies. She does not speak of any "natural" or God-given "right" to propagate false beliefs publicly or that such propagation can serve to fight "irreligion" and relativism. False religions by their nature are sacrilegious and relativist. The most that Holy Mother Church will admit is that her children may have to tolerate such a propagation to avoid disturbing the common good. Pope Leo XIII noted this in Libertas Praestantissimum, June 20, 1888:

Yet, with the discernment of a true mother, the Church weighs the great burden of human weakness, and well knows the course down which the minds and actions of men are in this our age being borne. For this reason, while not conceding any right to anything save what is true and honest, she does not forbid public authority to tolerate what is at variance with truth and justice, for the sake of avoiding some greater evil, or of obtaining or preserving some greater good. God Himself in His providence, though infinitely good and powerful, permits evil to exist in the world, partly that greater good may not be impeded, and partly that greater evil may not ensue. In the government of States it is not forbidden to imitate the Ruler of the world; and, as the authority of man is powerless to prevent every evil, it has (as St. Augustine says) to overlook and leave unpunished many things which are punished, and rightly, by Divine Providence. But if, in such circumstances, for the sake of the common good (and this is the only legitimate reason), human law may or even should tolerate evil, it may not and should not approve or desire evil for its own sake; for evil of itself, being a privation of good, is opposed to the common welfare which every legislator is bound to desire and defend to the best of his ability. In this, human law must endeavor to imitate God, who, as St. Thomas teaches, in allowing evil to exist in the world, "neither wills evil to be done, nor wills it not to be done, but wills only to permit it to be done; and this is good.'' This saying of the Angelic Doctor contains briefly the whole doctrine of the permission of evil. (Pope Leo XIII, Libertas Praestantissimum, June 20, 1888.)

 

Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict accepts as "good" and praiseworthy that which the Catholic Church teaches is an evil that may have to be tolerated to avoid civil disturbances. This is a quite a distinction.

Ratzinger/Benedict's incredibly Modernist mind was on full display yesterday, Friday, September 23, 2011, the Feast of Pope Saint Linus and the Commemoration of Saint Thecla (and Ember Saturday in September) when he addressed a group of Mohammedans in Berlin, Germany, before flying to Erfurt, Germany, to sing the praises of a chap named Martin Luther, the man who is singularly responsible for helping to let loose the flood tide of demonic forces that have shaped the world of Modernity.

Here are some excepts from the false "pontiff's" address to the Mohammedans in the Apostolic Nunciature of Berlin:

I am glad to be able to welcome you here, as the representatives of different Muslim communities in Germany.  I thank Professor Mouhanad Khorchide most sincerely for his kind greetings and for the profound reflections that he shared with us.  His words illustrate what a climate of respect and trust has grown up between the Catholic Church and the Muslim communities in Germany and how the convictions we share are becoming visible.

Berlin is a good place for a meeting like this, not only because the oldest mosque in Germany is located here, but also because Berlin has the largest Muslim population of all the cities in Germany.

From the 1970s onwards, the presence of numerous Muslim families has increasingly become a distinguishing mark of this country.  Constant effort is needed in order to foster better mutual acquaintance and understanding.  Not only is this important for peaceful coexistence, but also for the contribution that each can make towards building up the common good in this society.

Many Muslims attribute great importance to the religious dimension of life.  At times this is thought provocative in a society that tends to marginalize religion or at most to assign it a place among the individual’s private choices. 

The Catholic Church firmly advocates that due recognition be given to the public dimension of religious adherence. In an overwhelmingly pluralist society, this demand is not unimportant.  In the process, care must be taken to guarantee that the other is always treated with respect.  This mutual respect grows only on the basis of agreement on certain inalienable values that are proper to human nature, in particular the inviolable dignity of every single person as created by God.  Such agreement does not limit the expression of individual religions; on the contrary, it allows each person to bear witness explicitly to what he believes, not avoiding comparison with others. (Meeting with representatives of the Muslim community in the reception room of the Apostolic Nunciature of Berlin, September 23, 2011.)

 

Brief Comment: The influx of Mohammedans to Germany in the past four decades was permitted as a result of a loss of the indigenous labor force in Germany brought about by the widespread use of contraception, which itself is but the fruit of the Protestant Revolution that began in Germany on October 31, 1517. Although Luther himself opposed contraception, his revolution against the Divine Plan that God Himself instituted to effect man's return to Him through the Catholic Church made each individual his own "pope" or "popessa," little authority figures who could determine for themselves to what to believe and how to behave. Luther could not foresee that the revolution he unleashed would produce forces beyond his control, forces that would wind up helping to spawn the very naturalist ideology that would overtake his country four hundred years later and would spawn countless other ideologies promising man some kind of "secular salvation." Luther is himself the proximate root cause of the rising tide of Mohammedanism throughout the formerly Catholic states of Europe, including Germany.

Does the Catholic Church "firmly advocate" that "due recognition to the public dimension of religious adherence"? Not to false religions. Does she give "mutual respect" to false religions" in a pluralist society? No. Is the Catholic Faith meant by God to "coexist" in a pluralist society? Or is she meant to seek with urgency the unconditional conversion of the adherents of false religions?

Consider the teaching of the Catholic Church concerning the mutual "respect" for false religions and the toleration of their false ideas, which is different than a toleration of those who hold those ideas:

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

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

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

 

By separating fraternity from Christian charity thus understood, Democracy, far from being a progress, would mean a disastrous step backwards for civilization. If, as We desire with all Our heart, the highest possible peak of well being for society and its members is to be attained through fraternity or, as it is also called, universal solidarity, all minds must be united in the knowledge of Truth, all wills united in morality, and all hearts in the love of God and His Son Jesus Christ. But this union is attainable only by Catholic charity, and that is why Catholic charity alone can lead the people in the march of progress towards the ideal civilization.. . .

We know only too well the dark workshops in which are elaborated these mischievous doctrines which ought not to seduce clear-thinking minds. The leaders of the Sillon have not been able to guard against these doctrines. The exaltation of their sentiments, the undiscriminating good-will of their hearts, their philosophical mysticism, mixed with a measure of illuminism, have carried them away towards another Gospel which they thought was the true Gospel of Our Savior. To such an extent that they speak of Our Lord Jesus Christ with a familiarity supremely disrespectful, and that - their ideal being akin to that of the Revolution - they fear not to draw between the Gospel and the Revolution blasphemous comparisons for which the excuse cannot be made that they are due to some confused and over-hasty composition.

We wish to draw your attention, Venerable Brethren, to this distortion of the Gospel and to the sacred character of Our Lord Jesus Christ, God and man, prevailing within the Sillon and elsewhere. As soon as the social question is being approached, it is the fashion in some quarters to first put aside the divinity of Jesus Christ, and then to mention only His unlimited clemency, His compassion for all human miseries, and His pressing exhortations to the love of our neighbor and to the brotherhood of men. True, Jesus has loved us with an immense, infinite love, and He came on earth to suffer and die so that, gathered around Him in justice and love, motivated by the same sentiments of mutual charity, all men might live in peace and happiness. But for the realization of this temporal and eternal happiness, He has laid down with supreme authority the condition that we must belong to His Flock, that we must accept His doctrine, that we must practice virtue, and that we must accept the teaching and guidance of Peter and his successors. Further, whilst Jesus was kind to sinners and to those who went astray, He did not respect their false ideas, however sincere they might have appeared. He loved them all, but He instructed them in order to convert them and save them. Whilst He called to Himself in order to comfort them, those who toiled and suffered, it was not to preach to them the jealousy of a chimerical equality. Whilst He lifted up the lowly, it was not to instill in them the sentiment of a dignity independent from, and rebellious against, the duty of obedience. Whilst His heart overflowed with gentleness for the souls of good-will, He could also arm Himself with holy indignation against the profaners of the House of God, against the wretched men who scandalized the little ones, against the authorities who crush the people with the weight of heavy burdens without putting out a hand to lift them. He was as strong as he was gentle. He reproved, threatened, chastised, knowing, and teaching us that fear is the beginning of wisdom, and that it is sometimes proper for a man to cut off an offending limb to save his body. Finally, He did not announce for future society the reign of an ideal happiness from which suffering would be banished; but, by His lessons and by His example, He traced the path of the happiness which is possible on earth and of the perfect happiness in heaven: the royal way of the Cross. These are teachings that it would be wrong to apply only to one's personal life in order to win eternal salvation; these are eminently social teachings, and they show in Our Lord Jesus Christ something quite different from an inconsistent and impotent humanitarianism. (Pope Saint Pius X, Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910.)

