Proud of His Blasphemy and of His Blaspheming Mentor

by Thomas A. Droleskey

 

Assisi, Italy, October 26, 2011

Ah, I thought that I was going to have a respite from all things pertaining to "His Apostateness, Benedict XVI, Antipope Emeritus," well, at least for a little while as the various apostates who are Auditioning To Be The Next Universal Face of Apostasy. Such, however, is not within the Providence of God, which we must accept with equanimity and joy in all of the various circumstances of our lives.

Yes, it was when I checked the Occupy Vatican Movement's website yesterday evening that I found a Pictorial Propaganda Essay In Behalf of Blasphemy and Apostasy featured in living color. One is tempted to label this propaganda display as "Joseph Ratzinger's Fantasy World of Color." Those old enough to remember Walt Disney's The Wonderful World of Color, which was the name of Walt Disney's television program when it moved from the American Broadcasting Company to the National Broadcasting Company at the beginning of the 1961-1962 television season will appreciate the reference, I am sure.

Indeed, anyone who views the video of the Disney television program theme show from 1961 to 1969 (at which it was renamed The Wonderful World of Disney) might come to understand that my reference here is not merely jocular or, as is the case with some of my links, to amuse myself.

No, the reference is very relevant as the renaming of the Disney program (which was titled Disneyland from 1954 to 1958 to promote the theme park in Anaheim, California, that opened on July 17, 1955, and Walt Disney Presents from 1958 to 1961) as Disney wanted to broadcast his programs in the color format in which most of them had been filmed and the National Broadcasting Company was the only network then televising in color. Officials of NBC-TV desired to produce and televise color programs in order to sell the color television sets that were manufactured by its parent corporation, the Radio Corporation of America (RCA). The late Michael Landon (Bonanza, Little House on the Prairie, Highway to Heaven) revealed decades after the fact that NBC-TV decided to produce Bonanza for one reason: to film in it in color in order to sell RCA color television sets.

In like manner, the propagandists who run the Occupy Vatican Movement's website have produced a nice array of color photographs designed to show a happy, smiling, grandfatherly apostate going about his business of spreading the errors he learned so well from mentors such as the late Father Hans Urs von Balthasar. Ever proud of his blasphemy, two of the photographs show very directly the blatant nature of Joseph Ratzinger's disregard for and contempt of the binding precepts of the First Commandment.

The first of those photographs, pictured above, shows the then "Pope" Benedict XVI walking along with the leaders of the other false religions of the world during Assisi III on October 27, 2011 (see Outcome Based Conciliar Math: Assisi I + Assisi II  + Assisi III = A-P-O-S-T-A-S-Y).

The second, pictured below, shows the now retired Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI at the Western (Wailing) Wall of Solomon's Temple as he inserted the following "prayer" that made no mention of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, a scandalous public act of apostasy and blasphemy:

 

God of all the ages, on my visit to Jerusalem, the “City of Peace”, spiritual home to Jews, Christians and Muslims alike, I bring before you the joys, the hopes and the aspirations, the trials, the suffering and the pain of all your people throughout the world.

God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, hear the cry of the afflicted, the fearful, the bereft; send your peace upon this Holy Land, upon the Middle East, upon the entire human family; stir the hearts of all who call upon your name, to walk humbly in the path of justice and compassion.

“The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul that seeks him” (Lam 3:25)! (Prayer at the Western Wall, May 12, 2009; one will note, of course, that there is not one reference to Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Saints gave up their lives rather than to give even the appearance of such apostasy.

How can it be, therefore, that some in the "resist but recognize" movement keep contending that the now retired universal public face of apostasy attempted to "restore" Tradition in what they continue to insist is the Catholic Church when their champion blasphemed the true God of Divine Revelation so repeatedly and so shamelessly?

Is God pleased with such acts of blasphemy and sacrilege?

Is God to rebuild His Holy Church, she who is His spotless, virginal Mystical Spouse, on the basis of such blasphemy and sacrilege, on the admixture of truth and error?

Do not such acts of blasphemy and sacrilege need to be denounced as grave offenses to the honor and majesty and glory of God?

