"Pacification of Spirits"

by Thomas A. Droleskey

 

It was scant three days ago now, while Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI was flying to France from Rome, Italy, for a pilgrimage to the Shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes, that the false "pontiff" explained that the "permission" he granted by means of his motu proprio Summorum Pontificum, July 7, 2007, for the wider use of the modernized version of the Immemorial Mass of Tradition that had been promulgated by Angelo Roncalli/John XXIII was "act of tolerance" for "these people and to permit them to live with this liturgy." Although this statement, made in response to questions asked by reporters on the airplane while in flight from Rome to France, was analyzed in part in The Inconvenience of Truth two days ago, it is worth repeating yet again in light of comments that Ratzinger/Benedict made yesterday to the conciliar "bishops" of France:

EN ROUTE TO PARIS, SEPT. 12, 2008 (Zenit.org).- An allowance for the celebration of Mass according to the 1962 Missal is in no way a return to the past, but rather an expression of pastoral concern, says Benedict XVI.

The Pope affirmed this today en route to France; he gave a brief press conference on the plane, answering four questions previously submitted by the journalists selected to be in the press corps accompanying the Holy Father.

The Pontiff said it is "groundless" to fear that "Summorum Pontificum" -- which opened the way for a wider celebration of the Mass according to the 1962 Missal -- is a regression.

"This 'motu proprio' is simply an act of tolerance, with a pastoral objective, for people who have been formed in this liturgy, who love it, know it and want to live with this liturgy," he said. "It is a small group, given that it presupposes a formation in Latin, a formation in a certain culture. But it seems to me a normal demand of faith and pastoral concern for a bishop of our Church to have love and tolerance for these people and permit them to live with this liturgy."

"There is no opposition whatsoever between the liturgy renewed by the Second Vatican Council and this liturgy," Benedict XVI continued. "Each day, the Council fathers celebrated Mass according to this old rite and, at the same time, have conceived a natural development for the liturgy in all of this century, since the liturgy is a living reality that develops and that conserves its identity in its development."

"Therefore, there are certainly distinct accents, but a fundamental identity that excludes a contradiction, an opposition between the renewed liturgy and the preceding liturgy," the Pope affirmed. "I think that there is the possibility of mutual enrichment. It's clear that the renewed liturgy is the ordinary liturgy of our times."

 

The Inconvenience of Truth dealt, albeit briefly, with Ratzinger/Benedict's false, patently absurd contention that there "is no opposition whatsoever between the liturgy renewed by the Second Vatican Council and this [the Traditional] liturgy." What is falsehood to a man steeped in a fervent, lifelong warfare against the very nature of dogmatic truth? (Please see Once Again, It is All About Truth. Those who do not want to see Ratzinger/Benedict's apostasy in just the matter of dogmatic truth alone are willfully blind.)

This particular article focuses on Ratzinger/Benedict's comments to the conciliar "bishops" of France, men who are carrying on at present a vendetta against all forms of the Immemorial Mass of Tradition because of their intense and irrational hatred of the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, the founder of the Society of Saint Pius X, a hatred, it should be added, that was shared by the rank Francophile named Giovanni Montini/Paul VI.

LOURDES, France, SEPT. 14, 2008 (Zenit.org).- Benedict XVI's letter paving the way to a broader use of the 1962 Missal -- which came into effect one year ago today -- is an effort to make everyone feel at home in the Church, he says.

The Pope explained this today when he addressed French bishops gathered with him in Lourdes to mark the 150th anniversary of the Virgin Mary's apparitions.

In his address, the Holy Father touched on themes ranging from the need to promote vocations to the priesthood and safeguard the formation of priests, to the importance of catechesis, evangelizing the family, and the situation of the role of the Church and state in France.

He also mentioned his 2007 letter "Summorum Pontificum," saying that in it he "was led to set out the conditions in which [the bishops' duty to sanctify the faithful] is to be exercised, with regard to the possibility of using the missal of Blessed John XXIII -- 1962 -- in addition to that of Pope Paul VI -- 1970."