 

 

Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI believes in the very antithesis of what is taught by the Catholic Church from time immemorial.

The rest of the false "pontiff's" address to the Mohammedans was just more of the same, ending with a plug  for his "Assisi III" event that will take place October 27, 2011, twenty-five years after Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II convened the first "World Day of Prayer for Peace" in Assisi, Italy:

Dear friends, on the basis of what I have outlined here, it seems to me that there can be fruitful collaboration between Christians and Muslims.  In the process, we help to build a society that differs in many respects from what we brought with us from the past.  As believers, setting out from our respective convictions, we can offer an important witness in many key areas of life in society.  I am thinking, for example, of the protection of the family based on marriage, respect for life in every phase of its natural course or the promotion of greater social justice.

This is another reason why I think it important to hold a day of reflection, dialogue and prayer for peace and justice in the world, which as you know we plan to do on 27 October next in Assisi, twenty-five years after the historic meeting there led by my predecessor, Blessed Pope John Paul II.  Through this gathering, we wish to express, with simplicity, that we believers have a special contribution to make towards building a better world, while acknowledging that if our actions are to be effective, we need to grow in dialogue and mutual esteem.  (Meeting with representatives of the Muslim community in the reception room of the Apostolic Nunciature of Berlin, September 23, 2011.)

 

Building the "better" world? Catholicism is the one and only foundation of personal and social order. Perhaps you have read this previously. The "better" world cannot be built upon a respect for those who violate the First Commandment by worshiping false gods and who violate the Second by blaspheming true God of Divine Revelation and and denying even one part of His Sacred Deposit of Faith. The "better" world starts by obeying the Most Blessed Trinity. The "better" world starts and ends with a complete and docile submission to everything taught by the Catholic Church in the Holy Name of her Divine Redeemer, Christ the King. Anyone who contends otherwise, including Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, is a liar and a deceiver.

It is no wonder, therefore, that the false "pontiff" is free with praise for the master liar and deceiver of Modernity, Martin Luther, as he demonstrated yet again yesterday in two addresses to Lutherans at what is called the "Former Augustinian Convent," now in Lutheran control, in Erfurt, Germany. The first address was given to the "council" of the so-called Evangelical [Lutheran] Church of Germany:

As I begin to speak, I would like first of all to say how deeply grateful I am that we are able to come together.  I am particularly grateful to you, my dear brother, Pastor Schneider, for receiving me and for the words with which you have welcomed me here among you.  You have opened your heart and openly expressed a truly shared faith, a longing for unity.  And we are also glad, for I believe that this session, our meetings here, are also being celebrated as the feast of our shared faith.   Moreover, I would like to express my thanks to all of you for your gift in making it possible for us to speak with one another as Christians here, in this historic place.

As the Bishop of Rome, it is deeply moving for me to be meeting you here in the ancient Augustinian convent in Erfurt.  As we have just heard, this is where Luther studied theology.  This is where he was ordained a priest.  Against his father’s wishes, he did not continue the study of Law, but instead he studied theology and set off on the path towards priesthood in the Order of Saint Augustine.  And on this path, he was not simply concerned with this or that.  What constantly exercised him was the question of God, the deep passion and driving force of his whole life’s journey.  “How do I receive the grace of God?”: this question struck him in the heart and lay at the foundation of all his theological searching and inner struggle.  For Luther theology was no mere academic pursuit, but the struggle for oneself, which in turn was a struggle for and with God.

“How do I receive the grace of God?”  The fact that this question was the driving force of his whole life never ceases to make a deep impression on me.  For who is actually concerned about this today – even among Christians?  What does the question of God mean in our lives?  In our preaching?  Most people today, even Christians, set out from the presupposition that God is not fundamentally interested in our sins and virtues.  He knows that we are all mere flesh.  And insofar as people believe in an afterlife and a divine judgement at all, nearly everyone presumes for all practical purposes that God is bound to be magnanimous and that ultimately he mercifully overlooks our small failings.  The question no longer troubles us.  But are they really so small, our failings?  Is not the world laid waste through the corruption of the great, but also of the small, who think only of their own advantage?  Is it not laid waste through the power of drugs, which thrives on the one hand on greed and avarice, and on the other hand on the craving for pleasure of those who become addicted?  Is the world not threatened by the growing readiness to use violence, frequently masking itself with claims to religious motivation?  Could hunger and poverty so devastate parts of the world if love for God and godly love of neighbour – of his creatures, of men and women – were more alive in us?  I could go on.  No, evil is no small matter.  Were we truly to place God at the centre of our lives, it could not be so powerful.  The question: what is God’s position towards me, where do I stand before God? – Luther’s burning question must once more, doubtless in a new form, become our question too, not an academic question, but a real one.  In my view, this is the first summons we should attend to in our encounter with Martin Luther.

Another important point: God, the one God, creator of heaven and earth, is no mere philosophical hypothesis regarding the origins of the universe.  This God has a face, and he has spoken to us.  He became one of us in the man Jesus Christ – who is both true God and true man.  Luther’s thinking, his whole spirituality, was thoroughly Christocentric: “What promotes Christ’s cause” was for Luther the decisive hermeneutical criterion for the exegesis of sacred Scripture.  This presupposes, however, that Christ is at the heart of our spirituality and that love for him, living in communion with him, is what guides our life. (Meeting with representatives of the German Evangelical Church Council in the Chapter Hall of the Augustinian Convent Erfurt, Germany, September 23, 2011.)

 

Brief Comment: So, Ratzinger/Benedict is pleased to be meeting with his fellow Christians? He should not have even walked into this den of iniquity where false worship and false doctrines offend God and deceive souls:

Lastly, the beloved disciple St. John renews the same command in the strongest terms, and adds another reason, which regards all without exception, and especially those who are best instructed in their duty: "Look to yourselves", says he, "that ye lose not the things that ye have wrought, but that you may receive a full reward. Whosoever revolteth, and continueth not in the doctrine of Christ, hath not God. He that continueth in the doctrine the same hath both the Father and the Son. If any man come to you and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house, nor say to him, God speed you: for he that saith to him, God speed you, communicateth with his wicked works". (2 John, ver. 8)

Here, then, it is manifest, that all fellowship with those who have not the doctrine of Jesus Christ, which is "a communication in their evil works" — that is, in their false tenets, or worship, or in any act of religion — is strictly forbidden, under pain of losing the "things we have wrought, the reward of our labors, the salvation of our souls". And if this holy apostle declares that the very saying God speed to such people is a communication with their wicked works, what would he have said of going to their places of worship, of hearing their sermons, joining in their prayers, or the like?