Does the gravity of such acts of blasphemy and sacrilege simply "go away" or is somewhat "canceled out" by intellectually dishonest assertions that a man who has been at war with practically every article of the Catholic Faith as It has been taught and passed down to us from Apostolic times, starting with the very nature of dogmatic truth, wanted to "restore" Tradition by means of Summorum Pontificum, July 7, 2007, even though their "suffering 'pope'" told us the motu proprio was issued solely to "pacify spirits" in order to purchase silence in the face of his many defections from the Catholic Faith?

Pope Leo the Great explained the guilt of those who remain silent about and/or who seek to minimize the gravity of the grave acts of blasphemy and sacrilege committed by the likes of the conciliar "popes," including "His Apostateness, Benedict XVI, Antipope Emeritus."

 

But it is vain for them to adopt the name of catholic, as they do not oppose these blasphemies: they must believe them, if they can listen so patiently to such words. (Pope Saint Leo the Great, Epistle XIV, To Anastasius, Bishop of Thessalonica, St. Leo the Great | Letters 1-59 )

Contrary to what the "resist but recognize" spinmeisters would have their subscribers believe, Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI is a man without the Catholic Faith, a man whose mind and soul were warped by the "new theology" of the likes of Father Hans Urs von Balthasar, who believed that he had to reinvent the entirety of Catholic theology in order to make it reflect what he thought was the "love of God." It is thus no surprise that the officials within the walls of the Occupy Vatican Movement revealed the name of only one of the books that the retired universal public face of apostasy took with him to Castel Gandolfo three days ago now:

Among the books Pope Benedict took with him to Castel Gandolfo, only one was named: the Theological Esthetics of Hans Urs von Balthasar, the Swiss theologian who was the co-founder, with Joseph Ratzinger and Henri de Lubac, of the journal Communio.

Here are excerpts from an excellent piece by the British Catholic writer Stratford Caldecott, also an old friend, which explains something of the mind of von Balthasar, the man whose work we know the Pope will be reading in the days ahead:

By Stratford Caldecott

In the mid 1930s, as a Jesuit novice, the young Hans Urs was studying Scholastic theology at Fourvière, just north of Lyons. He found St Thomas Aquinas interesting enough, but what his professors seemed to have done to St Thomas was so boring that he eventually resorted to stuffing his ears during lectures in order to read something much more thrilling: the writings of St Augustine and the early Church Fathers.

What had gone wrong with theology to make it so boring? Unlike many another who has found it a tedious waste of time, before and since, this particular Jesuit novice set out to discover why. In the course of answering that one simple question, he had practically to reinvent the whole subject.

Theology, Balthasar believed, is supposed to be the study of the fire and light that burn at the centre of the world.

Theologians had reduced it to the turning of pages in a dessicated catalogue of ideas – a kind of butterfly collection for the mind...

Modern man has lost his grip on morality partly because the deepest reasons for being good have been systematically denied him.

What Balthasar saw more clearly than anyone else was that the unity of Truth and Goodness in Beauty is evident above all in the very thing that ought to be the subject of theology, but which has been almost completely forgotten by the theologians: the Glory of God, which is incarnate in Jesus Christ...

Throughout his writings, Balthasar very clearly describes exactly what is wrong with the world, the culture, that we have grown up with. But at the same time he states the possibility of an alternative.

This alternative culture is based on the awakening of what he calls in the very first volume of the great series (with St Paul and, later, Clement of Alexandria) a "gnosis" or knowledge belonging to faith; the opening of an interior vision that "reads" the world in the light of love. (It was part of the intention of the international review Communio, of which Balthasar was the leading founder, to encourage this re-reading of the culture and the cosmos within the Church.)

Later in the series, in the five-volume Theo-Drama, he employs the eyes of faith to reveal the underlying dynamic of cosmic salvation history, culminating in the inevitable "Battle of the Logos" which drives evil into the open and onto the world stage.

It is this vision of the spiritual issues underlying the modern crisis of Christianity and culture that enables him to go beyond the shallow optimism of some of the Vatican II documents to a more profound critique of post-Enlightenment modernity...

It was a good thing, Balthasar believed, that the Church no longer wielded the temporal power that had once been claimed by the Popes, and that she had renounced forever the use of force and fear to achieve her ends.

Christendom was at times a noble experiment, but it had failed to give clear expression to many of the priorities of the Gospel. The disaster of the Crusades had shown how easily even the greatest of Christians (such as St Bernard of Clairvaux) could be deceived into confusing earthly with spiritual warfare.