"Some fruits of these new arrangements have already been seen, and I hope that, thanks be to God, the necessary pacification of spirits is already taking place," the Holy Father continued. "I am aware of your difficulties, but I do not doubt that, within a reasonable time, you can find solutions satisfactory for all, lest the seamless tunic of Christ be further torn."

The Society of St. Pius X, one of the groups attached to the Mass as it was celebrated before Vatican II, and currently not in full communion with the Church, was founded by French bishop Marcel Lefebvre.

In the accompanying statement to Benedict XVI's letter on the liturgy, which established that the 1962 Missal could be used as the "extraordinary form" of the Roman Rite, the Pope explained that he was making "every effort" to enable those who truly desire unity to remain in that unity or to attain it anew.

He gave the same message to the French bishops today. "Everyone has a place in the Church," the Pontiff affirmed. "Every person, without exception, should be able to feel at home, and never rejected. God, who loves all men and women and wishes none to be lost, entrusts us with this mission by appointing us shepherds of his sheep.

"We can only thank him for the honor and the trust that he has placed in us. Let us therefore strive always to be servants of unity."

 

An English of the French text used by Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI to address the conciliar "bishops" of France has not been posted on the Vatican website. An unofficial translation, however, of the portion of the text dealing with Summorum Pontificum and the "pacification of spirits" has been posted on the Rorate Caeli blogspot:

Liturgical worship is the supreme expression of priestly and episcopal life, and also of catechetical teaching. Your mission of sanctification of the faithful people, dear Brothers, is indispensable for the growth of the Church. I was prompted to detail, in the Motu proprio Summorum Pontificum, the conditions for the accomplishment of this mission, in that which relates to the possibility of using both the missal of Blessed John XXIII (1962) and that of Pope Paul VI (1970). The fruits of these new dispositions have already seen [the light of] day, and I hope that the indispensable pacification of the spirits is being accomplished, thank God.

I comprehend your difficulties, but I do not doubt that you will be able to reach, within reasonable time, solutions which are satisfactory to all, so that the seamless robe of Christ is not torn anymore. No one is excessive within the Church. Everyone, without exception, must be able to feel at home, and never rejected. God, who loves all men and wills that no one be lost, entrusts us with this mission of Pastors, making us Shepherds of His sheep. We can only give Him thanks for the honor and the confidence He places upon us. Let us endeavor to always be servants of u

 

This brief statement is indeed a double-edged one. The reference to the "pacification of spirits" refers not only to those traditionally-minded Catholics yet attached to the structures of the counterfeit church of conciliarism who have demonstrated "exaggerations" in their approach to the blasphemies spawned by the abomination that is the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo service and the apostasies represented by conciliarism's relentless warfare against the nature of dogmatic truth and the nature of the unicity of Holy Mother Church as its false shepherds have promoted false ecumenism, inter-religious prayer services, the esteeming of false religions, religious liberty, separation of Church and State and episcopal collegiality. Oh, yes it refers to them, as I will demonstrate in a moment. However, Ratzinger/Benedict's reference to the "pacification of spirits" refers also the anger exhibited by the ultra-revolutionary conciliar "bishops" in France who have been far from "tolerant" of those traditionally-minded Catholics who labor under the misapprehension that the conciliar church is the Catholic Church. Indeed, many of these French "bishops," and some of their counterparts in the United Kingdom and the United States of America and elsewhere in the world, have been downright hostile to these Catholics even in the wake of Summorum Pontificum.

Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI is aware of this hostility on the part of many of the ultra-revolutionary "bishops" in his counterfeit church. This hostility has proved quite useful in his efforts to "pacify" traditionally-minded Catholics who recognize the Novus Ordo service as an abomination and who understand that it is impossible to reconcile Ratzinger/Benedict's own statements on the nature of dogmatic truth, among the areas listed just above, with simple natural reason and logic, let alone the infallible, immutable teaching of the Catholic Church. Let me explain.

After all, one of the tools that the devil uses to "pacify" people who are lost in the trees of a forest as they forget at all that they are in a forest is to raise up a big, bad ugly-looking "tree" to make the little, ugly stump over which one could fall headlong into a ravine seem better by comparison. The French conciliar "bishops" are serving the part of Lenin's "useful idiots" for Ratzinger/Benedict by frothing at the mouth even while he, Ratzinger/Benedict, assures them that he is absolutely committed to the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo service and that, as he noted in his interview onboard the non-"papal" plane from Rome to France a few days ago, Summorum Pontificum is merely an "act of tolerance" to permit "these" people to "live with 'this' liturgy."