From this passage the learned translators of the Rheims New Testament, in their note, justly observe, "That, in matters of religion, in praying, hearing their sermons, presence at their service, partaking of their sacraments, and all other communicating with them in spiritual things, it is a great and damnable sin to deal with them." And if this be the case with all in general, how much more with those who are well instructed and better versed in their religion than others? For their doing any of these things must be a much greater crime than in ignorant people, because they know their duty better. (Bishop George Hay, The Laws of God Forbidding All Communication in Religion With Those of a False Religion.)

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

Also, "If any clergyman or laic shall go into the synagogue of the Jews, or the meetings of heretics, to join in prayer with them, let him be deposed, and deprived of communion". (Can. 63) (Bishop George Hay, ,who served as the Vicar Apostolic of the Lowland District of Scotland, mind you, my friends, from December 3, 1778, to August 24, 1805: The Laws of God Forbidding All Communication in Religion With Those of a False Religion.)

So, Venerable Brethren, it is clear why this Apostolic See has never allowed its subjects to take part in the assemblies of non-Catholics: for the union of Christians can only be promoted by promoting the return to the one true Church of Christ of those who are separated from it, for in the past they have unhappily left it. To the one true Church of Christ, we say, which is visible to all, and which is to remain, according to the will of its Author, exactly the same as He instituted it. During the lapse of centuries, the mystical Spouse of Christ has never been contaminated, nor can she ever in the future be contaminated, as Cyprian bears witness: "The Bride of Christ cannot be made false to her Spouse: she is incorrupt and modest. She knows but one dwelling, she guards the sanctity of the nuptial chamber chastely and modestly."The same holy Martyr with good reason marveled exceedingly that anyone could believe that "this unity in the Church which arises from a divine foundation, and which is knit together by heavenly sacraments, could be rent and torn asunder by the force of contrary wills." For since the mystical body of Christ, in the same manner as His physical body, is one, compacted and fitly joined together, it were foolish and out of place to say that the mystical body is made up of members which are disunited and scattered abroad: whosoever therefore is not united with the body is no member of it, neither is he in communion with Christ its head. (Pope Pius XI, Mortalium Animos, January 6, 1928.)

 

None of this matters one whit to Ratzinger/Benedict, who dismisses the authentic patrimony of the Catholic Church with a wave of the hand as he invokes his philosophically absurd and dogmatically condemned "hermeneutic of continuity and discontinuity" to rationalize his violation of the very Oath Against Modernism that he had sworn to uphold:

Fourthly, I sincerely hold that the doctrine of faith was handed down to us from the apostles through the orthodox Fathers in exactly the same meaning and always in the same purport. Therefore, I entirely reject the heretical' misrepresentation that dogmas evolve and change from one meaning to another different from the one which the Church held previously. . . .

Finally, I declare that I am completely opposed to the error of the modernists who hold that there is nothing divine in sacred tradition; or what is far worse, say that there is, but in a pantheistic sense, with the result that there would remain nothing but this plain simple fact-one to be put on a par with the ordinary facts of history-the fact, namely, that a group of men by their own labor, skill, and talent have continued through subsequent ages a school begun by Christ and his apostles. I firmly hold, then, and shall hold to my dying breath the belief of the Fathers in the charism of truth, which certainly is, was, and always will be in the succession of the episcopacy from the apostles. The purpose of this is, then, not that dogma may be tailored according to what seems better and more suited to the culture of each age; rather, that the absolute and immutable truth preached by the apostles from the beginning may never be believed to be different, may never be understood in any other way.

I promise that I shall keep all these articles faithfully, entirely, and sincerely, and guard them inviolate, in no way deviating from them in teaching or in any way in word or in writing. Thus I promise, this I swear, so help me God. (The Oath Against Modernism, September 1, 1910.)

 

Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI has not only failed to keep these articles faithfully, he has worked actively to undermine each and every one of them without fail.

Luther had a struggle for and with God to develop his theology? Luther's whole life was Christocentric?

Martin Luther had struggles all right. Those struggles involved his failure to control his sins against holy purity and temperance as he broke his vow of celibacy and got himself into one drunken stupor after another, confessing his sins thereafter without "feeling" forgiven, a false emotion that caused him to conclude that the whole sacramental system was false because we do not need an "intermediary" between God and man in the form of an ordained priest to absolve us of our sins. This is hardly the stuff of a man whose life was "Christocentric" as to be centered on the Second Person of the Most Blessed Trinity made Man in the Virginal and Immaculate Womb of His Most Blessed Mother by the power of God the Holy Ghost at the Annunciation is to submit oneself without reservation to everything contained in the Sacred Deposit of Faith, which includes Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition.

Martin Luther thus had no true love of Our Lord. He believed that he alone understood the Word of God and the Fathers of the Church, rejecting the "prison" into which Sacred Scripture had been placed by some of the Fathers and, of course, by Saint Thomas Aquinas himself. Sound familiar? Of course it does. This is identical to what Ratzinger/Benedict and the "fathers" of the "new theology" to which he is so dedicated have taught. Luther was also a lover of novelty, and these sorts of "ecumenical" gatherings are novelties of the "popes" of the counterfeit church of conciliarism.

Although Martin Luther was gifted with a keen intellect, his sins and his overweening pride and disordered self-love darkened that intellect and turned it into an instrument of the evil that is still deceiving souls yet today. Father Patrick O'Hare explained the true identity, which is far different from the Ratzinger/Benedict's hagiography, of Martin Luther:

"Anointed," as Luther was, "to preach the Gospel of peace," and commissioned to communicate to all the knowledge which uplifts, sanctifies and saves, it is certainly pertinent to ask what was his attitude towards the ministry of the divine word, and in what manner did he show by speech and behavior the heavenly sanctions of law: divine, international and social?

As we draw near this man and carefully examine his career, we find that in an evil moment he abandoned the spirit of discipline, became a pursuer of novelty, and put on the ways and manners of the "wolf in sheep's clothing" whose teeth and claws rent asunder the seamless garment of divine knowledge which should have been kept whole for the instruction and the comfort of all who were to seek the law at his lips. His words lost their savor and influence for good, and only foulness and mocking blasphemy filled his mouth, to deceive the ignorant and lead them into error, license and rebellion against both Church and state. Out of the abundance of a corrupt heart this fallen priest, who had departed from the divine source of that knowledge, which is unto peace, shamelessly advanced theories and principles which cut at the root of all order, authority and obedience, and inaugurated an antagonism and a disregard for the sanctity of law such as the world had not seen since pagan times. His Gospel was not that of the Apostles, who issued from the upper room of Jerusalem in the power of those "parted tongues, as it were of fire." His doctrine, stripped of its cunning and deceit, was nothing else, to use the words of St. James describing false teaching, but "earthly, sensual, devilish"; so much so, that men of good sense could no longer safely "seek the law at his mouth" and honestly recognize him as "the angel of the Lord of Hosts" sent with instructions for the good of the flock and the peace of the nations. Opposed to all law, order and restraint, he could not but disgrace his ministry, proclaim his own shame, and prove to every wise and discerning follower of the true Gospel of peace, the groundlessness of his boastful claims to be in any proper sense a benefactor of society, an upholder of constituted authority and a promoter of the best interests of humanity.