What was needed now was a new non-violent chivalry, a new kind of consecration in the midst of secular life...

Love is at the heart of being, and its dynamism is at the heart of knowing: it is the "code" that enables us to read the meaning of things.

One more particular application of this insight might be mentioned: an application of relevance to contemporary feminism.

There is always a close integration in Balthasar's thinking between seemingly abstract theological conclusions, cultural critique (thus social science) and spirituality. The tradition that God, being "pure act", could contain no trace of passivity had become associated with the tendency in Christian thought to assign a lower place to woman and to the so-called "feminine" virtues.

In modern society, which increasingly values the hard, driving mechanisms of technological progress and economic competition, theology inevitably becomes entangled with the same attitude.

According to Balthasar, on the other hand, to receive something from another is not at all a weakness or imperfection, but intrinsic to the nature of what it is to love. If gentleness and openness to others, or "Receptivity", is a feminine virtue, it is also an essential dimension of God.

This means that theology is free to revalue the feminine – and the spirit of childhood. Love Alone contains the following famous passage:

"But whenever the relationship between nature and grace is severed (as happens... where 'faith' and 'knowledge' are constructed as opposites), then the whole of worldly being falls under the dominion of 'knowledge', and the springs and forces of love immanent in the world are overpowered and finally suffocated by science, technology and cybernetics.

"The result is a world without women, without children, without reverence for love in poverty and humiliation – a world in which power and the profit-margin are the sole criteria, where the disinterested, the useless, the purposeless is despised, persecuted and in the end exterminated – a world in which art itself is forced to wear the mask and features of technique." (As provided by a reader from information he received from Robert Moynihan's "Letter's from Rome." Dr. Moynihan's apologia in behalf of the retired false "pontiff" and conciliarism is found at: Letter #29: First Day After. The original text of Stafford Caldecott is found at: An Introduction to Hans Urs von Balthasar.)

 

Why is the now retired "restorer of Tradition" bringing a heretical book written by the propagator of the heresy of "universal salvation" with him to Castel Gandolfo?

The answer is simple: Joseph Ratzinger has the same kind of visceral hatred of the Scholasticism of Saint Thomas Aquinas as was possessed by the late Father Hans Urs von Balthasar, who was governed by emotions and "feelings" as he engaged in a "new theology" that was simply a variation of the rationalism advanced by the Modernists at the time of Pope Saint Pius X.

Although the following material will appear in a republished article four days from now, it is useful at this point to note those who reject Scholasticism, the official philosophy of the Catholic Church, have been condemned repeatedly by our true popes and by the Fathers of the Council of Trent:

 

For just as the opinion of certain ancients is to be rejected which maintains that it makes no difference to the truth of the Faith what any man thinks about the nature of creation, provided his opinions on the nature of God be sound, because error with regard to the nature of creation begets a false knowledge of God; so the principles of philosophy laid down by St. Thomas Aquinas are to be religiously and inviolably observed, because they are the means of acquiring such a knowledge of creation as is most congruent with the Faith; of refuting all the errors of all the ages, and of enabling man to distinguish clearly what things are to be attributed to God and to God alone….

St. Thomas perfected and augmented still further by the almost angelic quality of his intellect all this superb patrimony of wisdom which he inherited from his predecessors and applied it to prepare, illustrate and protect sacred doctrine in the minds of men. Sound reason suggests that it would be foolish to neglect it and religion will not suffer it to be in any way attenuated. And rightly, because, if Catholic doctrine is once deprived of this strong bulwark, it is useless to seek the slightest assistance for its defense in a philosophy whose principles are either common to the errors of materialism, monism, pantheism, socialism and modernism, or certainly not opposed to such systems. The reason is that the capital theses in the philosophy of St Thomas are not to be placed in the category of opinions capable of being debated one way or another, but are to be considered as the foundations upon which the science of natural and divine things is based; if such principles are once removed or in any way impaired, it must necessarily follow that students of the sacred sciences will ultimately fail to perceive so much as the meaning of the words in which the dogmas of divine revelation are proposed by the magistracy of the Church. . . . (Pope Saint Pius X, Doctoris Angelici, quoted in James Larson's Article 11: A Confusion of Loves.)