In other words, Ratzinger/Benedict is telling all of the ultra-revolutionary "bishops," including those in France, "Be still. The revolution progresses yet. We need to be 'tolerant' of 'these' people in order to 'bring them along' in the path of the revolution. We're not going to figuratively kill anyone as in the past. We are going to kill 'these people' with kindness as we pacify their spirits in order to be get them to be silent about, if not fully accepting of, the 'new Pentecost' that has been ushered in by a 'correct' interpretation of the Council according to the 'hermeneutics of continuity in discontinuity.'"

Although there were many well-meaning souls who believed that Summorum Pontificum represented a major step in the direction of the "restoration" of the Catholic Church, Ratzinger/Benedict himself told us last year in his accompanying letter to the conciliar "bishops" that he was "liberating" the modernized version of the Immemorial Mass of Tradition for "pastoral" reasons and not for any reasons of the Faith. He even explained that he viewed some of those attached to "extraordinary form of the Roman Rite" to have had, in effect, a bad attitude about the Novus Ordo and the Council, urging the conciliar "bishops" to have "charity" and to exercise "pastoral prudence" with these poor saps, who can certainly have their own place of  "tolerance" in the One World Church along with the places of high honor and influence given to the likes of the true sons and daughters of the "Council" who belong to Focolare, Opus Dei, Cursillo, Communion and Liberation, the "Catholic Charismatic Renewal, the Sant'Egidio Community, the Shalom Catholic Community, the Chemin Neuf Community, the International Community of Faith and Light, Regnum Christi, Communion and Liberation, the Emmanuel Community, the Seguimi Lay Group of Human-Christian Promotion, or, among many, many others, the recently approved Neocatechumenal Way.

This is what Ratzinger/Benedict wrote to the conciliar "bishops" in his accompanying letter to Summorum Pontificum, July 7, 2007:

It is true that there have been exaggerations and at times social aspects unduly linked to the attitude of the faithful attached to the ancient Latin liturgical tradition. Your charity and pastoral prudence will be an incentive and guide for improving these. For that matter, the two Forms of the usage of the Roman Rite can be mutually enriching: new Saints and some of the new Prefaces can and should be inserted in the old Missal. The "Ecclesia Dei" Commission, in contact with various bodies devoted to the usus antiquior, will study the practical possibilities in this regard. The celebration of the Mass according to the Missal of Paul VI will be able to demonstrate, more powerfully than has been the case hitherto, the sacrality which attracts many people to the former usage. The most sure guarantee that the Missal of Paul VI can unite parish communities and be loved by them consists in its being celebrated with great reverence in harmony with the liturgical directives. This will bring out the spiritual richness and the theological depth of this Missal. (Explanatory Letter - English.)

 

So few people took his words seriously. This is all part of the plan to neutralize the resistance as offense is given to God in the Novus Ordo and by means of false ecumenism and inter-religious prayer services and the esteeming of false religions. Traditionally-minded Catholics can have a modernized version of the Mass. They will learn to be quiet in the face of almost any offense given to the honor and glory and majesty of God by a conciliar "pontiff" or a conciliar "bishop." After all, we don't want to "lose" "the Mass."

For example, priests, some validly ordained and some not, of the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter who used to froth at the mouth themselves, albeit in quiet, at the apostasies of conciliarism, can not the defend of the honor and majesty and glory of God, not for God's sake and not the sake of the souls who look to them as "pastors" and "guides" to eternity. Silence from traditionally-minded Catholics in the conciliar structures has been purchased by Ratzinger/Benedict just as much as John McCain has purchased silence from those opposed to his neoconservative war mongering advisers and his statism because he has selected the one hundred percent pro-contraception, self-identified "feminist for life," Sarah Palin, who believes that some babies are expendable under cover of law. "Strategy" always seems to matter to more than fidelity to the truth, including the truth that the Catholic Church cannot give us a defective, no less offensive, liturgy, and issue one statement after another that puts into question and/or denies her perennial teaching, which she has received from her Invisible Head and Mystical Bridegroom.