Luther, like many another framer of religious and political heresy, may have begun his course blindly and with little serious reflection. He may never have stopped to estimate the lamentable and disastrous results to which his heretofore unheard-of-propaganda would inevitably lead. He may not have directly intended the ruin, desolation and misery which his seditious preaching effected in all directions. "But," as Verres aptly says, "if a man standing on one of the snowcapped giants of the Alps were to roll down a little stone, knowing what consequences would follow, he would be answerable for the desolation caused by the avalanche in the valley below. Luther put into motion not one little stone, but rock after rock, and he must have been shortsighted indeed--or his blind hatred made him so--if he was unable to estimate beforehand what effect his inflammatory appeals to the masses of the people and his wild denunciations of law and order would have." He should, as a matter of course, have weighed well and thoroughly the merits or demerits of his "new gospel" before he announced it to an undiscriminating public, and wittingly or unwittingly unbarred the floodgates of confusion and unrest. Deliberation, however, was a process little known to this man of many moods and violent temper. To secure victory in his quarrel with the Church absorbed his attention to the exclusion of all else, and, although he may not have reflected in time on the effects of his revolutionary teachings, he is nonetheless largely responsible for the religious, political and social upheaval of his day which his wild and passionate harangues fomented and precipitated. Nothing short of a miracle could have prevented his reckless, persistent and unsparing denunciations of authority and its representatives from undermining the supports by which order and discipline in Church and state were upheld. As events proved, his wild words, flung about in reckless profusion, fell into souls full of the fermenting passions of time and turned Germany into a land of misery, darkness and disorder. (Monsignor Patrick F. O'Hare. The Facts About Luther, published originally in Cincinnati, Ohio, by Frederick Pustet Company in 1916, reprinted in 1987 by TAN Books and Publishers, pp. 215-217.)

 

No man can be said to have led a Christocentric life who made war upon the very reality of the visible, hierarchical Church that He founded upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope. There is no true Christocentric life without the Catholic Church. It is that simple, something that Ratzinger, much like Luther before him, is not.

Luther was concerned about "Christ's cause." No, he was not. No man who denies the very reality of His Holy Church is advancing anyone's cause except that of Lucifer himself.

Here is a brief review of the principal errors of the Lutheran strain of Protestantism:

(1) That Our Blessed Lord and Savior Jesus Christ did not create a visible, hierarchical Church.

(2) That there is no authority given by Our Lord to the Pope and his bishops and priests to govern and to sanctify the faithful.

(3) That each believer has an immediate and personal relationship with the Savior as soon as he makes a profession of faith on his lips and in his heart, therefore being perpetually justified before God.

(4) Having been justified by faith alone, a believer has no need of an intermediary from a non-existent hierarchical priesthood to forgive him his sins. He is forgiven by God immediately when he asks forgiveness.

(5) This state of justification is not earned by good works. While good works are laudable, especially to help unbelievers convert, they do not impute unto salvation. Salvation is the result of the profession of faith that justifies the sinner.

(6) That grace is merely, in the words of Martin Luther, the snowflakes that cover up the "dung heap" that is man.

(7) That there is only one source of Divine Revelation, Sacred Scripture.

(8) That each individual is his own interpreter of Sacred Scripture.

(9) That there is a strict separation of Church and State. Princes, to draw from Luther himself, may be Christians but it is not as a Christian that they ought to rule.

 

These lies have perm ut at ed in thousands of different directions. However, they have sewn the fabric of the modern state and popular culture for nearly half a millennium, serving as a good deal of the foundation of conciliarism itself and its own devastation of souls.

 

Here below are explanations of these lies and their multifaceted implications for the world in which we live:

(1-2) The contention that Our Lord did not create a visible, hierarchical church vitiates the need for a hierarchical, sacerdotal priesthood for the administration of the sacraments. It is a rejection of the entirety of the history of Christianity prior to the Sixteenth Century. It is a denial of the lesson taught us by Our Lord by means of His submission to His own creatures, Saint Joseph and the Blessed Mother, in the Holy Family of Nazareth that each of us is to live our entire lives under authority, starting with the authority of the Vicar of Christ and those bishops who are in full communion with him. The rejection of the visible, hierarchical church is founded on the prideful belief that we are able to govern ourselves without being directed by anyone else on earth. This contention would lead in due course to the rejection of any and all religious belief as necessary for individuals and for societies. Luther and Calvin paved the way for Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the French Revolution that followed so closely the latter's deification of man.

(3-6) Baptism is merely symbolic of the Christian's desire to be associated with the Savior in the amorphous body known as the Church. What is determinative of the believer's relationship with Christ is his profession of faith. As the believer remains a reprobate sinner, all he can do is to seek forgiveness by confessing his sins privately to God. This gives the Protestant of the Lutheran strain the presumptuous sense that there is almost nothing he can do to lose his salvation once he has made his profession of faith in the Lord Jesus. There is thus no belief that a person can scale the heights of personal sanctity by means of sanctifying grace. It is impossible, as Luther projected from his own unwillingness to cooperate with sanctifying grace to overcome his battles with lust, for the believer to be anything other than a dung heap. Thus a Protestant can sin freely without for once considering that he has killed the life of sanctifying grace in his soul, thereby darkening his intellect and weakening the will and inclining himself all the more to sin-and all the more a vessel of disorder and injustice in the larger life of society.

(7-8) The rejection of a visible, hierarchical Church and the rejection of Apostolic Tradition as a source of Divine Revelation protected by that Church leads in both instances to theological relativism. Without an authoritative guide to interpret Divine Revelation, including Sacred Scripture, individual believers can come to mutually contradictory conclusions about the meaning of passages, the precise thing that has given rise to literally thousands of Protestant sects. And if a believer can reduce the Bible, which he believes is the sole source of Divine Revelation, to the level of individual interpretation, then there is nothing to prevent anyone from doing the same with all written documents, including the documents of a nation's founding. If the plain words of Scripture can be deconstructed of their meaning, it is easy to do so, say, with the words of a governmental constitution. Theological relativism paved the way for moral relativism. Moral relativism paved the way for the triumph of positivism and deconstructionism as normative in the realm of theology and that of law and popular culture.

(9) The overthrow of the Social Kingship of Jesus Christ as it was exercised by His true Church in the Middle Ages by the Protestant concept of the separation of Church and State is what gave rise to royal absolutism in Europe in the immediate aftermath of Luther's handiwork. Indeed, as I have noted any number of times before, it is arguably the case that the conditions that bred resentment on the part of colonists in English America prior to 1776 might never have developed if England had remained a Catholic nation. The monarchy would have been subject in the Eighteenth Century to same constraints as it had in the Tenth or Eleventh Centuries, namely, that kings and queens would have continued to understand that the Church reserved unto herself the right to interpose herself in the event that rulers had done things-or proposed to do things-that were contrary to the binding precepts of the Divine positive law and the natural law and/or were injurious of the cause of the sanctification and salvation of the souls of their subjects. The overthrow of the Social Kingship of Jesus Christ deposited power first of all in the hands of monarchs eager to be rid of the "interference" of the Church and ultimately in the hands of whoever happened to hold the reins of governmental power in the modern "democratic" state. Despotism has been the result in both cases.

 

Despite all of this, however, many conciliarists have praised the revolutionary Martin Luther. Among these conciliarists is, of course, Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI. Although the false "pontiff" has criticized various aspects of Luther's beliefs in various places at various times, including in Spe Salvi, November 30, 2007, he has nevertheless praised Martin Luther as a "father" of a theological school that is deserving of respect. Ratzinger/ Benedict believes that Catholics and Protestants can both understand their respective "Fathers" in a way that would be recognized as "catholic" by the early Church Fathers, which is why he, "Benedict XVI," is attempting to deconstruct the early Church Fathers to "read" conciliarism, which is so favorably disposed to Orthodoxy ( see Oh, Bother! It's Just A Thousand Years) and Protestantism, into their texts:

In many respects, a decision about the role of the Fathers seems, in fact, to have been reached today. But, since it is more unfavorable than favorable to a greater reliance upon them, it does nothing to lead us out of our present aporia. For, in the debate about what constitutes greater fidelity to the Church of the Fathers, Luther's historical instinct is clearly proving itself right. We are fairly certain today that, while the Fathers were not Roman Catholic as the thirteenth or nineteenth century would have understood the term, they were nonetheless "Catholic", and their Catholicism extended to the very canon of the New Testament itself. With this assessment, paradoxically, the Fathers have lost ground on both side of the argument because, in the controversy about the fundamental basis for understanding Scripture, there is nothing more to be proved or disproved by reference to them. But neither have they become totally unimportant in the domain, for, even after the relativization they have suffered in the process we have described, the differences between the Catholicism of an Augustine and a Thomas Aquinas, or even between that of a Cardinal Manning and a Cyprian, still opens a broad field of theological investigation. Granted, only one side can consider them its own Fathers, and the proof of continuity, which once led directly back to them, seems no longer worth the effort for a concept of history and faith that sees continuity as made possible and communicated in terms of discontinuity.