Innocent VI: "The teaching of this Doctor above all others, with the exception of Canon Law, has precision in terminology, propriety of expression, truth of judgment: so that never is one who has held it been found to have deviated from the path of truth."

Pius V: "It was wrought by the providence of Almighty God that by the force and truth of the Angelic Doctor's teaching, by which he illumined the Apostolic Church with the refutation of innumerable errors, that the many heresies which have arisen after his canonization have been confounded, overthrown and dispersed. This has been made evident both earlier and recently in the sacred decrees of the Council of Trent."

Clement VIII to the Neapolitans: "Devoutly and wisely are you thinking of adopting a new patron of your city, your fellow citizen, the Angelic interpreter of the Divine Will, splendid in the sanctity of his life and by his miracles, Thomas Aquinas, since indeed is this honor owed with the greatest justification to his virtues joined to his admirable doctrine. Indeed, witness to his doctrine is the great number of books which he composed, in a very brief time, in almost every class of learning, with a matchless arrangement and wondrous clearness, without any error whatsoever."

Paul V: "We greatly rejoice in the Lord that honor and veneration are increasing daily for the most splendid champion of the Catholic Faith, blessed Thomas Aquinas, by the shield of whose writings the Church Militant successfully parries the spears of the heretics.

And Leo XIII, at once embracing hand surpassing all of the praises of his predecessors, says of him: "Distinguishing reason from Faith, as is proper, but nevertheless combining the two in a friendly alliance, he both preserved the rights of each and had regard for the dignity of both., in such a way too that reason, carried on the wings of Thomas to the highest human limit, now almost cannot rise any higher, and faith almost cannot expect more or stronger helps from reason than it has already obtained through Thomas."

--And again, presenting St. Thomas to Catholics as a model and patron in various sciences, he says: "In him are all the illustrious ornaments of mind and character by which he rightly calls others to the imitation of himself: the richest doctrine, incorrupt, fittingly arranged; obedience to the Faith, and a marvelous consonance with the truths divinely handed down; integrity of life with the splendor of the greatest virtues." (Readings from the Dominican Breviary (II Nocturn) for the feast of the Patronage of Saint Thomas Aquinas, November 13.)

But, furthermore, Our predecessors in the Roman pontificate have celebrated the wisdom of Thomas Aquinas by exceptional tributes of praise and the most ample testimonials. Clement VI in the bull "In Ordine;" Nicholas V in his brief to the friars of the Order of Preachers, 1451; Benedict XIII in the bull "Pretiosus," and others bear witness that the universal Church borrows luster from his admirable teaching; while St. Pius V declares in the bull "Mirabilis" that heresies, confounded and convicted by the same teaching, were dissipated, and the whole world daily freed from fatal errors; others, such as Clement XII in the bull "Verbo Dei," affirm that most fruitful blessings have spread abroad from his writings over the whole Church, and that he is worthy of the honor which is bestowed on the greatest Doctors of the Church, on Gregory and Ambrose, Augustine and Jerome; while others have not hesitated to propose St. Thomas for the exemplar and master of the universities and great centers of learning whom they may follow with unfaltering feet. On which point the words of Blessed Urban V to the University of Toulouse are worthy of recall: "It is our will, which We hereby enjoin upon you, that ye follow the teaching of Blessed Thomas as the true and Catholic doctrine and that ye labor with all your force to profit by the same." Innocent XII, followed the example of Urban in the case of the University of Louvain, in the letter in the form of a brief addressed to that university on February 6, 1694, and Benedict XIV in the letter in the form of a brief addressed on August 26, 1752, to the Dionysian College in Granada; while to these judgments of great Pontiffs on Thomas Aquinas comes the crowning testimony of Innocent VI: "His teaching above that of others, the canonical writings alone excepted, enjoys such a precision of language, an order of matters, a truth of conclusions, that those who hold to it are never found swerving from the path of truth, and he who dare assail it will always be suspected of error."