Do we forget that Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI explained exactly how he was going to do to neutralize the resistance of the integralists?

Among the more obvious phenomena of the last years must be counted the increasing number of integralist groups in which the desire for piety, for the sense of mystery, is finding satisfaction. We must be on our guard against minimizing these movements. Without a doubt, they represent a sectarian zealotry that is the antithesis of Catholicity. We cannot resist them too firmly. (Principles of Catholic Theology, pp. 389-390)

 

How is this neutralization to be effected and institutionalized? With "kindness." With "tolerance." With "pastoral prudence." Everyone is welcomed in the One World Church of conciliarism. Traditionally-minded Catholics must be as tolerant of others in the "big tent" of conciliarism as Ratzinger/Benedict is being "tolerant" of them.

Agreement and union of minds? You mean to say that the folks in Focolare and Cursillo and the Neocatechumenal Way have to be in complete agreement of unity of minds with traditionally-minded Catholics yet attached to the structures of the counterfeit church of conciliarism? Not in the One World Church of conciliarism, where multiplicity-in-unity has become one of those shopworn slogans to go along with the ever-popular "hermeneutics of continuity in discontinuity," "springtime of the Church," "inculturation of the Gospel," "extraordinary form of the Roman Rite," "ordinary form of the Roman Rite," "the new Pentecost," "the 'renewed' liturgy," "full, active, conscious participation of the people," "the new evangelization," "the civilization of love," and "purification of memory" in the pantheon of conciliarspeak.

Pope Leo XIII, however, explained in Satis Cognitum, June 29, 1896, that there must be complete agreement and union of minds in 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.

The heavenly doctrine of Christ, although for the most part committed to writing by divine inspiration, could not unite the minds of men if left to the human intellect alone. It would, for this very reason, be subject to various and contradictory interpretations. This is so, not only because of the nature of the doctrine itself and of the mysteries it involves, but also because of the divergencies of the human mind and of the disturbing element of conflicting passions. From a variety of interpretations a variety of beliefs is necessarily begotten; hence come controversies, dissensions and wranglings such as have arisen in the past, even in the first ages of the Church. Irenaeus writes of heretics as follows: "Admitting the sacred Scriptures they distort the interpretations" (Lib. iii., cap. 12, n. 12). And Augustine: "Heresies have arisen, and certain perverse views ensnaring souls and precipitating them into the abyss only when the Scriptures, good in themselves, are not properly understood" (In Evang. Joan., tract xviii., cap. 5, n. 1). Besides Holy Writ it was absolutely necessary to insure this union of men's minds - to effect and preserve unity of ideas - that there should be another principle. This the wisdom of God requires: for He could not have willed that the faith should be one if He did not provide means sufficient for the preservation of this unity; and this Holy Writ clearly sets forth as We shall presently point out. Assuredly the infinite power of God is not bound by anything, all things obey it as so many passive instruments. In regard to this external principle, therefore, we must inquire which one of all the means in His power Christ did actually adopt. For this purpose it is necessary to recall in thought the institution of Christianity.

 

Make no mistake about it, ladies and gentlemen, the true popes of the Catholic Church have warned us about these times. Pope Saint Pius X did so in Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910:

We fear that worse is to come: the end result of this developing promiscuousness, the beneficiary of this cosmopolitan social action, can only be a Democracy which will be neither Catholic, nor Protestant, nor Jewish. It will be a religion (for Sillonism, so the leaders have said, is a religion) more universal than the Catholic Church, uniting all men become brothers and comrades at last in the "Kingdom of God". - "We do not work for the Church, we work for mankind."

And now, overwhelmed with the deepest sadness, We ask Ourselves, Venerable Brethren, what has become of the Catholicism of the Sillon? Alas! this organization which formerly afforded such promising expectations, this limpid and impetuous stream, has been harnessed in its course by the modern enemies of the Church, and is now no more than a miserable affluent of the great movement of apostasy being organized in every country for the establishment of a One-World Church which shall have neither dogmas, nor hierarchy, neither discipline for the mind, nor curb for the passions, and which, under the pretext of freedom and human dignity, would bring back to the world (if such a Church could overcome) the reign of legalized cunning and force, and the oppression of the weak, and of all those who toil and suffer.