Nevertheless, a fact is emerging from these reflections that can guide us in our search for an answer. For we must admit, on the one hand, that, even for Catholic theology, the so-called Fathers of the Church have, for a long time, been "Fathers" only in an indirect sense, whereas the real "Father" of the form that ultimately dominated nineteenth century theology was Thomas Aquinas, with his classic systematization of the thirteenth century doctrina media, which, it must be added, was in its turn based on the "authority" of the Fathers. (Joseph Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology, pp. 141-142.)

 

Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI is joined at the hip with Martin Luther in their mutual errors concerning Saint Thomas Aquinas and the Angelic Doctor's view of the Church Fathers.

The false "pontiff" noted that his Lutheran "brothers" could join with him in fighting irreligion, a common theme of the movement that is false ecumenism while condemning the rise of various "fundamentalist" Protestant communities who owe their very origins to the revolution against God and His Catholic Church started by the drunkard and lecher named Martin Luther, whose heretical view of "justification by faith alone" became the basis of a de facto discrediting of the Council of Trent's Decree on Justification offered by the then Joseph "Cardinal" Ratzinger-brokered Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification in 1999 (one of those "unofficial" official documents of the conciliar church that supposedly binds no one but winds up being referenced by the false "pontiff" very frequently, such as he did on Thursday by citing his own apostate work on Holy Week in his address to Talmudists in Berlin):

Now perhaps one might say: all well and good, but what has this to do with our ecumenical situation?  Could this just be an attempt to talk our way past the urgent problems that are still waiting for practical progress, for concrete results?  I would respond by saying that the first and most important thing for ecumenism is that we keep in view just how much we have in common, not losing sight of it amid the pressure towards secularization – everything that makes us Christian in the first place and continues to be our gift and our task.  It was the error of the Reformation period that for the most part we could only see what divided us and we failed to grasp existentially what we have in common in terms of the great deposit of sacred Scripture and the early Christian creeds.  For me, the great ecumenical step forward of recent decades is that we have become aware of all this common ground, that we acknowledge it as we pray and sing together, as we make our joint commitment to the Christian ethos in our dealings with the world, as we bear common witness to the God of Jesus Christ in this world as our inalienable, shared foundation.

To be sure, the risk of losing it is not unreal.  I would like to make two brief points here.  The geography of Christianity has changed dramatically in recent times, and is in the process of changing further.  Faced with a new form of Christianity, which is spreading with overpowering missionary dynamism, sometimes in frightening ways, the mainstream Christian denominations often seem at a loss.  This is a form of Christianity with little institutional depth, little rationality and even less dogmatic content, and with little stability.  This worldwide phenomenon – that bishops from all over the world are constantly telling me about –  poses a question to us all: what is this new form of Christianity saying to us, for better and for worse?  In any event, it raises afresh the question about what has enduring validity and what can or must be changed – the question of our fundamental faith choice.

The second challenge to worldwide Christianity of which I wish to speak is more profound and in our country more controversial: the secularized context of the world in which we Christians today have to live and bear witness to our faith.  God is increasingly being driven out of our society, and the history of revelation that Scripture recounts to us seems locked into an ever more remote past.  Are we to yield to the pressure of secularization, and become modern by watering down the faith?  Naturally faith today has to be thought out afresh, and above all lived afresh, so that it is suited to the present day.  Yet it is not by watering the faith down, but by living it today in its fullness that we achieve this.  This is a key ecumenical task in which we have to help one another: developing a deeper and livelier faith.  It is not strategy that saves us and saves Christianity, but faith – thought out and lived afresh; through such faith, Christ enters this world of ours, and with him, the living God.  As the martyrs of the Nazi era brought us together and prompted that great initial ecumenical opening, so today, faith that is lived from deep within amid a secularized world is the most powerful ecumenical force that brings us together, guiding us towards unity in the one Lord.  And we pray to him, asking that we may learn to live the faith anew, and that in this way we may then become one. (Meeting with representatives of the German Evangelical Church Council in the Chapter Hall of the Augustinian Convent Erfurt, Germany, September 23, 2011.)

 

All right, Bishop Fellay, try to justify this mother lode of apostasy when you decide whether to sign on the dotted line. Here are just a few of the little "details" that you will just have to accept if you so so.

What, pray tell, constitutes, "mainstream Christianity"? Orthodoxy? Lutheranism? Presbyterianism? Anglicanism? Methodism? Baptists?

How can it be said that the "fundamentalist" Protestant sects differ at all from the so-called "mainstream" Protestant sects as every Protestant sect is founded on a reject of multiple parts of the Deposit of Faith? Whatever differences that exist are matters of degree, not of kind.

What kind of "dogma" is taught by Protestants that can bind the consciences of anyone at any time for any reason?

How can heretics give a "common witness" to the "Christian faith"? What kind of common ground is there between truth and error.

Pope Leo XIII, writing in Satis Cognitum, June 29, 1896, explained that there must be perfect agreement and union of minds for there to be unity among believers, and that that unity can be found in one and only one place, the Catholic Church:

Agreement and union of minds is the necessary foundation of this perfect concord amongst men, from which concurrence of wills and similarity of action are the natural results. Wherefore, in His divine wisdom, He ordained in His Church Unity of Faith; a virtue which is the first of those bonds which unite man to God, and whence we receive the name of the faithful - "one Lord, one faith, one baptism" (Eph. iv., 5). That is, as there is one Lord and one baptism, so should all Christians, without exception, have but one faith. And so the Apostle St. Paul not merely begs, but entreats and implores Christians to be all of the same mind, and to avoid difference of opinions: "I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all speak the same thing, and that there be no schisms amongst you, and that you be perfect in the same mind and in the same judgment" (I Cor. i., 10). Such passages certainly need no interpreter; they speak clearly enough for themselves. Besides, all who profess Christianity allow that there can be but one faith. It is of the greatest importance and indeed of absolute necessity, as to which many are deceived, that the nature and character of this unity should be recognized. And, as We have already stated, this is not to be ascertained by conjecture, but by the certain knowledge of what was done; that is by seeking for and ascertaining what kind of unity in faith has been commanded by Jesus Christ. (Pope Leo XIII, Satis Cognitum, June 29, 1896.)