The ecumenical councils, also, where blossoms the flower of all earthly wisdom, have always been careful to hold Thomas Aquinas in singular honor. In the Councils of Lyons, Vienna, Florence, and the Vatican one might almost say that Thomas took part and presided over the deliberations and decrees of the Fathers, contending against the errors of the Greeks, of heretics and rationalists, with invincible force and with the happiest results. But the chief and special glory of Thomas, one which he has shared with none of the Catholic Doctors, is that the Fathers of Trent made it part of the order of conclave to lay upon the altar, together with sacred Scripture and the decrees of the supreme Pontiffs, the "Summa" of Thomas Aquinas, whence to seek counsel, reason, and inspiration.

A last triumph was reserved for this incomparable man -- namely, to compel the homage, praise, and admiration of even the very enemies of the Catholic name. For it has come to light that there were not lacking among the leaders of heretical sects some who openly declared that, if the teaching of Thomas Aquinas were only taken away, they could easily battle with all Catholic teachers, gain the victory, and abolish the Church. A vain hope, indeed, but no vain testimony. (Pope Leo XIII, Aeterni Patris, August 4, 1879.)

Theology does not need to be "reinvented" or "updated," something that the late, nefarious revolutionary named John Raymond McGann, conciliar "bishop" of the Diocese of Rockville Centre from June 24, 1976, to January 4, 2000, told the late Father Salvatore V. Franco that he had to do ("Sal, you have to update your theology). Hans Urs von Balthasar had to "reimagine" the entirety of the Catholic Faith, and it has been the lifelong task of "His Apostateness Benedict XVI, Antipope Emeritus" to implement and institutionalize his mentor's "new theology" as the norm for Catholic theological and liturgical life and pastoral praxis.

Father Regis Scanlon, O.F.M., Cap., explained in The Inflated Reputation of Hans Urs von Balthasar, that Ratzinger's mentor believed that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ did not have infallible omniscience of all things in His Sacred Humanity, which makes it easy to understand how it is very easy for Joseph Ratzinger to be so dismissive of the binding pronouncements of Holy Mother Church's twenty legitimate general councils and the teaching of our true popes as he does not believe that they were guided by God the Holy Ghost infallibly given what they believe to be the "inability" of human language to express adequately in any kind of precision the beliefs of the Faith.

Here is a brief excerpt from Father Scanlon's article:

 

If one were to accept Balthasar's theory that Jesus was "strictly ignorant of the hour" of His final coming, one could hardly explain how Jesus could describe the events of His final coming in Matthew 24:15-42 ("the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light... they will see the Son of Man coming upon the clouds of heaven"). This is what St. Ephrem, the fourth-century Doctor of the Church, pointed out. In his Commentary on the Diatessaron he stated about Jesus: "He described the signs of his coming; how could what he has himself decided be hidden from him?" St. Ephrem said that the first reason why Our Lord did not make the time of His final coming plain, was "so all generations and ages await him eagerly" and "think that he would come again in their own day." St. Ephrem also said, "He has not made it plain for this reason especially, that no one may think that he whose power and dominion rule all numbers and times is ruled by fate and time."

Thus, this opinion, that there was ignorance in Jesus, was already rejected during the fourth-century Arian heresy by Church Fathers such as St. Ephrem (and St. Ambrose). It was officially condemned by Pope Vigilius on May 14, 553, when he taught that "If anyone says that the one Jesus Christ, true Son of God and true Son of Man, was ignorant of future things, or of the day of the last judgment ... let him be anathema." (Denzinger, 29th ed., No. 419).

This error was refuted most thoroughly in A.D. 600 when Pope Gregory I (St. Gregory the Great) rebutted the Monophysite sect known as the "Agnoetae" who also held that Mark 13:32 ("neither the Son, nor the angels know the day and the hour") indicated that Christ was ignorant (all cites in this paragraph are from Denz. No. 248). Pope Gregory taught that Christ knew by means of two natures, and what He did not know "from" His human nature, He knew "from" His divine nature. Thus, Pope Gregory maintained that, while Christ knew "the day and the hour of judgment" in His human nature, He knew this from His divine nature and not from His human nature. He said: "Therefore, that which in [nature] itself He knew, He did not know from that very [nature]." So, Christ knew all things "in His human nature." Pope Gregory stated: "so the omnipotent Son says He does not know the day which He causes not to be known, not because He himself is ignorant of it, but because He does not permit it to be known at all." And, he concluded:

For with what purpose can he who confesses that the Wisdom itself of God is incarnate say that there is anything, which the Wisdom of God does not know? It is written: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.... All things were made by him [John 1:13]. If all, without doubt also the day of judgment and the hour. Who, therefore, is so foolish as to presume to assert that the Word of the Father made that which He does not know? It is written also: Jesus knowing, that the Father gave him all things into his hands [John 13:3]. If all things, surely both the day of judgment and the hour. Who, therefore, is so stupid as to say that the Son has received in His hands that of which He is unaware? (Denz. No. 248.)