 

No one who is possessed of honesty or his sensus Catholicus can truthfully say that one is going to find "agreement and union" of minds among conciliar "bishops" and "priests" and "religious" and professors and teachers in conciliar chancery offices, rectories, parishes, pulpits, schools, convents, seminaries, universities, and religious education programs. Apostasy, abomination, blasphemy and sacrilege permeate the infrastructures of conciliarism, making it impossible for these to be part of the Catholic Church.

Pope Pius XI, quoting one of the saints we commemorate this very day, Tuesday, September 16, 2008, Saint Cyprian, Bishop and Martyr, in Mortalium Animos, January 6, 1928, explained that the Catholic Church can be stained by no type of error or impurity:

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.

 

Fathers Francisco and Dominic Radecki, CMRI, explained this exact point in their important, irrefutable Tumultuous Times:

A legitimate pope cannot contradict or deny what was first taught by Christ to His Church. An essential change in belief constitutes the establishment of a new religion.

The attribute of infallibility was given to the popes in order that the revealed doctrines and teaching of Christ would remain forever intact and unchanged. It is contrary to faith and reason to blindly follow an alleged pope who attempts to destroy the Catholic Faith--for there have been 41 documented antipopes. Papal infallibility means that the Holy Ghost guides and preserves the Catholic Church from error through the succession of legitimate popes who have ruled the Church through the centuries. All Catholics, including Christ's Vicar on earth, the pope, must accept all the doctrinal pronouncements of past popes. These infallible teachings form a vital link between Christ and St. Peter and his successors.

If a pope did not accept and believe this entire body of formulated teachings (the Deposit of Faith), he could not himself be a Catholic. He would cease to belong to Christ's Church. If he no longer belongs to the Catholic Church, he cannot be her Head. (Fathers Francisco and Dominic Radecki, CMRI, Tumultuous Times, p. 274.)

 

Those who deny but one article of the Faith--and it has been amply demonstrated that Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI denies the nature of dogmatic truth--fall from the Catholic Church. Let us turn yet again to Pope Leo XIII's passage explaining this truth in Satis Cognitum, refuting the patently absurd claim of anyone who invents of out whole cloth the absolute fiction that one remains a Catholic as long as he maintains a never defined and always unspecified"minimal number of articles of the Faith:

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

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

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

 

Those who want to labor under the misapprehension that Joseph Ratzinger is "Pope" Benedict XVI and thus a legitimate Successor of Saint Peter must ignore his lifelong warfare against the Catholic Faith, parts of which are chronicled every now and again on various websites, demonstrating from Ratzinger's own books and essays his commitment to apostasies that he has never abjured. (see just one of the latest postings that has come to my attention by means of a reader, The Bishops have a fully democratic function). While some of those who post these amazingly apostate writings have not yet publicly admitted that Joseph Ratzinger cannot be a true pope, the evidence they provide certainly adds to the body of what has been known for decades, a body of evidence to which Ratzinger, as Benedict XVI, adds year by year as he esteems the symbols of false religions, treats the places of "worship" of false religions as "holy" (and as he is treated as an inferior in these places of devil worship), and as he reiterates the glories of the "council" and of the false "pope" who presided over most of it, Giovanni Montini/Paul VI (who genuflected before the heretical and schismatic Greek Orthodox "patriarch" of Constantinople, gave away the Papal Tiara to the United Nations, called the United Masonic Nations "as the last hope of concord and peace," and sold out Josef Cardinal Mindszenty--all before he approved the Novus Ordo service).