 

How is Ratzinger/Benedict himself not guilty of doing what he condemns, that is, of "watering down the faith," by speaking of a common witness to fight against a secularized world, especially one one considers these words of Pope Pius XI in Mortalium Animos, January 8, 1928:

Is it not right, it is often repeated, indeed, even consonant with duty, that all who invoke the name of Christ should abstain from mutual reproaches and at long last be united in mutual charity? Who would dare to say that he loved Christ, unless he worked with all his might to carry out the desires of Him, Who asked His Father that His disciples might be "one." And did not the same Christ will that His disciples should be marked out and distinguished from others by this characteristic, namely that they loved one another: "By this shall all men know that you are my disciples, if you have love one for another"? All Christians, they add, should be as "one": for then they would be much more powerful in driving out the pest of irreligion, which like a serpent daily creeps further and becomes more widely spread, and prepares to rob the Gospel of its strength. These things and others that class of men who are known as pan-Christians continually repeat and amplify; and these men, so far from being quite few and scattered, have increased to the dimensions of an entire class, and have grouped themselves into widely spread societies, most of which are directed by non-Catholics, although they are imbued with varying doctrines concerning the things of faith. This undertaking is so actively promoted as in many places to win for itself the adhesion of a number of citizens, and it even takes possession of the minds of very many Catholics and allures them with the hope of bringing about such a union as would be agreeable to the desires of Holy Mother Church, who has indeed nothing more at heart than to recall her erring sons and to lead them back to her bosom. But in reality beneath these enticing words and blandishments lies hid a most grave error, by which the foundations of the Catholic faith are completely destroyed. (Pope Pius XI, Mortalium Animos, January 6, 1928.)

 

How has "Pope" Benedict XVI recalled Holy Mother Church's "erring sons" to "lead them back to her bosom"? He has not. Indeed, he uses words and blandishments that expose a most grave error by which he has personally presided over the destruction of the Catholic Faith in the lives of hundreds of millions of Catholics around the world. He is an apostate. Sign on the dotted line?

Ratzinger/Benedict's second set of remarks to the Lutherans yesterday, delivered at an ecumenical "prayer service" in the church of the former Augustinian Convent in Erfurt, Germany, continued the same themes that he had developed in the address to the representatives of the council of the so-called Evangelical Church of Germany a short while beforehand:

“I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through them” (Jn 17:20).  These words Jesus addressed to the Father in the Upper Room.  He intercedes for coming generations of believers.  He looks beyond the Upper Room, towards the future.  He also prayed for us.  And he prayed for our unity.  This prayer of Jesus is not simply something from the past.  He stands before the Father, for ever making intercession for us.  At this moment he also stands in our midst and he desires to draw us into his own prayer.  In the prayer of Jesus we find the very heart of our unity.  We will become one if we allow ourselves to be drawn into this prayer.  Whenever we gather in prayer as Christians, Jesus’ concern for us, and his prayer to the Father for us, ought to touch our hearts. The more we allow ourselves to be drawn into this event, the more we grow in unity. (Ecumenical Celebration in the church of the Augustinian Convent, Erfurt, Germany, September 23, 2011.)

 

Brief Comment: Grow in unity? Unity exists in one place. The Catholic Church. People either belong to this true Church or they do not.

Pope Pius XII noted this in Mystici Corporis, June 29, 1946:

Actually only those are to be included as members of the Church who have been baptized and profess the true faith, and who have not been so unfortunate as to separate themselves from the unity of the Body, or been excluded by legitimate authority for grave faults committed. "For in one spirit" says the Apostle, "were we all baptized into one Body, whether Jews or Gentiles, whether bond or free." As therefore in the true Christian community there is only one Body, one Spirit, one Lord, and one Baptism, so there can be only one faith. And therefore, if a man refuse to hear the Church, let him be considered - so the Lord commands - as a heathen and a publican. It follows that those who are divided in faith or government cannot be living in the unity of such a Body, nor can they be living the life of its one Divine Spirit. (Pope Pius XII, Mystici Corporis, June 29, 1943.)

 

There is and can be no "unity" with Lutherans. They must convert unconditionally to the Catholic Church, and it is a dereliction of duty on the part of the man who believes himself to be the very Vicar of Our Lord Jesus Christ on earth to refuse to seek their conversion. It is a sin against God and and it is a sin against charity for the sake of the souls of the Lutherans, a sin that also reaffirms Catholics in the utterly false belief that those who adhere to Lutheranism are in no peril of losing their immortal souls for all eternity. This is a lie. Ratzinger/Benedict is a liar and deceiver. Oh, I wrote that already. I'll write it again and again if I have to whenever the false "pontiff" lies and deceives, which is a great deal of the time, admitting that he has his "Catholic" moments when addressing Catholics, something that will be addressed in tomorrow's installment of this series.

Did Jesus’ prayer go unheard?  The history of Christianity is in some sense the visible element of this drama in which Christ strives and suffers with us human beings.  Ever anew he must endure the rejection of unity, yet ever anew unity takes place with him and thus with the triune God.  We need to see both things: the sin of human beings, who reject God and withdraw within themselves, but also the triumphs of God, who upholds the Church despite her weakness, constantly drawing men and women closer to himself and thus to one another.  For this reason, in an ecumenical gathering, we ought not only to regret our divisions and separations, but we should also give thanks to God for all the elements of unity which he has preserved for us and bestows on us ever anew.  And this gratitude must be at the same time a resolve not to lose, at a time of temptations and perils, the unity thus bestowed.

Our fundamental unity comes from the fact that we believe in God, the Father Almighty, the maker of heaven and earth.  And that we confess that he is the triune God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  The highest unity is not the solitude of a monad, but rather a unity born of love.  We believe in God – the real God.  We believe that God spoke to us and became one of us.  To bear witness to this living God is our common task at the present time. (Ecumenical Celebration in the church of the Augustinian Convent, Erfurt, Germany, September 23, 2011.)

 

Elements of unity? There are no such things.

"Fundamental unity" comes from a common belief in the Most Blessed Trinity? Wrong again. See the passages from Satis Cognitum and Mystici Corporis cited above.

 

Does man need God, or can we do quite well without him?  When, in the first phase of God’s absence, his light continues to illumine and sustain the order of human existence, it appears that things can also function quite well without God.  But the more the world withdraws from God, the clearer it becomes that man, in his hubris of power, in his emptiness of heart and in his longing for satisfaction and happiness, increasingly loses his life.  A thirst for the infinite is indelibly present in human beings.  Man was created to have a relationship with God; we need him.  Our primary ecumenical service at this hour must be to bear common witness to the presence of the living God and in this way to give the world the answer which it needs.  Naturally, an absolutely central part of this fundamental witness to God is a witness to Jesus Christ, true man and true God, who lived in our midst, suffered and died for us and, in his resurrection, flung open the gates of death.  Dear friends, let us strengthen one another in this faith!  This is a great ecumenical task which leads us into the heart of Jesus’ prayer. (

The seriousness of our faith in God is shown by the way we live his word.  In our own day, it is shown in a very practical way by our commitment to that creature which he wished in his own image: to man.  We live at a time of uncertainty about what it means to be human.  Ethics are being replaced by a calculation of consequences.  In the face of this, we as Christians must defend the inviolable dignity of human beings from conception to death – from issues of pre-implantation diagnosis to the question of euthanasia.  As Romano Guardini once put it: “Only those who know God, know man.”  Without knowledge of God, man is easily manipulated.  Faith in God must take concrete form in a common defence of man.  To this defence of man belong not only these fundamental criteria of what it means to be human, but above all and very specifically, love, as Jesus Christ taught us in the account of the final judgement (Mt 25): God will judge us on how we respond to our neighbour, to the least of his brethren.  Readiness to help, amid the needs of the present time and beyond our immediate circle, is an essential task of the Christian. Ecumenical Celebration in the church of the Augustinian Convent, Erfurt, Germany, September 23, 2011.)

 

Common witness? See above. There can be no such thing with members of false religions.

A common defense against abortion and euthanasia? How can those who believe in contraception and divorce help fight two evils that were also spawned by the Protestant Revolution and the subsequent rise of the naturalism of Judeo-Masonry?