Obviously, if the Son received into His hands "all things," including "the day of judgment," surely He also knew who would, and who would not, be saved -- even Judas!

Again, there is only "one Person" in "Christ" and this Person is a divine Person -- namely, "God" (Denz. No. 282-283). We say that the divine Person Jesus Christ knows by means of His two natures. But, while Jesus Christ has a double consciousness, He has only one center or I (ego) of consciousness, which is divine. John Paul II puts it this way:

"There is no gospel text, which indicates that Christ spoke of himself as a human person, even when he frequently referred to himself as "Son of Man." This term is rich with meaning. Under the veil of biblical and messianic expression, it seems to imply that he who applies it to himself belongs to a different and higher order than that of ordinary mortals as far as the reality of his "I" is concerned. It is a term, which bears witness to his intimate awareness of his own divine identity."

Although He has a fully human nature and a fully divine nature, Christ is a divine Person, not a human person. And, whatever we say about the knowledge of the Person of Jesus Christ we say about the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity. Thus, Jesus Christ had infinite knowledge "in" His human nature, but He had this knowledge from His divine Person.

Jesus could experience suffering in His human nature as something new to His Person, which He had never experienced. And, surely, as Fr. John Harden says, Christ had "sense perception and derive[d] corresponding knowledge from such experience" -- i.e., "experiential knowledge" (The Catholic Catechism). Once more, the Son of God (Jesus Christ) could "conceal" some property manifested by His Person, like the manifestation of His glory or the immensity of His majesty (see Phil. 2:7, "he emptied himself), and this would account for a lack of consolation flowing to His human nature from His beatific vision. But He could not give up something intrinsic to His divine Person or His divine Being. And God's self-knowledge is intrinsic to His divine Being, for St. Thomas Aquinas says that, "God understands Himself through Himself." And, he says: "the act of God's intellect is His substance" and "His act of understanding must be His essence and His existence" (Summa Theologica, 1a, q. 14, art. 2).

It is not surprising, then, that Pius X "condemned" any statement that denies "the infallible knowledge of Jesus Christ" or any statement that denies that Jesus had "knowledge circumscribed by no limit" (Denz. Nos. 2032, 2034, 2065[a]). Nor was it surprising that under Benedict XV the Church taught that "Christ was ignorant of nothing, but from the beginning knew all things in the Word, past, present, and future, or all things that God knows by the knowledge of vision" (Denz. Nos. 2184, 2289). So, Balthasar's "hope" for universal salvation rested logically on a theory of Christ's ignorance and fallibility, which had been often and variously condemned. (The Inflated Reputation of Hans Urs von Balthasar.)

Yes, you see, Holy Mother Church has never been ignorant of anything, which is why Joseph Ratzinger's contention that "we had to learn" about that doctrinal pronouncements become "obsolete in the particulars they contain," an integral part of his philosophically absurd and dogmatically condemned "hermeneutic of continuity," is heretical and blasphemous on its face. Yet it is that the conciliar "'pope' emeritus" persists in his unending adoration of the cult of his mentor, Hans Urs von Balthasar, right to the point of taking one of his fellow heretic's books with him into retirement.

Here is what Pope Pius XII had to say about the "new theology" of the likes of Hans Urs von Balthasar, Henri de Lubac, Maurice Blondel and Joseph Ratzinger:

 

In theology some want to reduce to a minimum the meaning of dogmas; and to free dogma itself from terminology long established in the Church and from philosophical concepts held by Catholic teachers, to bring about a return in the explanation of Catholic doctrine to the way of speaking used in Holy Scripture and by the Fathers of the Church. They cherish the hope that when dogma is stripped of the elements which they hold to be extrinsic to divine revelation, it will compare advantageously with the dogmatic opinions of those who are separated from the unity of the Church and that in this way they will gradually arrive at a mutual assimilation of Catholic dogma with the tenets of the dissidents.