Catholics who recognize that the Catholic Church cannot be responsible for the abominations and blasphemies and sacrileges and apostasies of conciliarism will never have their spirits "pacified" by a false "pontiff" who is at war with the Catholic Faith even though he does not understand or accept this fact as he uses the illogic of Hegelianism to convince himself of the condemned Modernist proposition that truth of Divine Revelation is so obscure and complex that it is impossible for any human being to understand it completely and perfect, which is why our "understanding" of truth, immutable in its inscrutability, must be altered from time to time as we come to understand past expressions of it were clouded by the historical circumstances in which they were made. Catholics, however, accept the following dogmatic pronouncement of the [First] Vatican Council and reject as anti-Catholic those who contend anything to the contrary:

Hence, that meaning of the sacred dogmata is ever to be maintained which has once been declared by Holy Mother Church, and there must never be an abandonment of this sense under the pretext or in the name of a more profound understanding.... If anyone says that it is possible that at some given time, given the advancement of knowledge, a sense may be assigned to the dogmata propounded by the Church which is different from that which the Church has always understood and understands: let him be anathema. [Vatican Council, 1870.]

 

A Catholic must never have his spirits "pacified" in the face of offenses to God that wound the souls for whom He shed every single drop of His Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross. Let us be fortified in battle against the apostasies of conciliarism by adverting once more to the uncompromising Catholic spirit in defense of the honor and majesty and glory of God exhibited by Father Frederick Faber in The Dolors of Mary/The Foot of the Cross:

The love of God brings many new instincts into the heart. Heavenly and noble as they are, they bear no resemblance to what men would call the finer and more heroic developments of character. A spiritual discernment is necessary to their right appreciation. They are so unlike the growth of earth, that they must expect to meet on earth with only suspicion, misunderstanding, and dislike. It is not easy to defend them from a controversial point of view; for our controversy is obliged to begin by begging the question, or else it would be unable so much as to state its case. The axioms of the world pass current in the world, the axioms of the gospel do not. Hence the world has its own way. It talks us down. It tries us before tribunals where our condemnation is secured beforehand. It appeals to principles which are fundamental with most men but are heresies with us. Hence its audience takes part with it against us. We are foreigners, and must pay the penalty of being so. If we are misunderstood, we had no right to reckon on any thing else, being as we are, out of our own country. We are made to be laughed at. We shall be understood in heaven. Woe to those easy-going Christians whom the world can understand, and will tolerate because it sees they have a mind to compromise!

The love of souls is one of these instincts which the love of Jesus brings into our hearts. To the world it is proselytism, there mere wish to add to a faction, one of the selfish developments of party spirit. One while the stain of lax morality is affixed to it, another while the reproach of pharisaic strictness! For what the world seems to suspect least of all in religion is consistency. But the love of souls, however apostolic, is always subordinate to love of Jesus. We love souls because of Jesus, not Jesus because of souls. Thus there are times and places when we pass from the instinct of divine love to another, from the love of souls to the hatred of heresy. This last is particularly offensive to the world. So especially opposed is it to the spirit of the world, that, even in good, believing hearts, every remnant of worldliness rises in arms against this hatred of heresy, embittering the very gentlest of characters and spoiling many a glorious work of grace. Many a convert, in whose soul God would have done grand things, goes to his grave a spiritual failure, because he would not hate heresy. The heart which feels the slightest suspicion against the hatred of heresy is not yet converted. God is far from reigning over it yet with an undivided sovereignty. The paths of higher sanctity are absolutely barred against it. In the judgment of the world, and of worldly Christians, this hatred of heresy is exaggerated, bitter, contrary to moderation, indiscreet, unreasonable, aiming at too much, bigoted, intolerant, narrow, stupid, and immoral. What can we say to defend it? Nothing which they can understand. We had, therefore, better hold our peace. If we understand God, and He understands us, it is not so very hard to go through life suspected, misunderstood and unpopular. The mild self-opinionatedness of the gentle, undiscerning good will also take the world's view and condemn us; for there is a meek-loving positiveness about timid goodness which is far from God, and the instincts of whose charity is more toward those who are less for God, while its timidity is searing enough for harsh judgment. There are conversions where three-quarters of the heart stop outside the Church and only a quarter enters, and heresy can only be hated by an undivided heart. But if it is hard, it has to be borne. A man can hardly have the full use of his senses who is bent on proving to the world, God's enemy, that a thorough-going Catholic hatred of heresy is a right frame of man. We might as well force a blind man to judge a question of color. Divine love inspheres in us a different circle of life, motive, and principle, which is not only not that of the world, but in direct enmity with it. From a worldly point of view, the craters in the moon are more explicable things than we Christians with our supernatural instincts. From the hatred of heresy we get to another of these instincts, the horror of sacrilege. The distress caused by profane words seems to the world but an exaggerated sentimentality. The penitential spirit of reparation which pervades the whole Church is, on its view, either a superstition or an unreality. The perfect misery which an unhallowed  touch of the Blessed Sacrament causes to the servants of God provokes either the world's anger or its derision. Men consider it either altogether absurd in itself, or at any rate out of all proportion; and, if otherwise they have proofs of our common sense, they are inclined to put down our unhappiness to sheer hypocrisy. The very fact that they do not believe as we believe removes us still further beyond the reach even of their charitable comprehension. If they do not believe in the very existence our sacred things, how they shall they judge the excesses of a soul to which these sacred things are far dearer than itself?