To defend the inviolability of innocent human life one must defend the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law as they have been entrusted by Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ exclusively to His Catholic Church for their eternal safekeeping and infallible explication. There is no "ecumenical" way to retard errors that have their proximate root causes in the revolution that Martin Luther wrought against the true Church founded by Christ the King Himself.

As I mentioned, this is true first and foremost in our personal lives as individuals.  But it also holds true in our community, as a people and a state in which we must all be responsible for one another.  It holds true for our continent, in which we are called to European solidarity.  Finally, it is true beyond all frontiers: today Christian love of neighbour also calls for commitment to justice throughout the world.  I know that Germans and Germany are doing much to enable all men and women to live in dignity, and for this I would like to express deep gratitude.

In conclusion, I would like to mention an even deeper dimension of our commitment to love.  The seriousness of our faith is shown especially when it inspires people to put themselves totally at the disposal of God and thus of other persons.  Great acts of charity become concrete only when, on the ground, we find persons totally at the service of others; they make the love of God credible.  People of this sort are an important sign of the truth of our faith.

Prior to my visit there was some talk of an “ecumenical gift” which was expected from such a visit.  There is no need for me to specify the gifts mentioned in this context.  Here I would only say that, in most of its manifestations, this reflects a political misreading of faith and of ecumenism.  In general, when a Head of State visits a friendly country, contacts between the various parties take place beforehand to arrange one or more agreements between the two states: by weighing respective benefits and drawbacks a compromise is reached which in the end appears beneficial for both parties, so that a treaty can then be signed.  But the faith of Christians does not rest on such a weighing of benefits and drawbacks.  A self-made faith is worthless. Faith is not something we work out intellectually and negotiate between us.  It is the foundation for our lives.  Unity grows not by the weighing of benefits and drawbacks but only by entering ever more deeply into the faith in our thoughts and in our lives.  In the past fifty years, and especially after the visit of Pope John Paul II some thirty years ago, we have drawn much closer together, and for this we can only be grateful.  I willingly think of the meeting with the Commission led by Bishop Lohse, in which this kind of joint growth in reflecting upon and living the faith was practised.  To all those engaged in that process – and especially, on the Catholic side, to Cardinal Lehmann – I wish to express deep gratitude.  I will refrain from mentioning other names – the Lord knows them all.  Together we can only thank the Lord for the paths of unity on which he has led us, and unite ourselves in humble trust to his prayer: Grant that we may all be one, as you are one with the Father, so that the world may believe that he has sent you (cf. Jn 17:21). (Ecumenical Celebration in the church of the Augustinian Convent, Erfurt, Germany, September 23, 2011.)

 

Bishop Lohse? Eduard Lohse was no "bishop." He was a Lutheran "bishop" of the Evangelical-Lutheran Church of Hanover, Germany, a member of the Evangelical Church of Germany, from 1971-1988.

Paths of unity?

Here is how Pope Pius IX called Protestants to unity one to the beginning of the [First] Vatican Council in 1869:

It is for this reason that so many who do not share 'the communion and the truth of the Catholic Church' must make use of the occasion of the Council, by the means of the Catholic Church, which received in Her bosom their ancestors, proposes [further] demonstration of profound unity and of firm vital force; hear the requirements [demands] of her heart, they must engage themselves to leave this state that does not guarantee for them the security of salvation. She does not hesitate to raise to the Lord of mercy most fervent prayers to tear down of the walls of division, to dissipate the haze of errors, and lead them back within holy Mother Church, where their Ancestors found salutary pastures of life; where, in an exclusive way, is conserved and transmitted whole the doctrine of Jesus Christ and wherein is dispensed the mysteries of heavenly grace.

It is therefore by force of the right of Our supreme Apostolic ministry, entrusted to us by the same Christ the Lord, which, having to carry out with [supreme] participation all the duties of the good Shepherd and to follow and embrace with paternal love all the men of the world, we send this Letter of Ours to all the Christians from whom We are separated, with which we exhort them warmly and beseech them with insistence to hasten to return to the one fold of Christ; we desire in fact from the depths of the heart their salvation in Christ Jesus, and we fear having to render an account one day to Him, Our Judge, if, through some possibility, we have not pointed out and prepared the way for them to attain eternal salvation. In all Our prayers and supplications, with thankfulness, day and night we never omit to ask for them, with humble insistence, from the eternal Shepherd of souls the abundance of goods and heavenly graces. And since, if also, we fulfill in the earth the office of vicar, with all our heart we await with open arms the return of the wayward sons to the Catholic Church, in order to receive them with infinite fondness into the house of the Heavenly Father and to enrich them with its inexhaustible treasures. By our greatest wish for the return to the truth and the communion with the Catholic Church, upon which depends not only the salvation of all of them, but above all also of the whole Christian society: the entire world in fact cannot enjoy true peace if it is not of one fold and one shepherd. (Pope Pius IX, Iam Vos Omnes, September 13, 1868.)

 

Here is how Pope Pius XI did so in Mortalium Animos, January 6, 1928:

 

So, Venerable Brethren, it is clear why this Apostolic See has never allowed its subjects to take part in the assemblies of non-Catholics: for the union of Christians can only be promoted by promoting the return to the one true Church of Christ of those who are separated from it, for in the past they have unhappily left it. To the one true Church of Christ, we say, which is visible to all, and which is to remain, according to the will of its Author, exactly the same as He instituted it. . . .  Let, therefore, the separated children draw nigh to the Apostolic See, set up in the City which Peter and Paul, the Princes of the Apostles, consecrated by their blood; to that See, We repeat, which is 'the root and womb whence the Church of God springs,' not with the intention and the hope that 'the Church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth' will cast aside the integrity of the faith and tolerate their errors, but, on the contrary, that they themselves submit to its teaching and government. Would that it were Our happy lot to do that which so many of Our predecessors could not, to embrace with fatherly affection those children, whose unhappy separation from Us We now bewail. Would that God our Savior, "Who will have all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth," would hear us when We humbly beg that He would deign to recall all who stray to the unity of the Church! In this most important undertaking We ask and wish that others should ask the prayers of Blessed Mary the Virgin, Mother of divine grace, victorious over all heresies and Help of Christians, that She may implore for Us the speedy coming of the much hoped-for day, when all men shall hear the voice of Her divine Son, and shall be 'careful to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.'" (Pope Pius XI, Mortalium Animos, January 6, 1928.)

Just consider two of the statements quoted above, one from Pope Pius IX's Iam Vos Omnes and the other from Pope Pius XI's Mortalium Animos:

. . . .the entire world in fact cannot enjoy true peace if it is not of one fold and one shepherd. (Pope Pius IX, Iam Vos Omnes.)

To the one true Church of Christ, we say, which is visible to all, and which is to remain, according to the will of its Author, exactly the same as He instituted it. (Pope Pius XI, Mortalium Animos.)

 

The "better" world through a "common witness"? This is the path to Hell, not Heaven.

Ut unum sint (That they may be one)?  This utter twisting of the words of the Divine Redeemer as recorded by Saint John in his Gospel has been a slogan of the ecumaniacal movement from the very beginning, and the use of these words to justify false "ecumenism" was condemned by Pope Pius XI in Mortalium Animos in a passage cited earlier in this brief commentary.

Lies. Lies. Lies.

None of this can come from the mouth of a true pope.

None of this is "redeemed" by the times in which Ratzinger/Benedict sounds like a Catholic.

The false "pontiff" has now, as mentioned before, put on his "Catholic" hat, well, at least for the most part, for the rest of his trip, although he does have a meeting with the Orthodox today, Saturday, September 24, 2011, the Feast of Our Lady of Ransom. Even when he speaks of the Mother of God, however, as he did last evening in a Marian Vespers at the Wallfahrtskapelle, Etzelsbach, Germany, he rarely mentions Our Lady's Most Holy Rosary. He did not so last evening. This has been a common theme of his pilgrimages. Flowery words about Our Lady are meaningless if one does not exhort Catholics to do what she asked us at Fatima to do: to pray her Most Holy Rosary.

All right. Enough. It's not as late an hour now as it was when part one was published early yesterday morning. It's still late. Enough of this for now. There will be more a bit more tomorrow, Sunday, the Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost.

Today is the Feast of Our Lady of Ransom, also known as Our Lady of Mercy.

Saint Peter Nolasco founded The Royal, Celestial and Military Order of Our Lady of Mercy and the Redemption of the Captives, known officially as Order of the Virgin Mary of Mercy of the Redemption of Captives, with King James I of Aragon and Saint Raymond of Pennafort in 1218 after Our Lady had appeared to each of them, asking them found and Order to rescue Christians who were being held captives by the Mohammedans. Our Lady of Ransom showered Saint Peter Nolasco with favors as he went about his work of freeing the captured Christians. Consider the account of this order's founding as provided by Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., in The Liturgical Year for this great feast day:

The Office of the time gives us, at then close of September, the Books of Judith and Esther. Those heroic women were figures of Mary, whose birthday is the honour of this month, and who comes at once to bring assistance to the world.

'Adonai, Lord God, great and admirable, who hast wrought salvation by the hand of a woman;' the Church introduces the history of the heroine, who delivered Bethulia by the sword, whereas Mardochai's niece rescued her people from death by her winsomeness and by her intercession. The Queen of heaven, in her peerless perfection, outshines them both, in gentleness, in valour, and in beauty. Today's feast is a memorial of the strength she puts forth for the deliverance of her people.

Finding their power crushed in Spain, and in the east checked by the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem, the Saracens, in the Twelfth Century, become wholesale pirates, and scoured the seas to obtain slaves for the African markets. We shudder to think of the numberless victims, of every age, sex, and condition, suddenly carried off from the coasts of Christian lands, or captured on the the high seas, and condemned to the disgrace of the harem or the miseries of the bagnio. Here, nevertheless, in many an obscure prison, were enacted scenes of heroism worthy to compare with those witnessed in the early persecutions; here was a new field for Christian charity; new horizons opened out for heroic self-devotion. Is not the spiritual good thence arising a sufficient reason for the permission of temporal ills? Without this permission, heaven would have for ever lacked a portion of its beauty.

When, in 1696, Innocent XII extended this feast to the whole Church, he afforded the world an opportunity of expressing its gratitude by a testimony as universal as the benefit received.

Differing from the Order of holy Trinity, which had been already twenty years in existence, the Order of Mercy was founded as it were in the very face of the Moors; and hence it originally numbered more knights than clerks [clerics] among its members. It was called the royal,l military, and religious Order of our Lady of Mercy for the ransom of captives. The clerics were charged with the celebration of the Divine Office in the commandaries; the knights guarded the coasts, and undertook the perilous enterprise of ransoming Christian captives. St. Peter Nolasco was the first Commander or Grand Master of the Order; when his relics were discovered, he was found armed with sword and cuirass.

In the following lines the Church gives us her thoughts upon the facts which we have already learnt.

At the time when the Saracen yoke oppressed the larger and more fertile part of Spain, and great numbers of the faithful were detained in cruel servitude, at the great risk of denying the Christian faith and losing their eternal salvation, the most blessed Queen of heaven graciously came to remedy all these great evils, and showed her exceeding charity in redeeming her children. She appeared with beaming countenance to Peter Nolasco, a man conspicuous for wealth and piety, who in his holy meditations was ever striving to devise some means of helping the innumerable Christians living in misery as captives of the Moors. She told him it would be very pleasing to her and her only-begotten Son, if- a religious Order were instituted in her honour, whose members should devote themselves to delivering the captives from Turkish tyranny. Animated this heavenly vision, the man of God was inflamed with burning love, having but one desire at heart, viz: that both he and the Order he was to found, might be devoted to the exercise of that highest charity, for the laying down of life for one's friends and neighbours.

That same night, the most holy Virgin appeared also to blessed Raymond of Pengnafort, and to James king of Aragon, telling them of her wish to have the Order instituted, and exhorting them to lend their aid to so great an undertaking. Meanwhile Peter hastened to relate the whole matter to Raymund, who was his confessor; and finding it had been already revealed to him from heaven, submitted humbly to his direction. King James next arrived, fully resolved to carry out the instructions he also had received from the blessed Virgin. Having therefore taken counsel together and being all of one mind, they set about instituting an Order in honour of the Virgin Mother, under the invocation of our Lady of Mercy for the ransom of captives.

On the tenth of August, in the year of our Lord one thousand two hundred and eighteen, king James put into execution what the two holy men had planned. The members of the Order bound themselves by a fourth vow to remain, when necessary, as securities in the power of the pagans, in order to deliver Christians. The king granted them licence to bear his royal arms upon their breast, and obtained from Gregory IX the confirmation of this religious institute distinguished by such eminent brotherly charity. God himself gave increase to the work through his Virgin Mother; so that the Order spread rapidly and prosperously over the whole world. It soon reckoned many holy men remarkable for their charity and piety who collected alms from Christ's faithful, to be spent in redeeming their brethren; and sometimes gave themselves up as ransom for many others. In order that due thanks might be rendered to God and his Virgin Mother for the benefit of such an institution, the apostolic See allowed this special feast and Office to be celebrated, and also granted innumerable other privileges to the Order.

 

Blessed be thou, O Mary, the honour and the joy of thy people! On the day of thy glorious Assumption, thou didst take possession of thy queenly dignity for our sake; and the annals of the human race are a record of thy merciful interventions. The captives whose chains thou hast broken, and whom thou hast set free from the degrading yoke of the Saracens, may be reckoned by millions. We are still rejoicing in the recollection of thy dear birthday; and thy smile is sufficient to dry our tears and chase away the clouds of grief. And yet, what sorrows there are still upon the earth, where thou didst drink such long draughts from the cup of suffering! Sorrows are sanctifying and beneficial to some; but there are other and unprofitable griefs, springing from social injustice: the drudgery of the factory, or the tyranny of the strong over the weak, may be worse than slavery in Algiers or Tunis. Thou alone, O Mary, canst break the inextricable chains, in which the cunning price of darkness entangles the dupes he has deceived by the high-sounding names of equality and liberty. Show thyself a Queen, by coming to the rescue. the whole earth, the entire human race, cries out to thee, in the words of Mardochai: 'Speak to the king for us, and deliver us from death.' (Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year, Time After Pentecost, Volume 14, pp. 261-266.)

 

Yes, indeed the high-sounding names of "equality and liberty," the clarion calls of the French Revolution and Modernity's warfare against the Social Reign of Christ the King, have indeed enslaved men and their nations. It is with that revolution, of course, that the then Joseph "Cardinal" Ratzinger wrote in Principles of Catholic Theology that what he thinks, falsely, of course, is the Catholic Church has made "its official reconciliation."

We need to pray to Our Lady of Ransom--Our Lady of Mercy--to ransom us from the perils of this present time of apostasy and betrayal as we seek shelter in her loving arms and as we have recourse in the Sacred Tribunal of Penance to the mercy that has been won for us by the shedding of every single drop of the Most Precious Blood of her Divine Son, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, on the wood of the Holy Cross so that we may be ransomed from our attachment even to the slightest Venial Sin and as we seek to live more penitentially each day by making sincere acts of reparation for our sins, especially by praying as many Rosaries each day as our state in life permits.

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