Now, it is important to bear all this in mind while we are considering the sixth dolor. Mary's heart was furnished, as never heart of saint was yet, yet with these three instincts regarding souls, heresy, and sacrilege. They were in her heart three grand abysses of grace, out of which arose perpetually new capabilities of suffering. Ordinarily speaking, the Passion tires us. It is a fatiguing devotion. It is necessarily so because of the strain of soul which it is every moment eliciting. So when our Lord dies a feeling of repose comes over us. For a moment we are tempted to think that our Lady's dolors ought to have ended there, and that the sixth dolor and the seventh are almost of our own creation, and that we tax our imagination in order to fill up the picture with the requisite dark shading of sorrow. But this is only one of the ways in which devotion to the dolors heightens and deepens our devotion to the Passion. It is not our imagination that we tax but our spiritual discernment. In these two last dolors we are led into greater refinements of woe, into the more abstruse delicacies of grief, because we have got to deal with a soul rendered even more wonderful than it was before by the elevations of the sorrows which have gone before. Thus, the piercing of our Lord with the spear as to our Blessed Lady by far the most awful sacrilege which it was then in man's power to perpetrate upon the earth. To break violently into the Holy of Holies in the temple, and pollute its dread sanctity with all manner of heathen defilement, would have been as nothing compared to the outrage of the adorable Body of God. It is in vain that we try to lift ourselves to a true appreciation of this horror in Mary's heart. Our love of God is wanting in keenness, our perceptions of divine things in fineness. We cannot do more than make approaches  and they are terrible enough. (Father Frederick Faber, The Foot of the Cross, published originally in England in 1857 under the title of The Dolors of Mary, republished by TAN Books and Publishers, pp. 291-295.)

 

While outraged for the honor and glory and majesty and love of God by the apostasies and abominations of the moment, we must also recognize that this is the time that God has known from all eternity that we would be alive. The graces He won for us by the shedding of every single drop of His Most Precious Blood and that flow into our hearts and souls through the loving hands of Our Lady, the Mediatrix of All Graces, are sufficient for to prosper both spiritually and temporally in the midst of the difficulties of the present time. We must consider it our privilege to suffer with the Divine Redeemer and His Most Blessed Mother as we suffer calumnies and humiliations and even temporal loss as we have nothing to do with those who blaspheme God and praise a hideous abomination of "worship" that is the Novus Ordo service, cleaving only to true bishops and true priests in the Catholic catacombs who make no concessions to conciliarism or to any of its false shepherds.

As always, we fly unto the shelter of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through His Blessed Mother Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart, praying as many Rosaries each day as our states-in-life permit. We are not blameless for the state of the Church or for the state of the world. Our sins have added much in the way of the foul miasma in which we find ourselves. We must be willing therefore to suffer much for the love of God and in reparation for our sins and those of the whole world as we give thanks unto Him through Our Lady's Immaculate Heart for placing here at this moment in salvation history so that we can, by His ineffable grace, plant a few seeds for the restoration of Holy Mother Church and of Christendom itself, a time when all hearts, consecrated to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, will exclaim:

Viva Cristo Rey!

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

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

 

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

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

Saints Cornelius and Cyprian, pray for us.

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

See also: A Litany of Saints