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

It is evident from what We have already said, that such tentatives not only lead to what they call dogmatic relativism, but that they actually contain it. The contempt of doctrine commonly taught and of the terms in which it is expressed strongly favor it. Everyone is aware that the terminology employed in the schools and even that used by the Teaching Authority of the Church itself is capable of being perfected and polished; and we know also that the Church itself has not always used the same terms in the same way. It is also manifest that the Church cannot be bound to every system of philosophy that has existed for a short space of time. Nevertheless, the things that have been composed through common effort by Catholic teachers over the course of the centuries to bring about some understanding of dogma are certainly not based on any such weak foundation. These things are based on principles and notions deduced from a true knowledge of created things. In the process of deducing, this knowledge, like a star, gave enlightenment to the human mind through the Church. Hence it is not astonishing that some of these notions have not only been used by the Oecumenical Councils, but even sanctioned by them, so that it is wrong to depart from them.

Unfortunately these advocates of novelty easily pass from despising scholastic theology to the neglect of and even contempt for the Teaching Authority of the Church itself, which gives such authoritative approval to scholastic theology. This Teaching Authority is represented by them as a hindrance to progress and an obstacle in the way of science. Some non Catholics consider it as an unjust restraint preventing some more qualified theologians from reforming their subject. And although this sacred Office of Teacher in matters of faith and morals must be the proximate and universal criterion of truth for all theologians, since to it has been entrusted by Christ Our Lord the whole deposit of faith -- Sacred Scripture and divine Tradition -- to be preserved, guarded and interpreted, still the duty that is incumbent on the faithful to flee also those errors which more or less approach heresy, and accordingly "to keep also the constitutions and decrees by which such evil opinions are proscribed and forbidden by the Holy See," is sometimes as little known as if it did not exist. What is expounded in the Encyclical Letters of the Roman Pontiffs concerning the nature and constitution of the Church, is deliberately and habitually neglected by some with the idea of giving force to a certain vague notion which they profess to have found in the ancient Fathers, especially the Greeks. The Popes, they assert, do not wish to pass judgment on what is a matter of dispute among theologians, so recourse must be had to the early sources, and the recent constitutions and decrees of the Teaching Church must be explained from the writings of the ancients.

Although these things seem well said, still they are not free from error. It is true that Popes generally leave theologians free in those matters which are disputed in various ways by men of very high authority in this field; but history teaches that many matters that formerly were open to discussion, no longer now admit of discussion.

Nor must it be thought that what is expounded in Encyclical Letters does not of itself demand consent, since in writing such Letters the Popes do not exercise the supreme power of their Teaching Authority. For these matters are taught with the ordinary teaching authority, of which it is true to say: "He who heareth you, heareth me"; and generally what is expounded and inculcated in Encyclical Letters already for other reasons appertains to Catholic doctrine. But if the Supreme Pontiffs in their official documents purposely pass judgment on a matter up to that time under dispute, it is obvious that that matter, according to the mind and will of the same Pontiffs, cannot be any longer considered a question open to discussion among theologians. (Pope Pius XII, Humani Generis, August 12, 1950.)

A man who was a seminarian with Ratzinger in Germany reported in 2005 after the "election" of his friend to the conciliar "pontificate" that he was with Ratzinger when one of their seminary professors read Humani Generis, prompting him to walk, seminarians in tow, to his room, whereby he slammed his books on the floor in disgust. The former seminarian said that that had made quite an impression upon the young Joseph Ratzinger, who has been unfailingly faithful to one condemned Modernist proposition after another.

Ah, yes, the "great restorer of Tradition." How could I forget?

Well, it's easy to forget as the pages of history will slam shut on this blasphemer and apostate once Christ the King sees fit to restore His Holy Church as the fruit of the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

We must not forget to have nothing to with the lords of conciliarism as we pray fervently for their conversion.

We must not forget to do penance for our own sins, accepting with joy, equanimity and gratitude to the good God for all sufferings and humiliations that are visited upon us by those of our relatives, friends and acquaintances who think that we are outside of the Church. The intentions of all hearts and the circumstances of all lives will be revealed only on the Last Day at the General Judgment of the living and the dead. It is good to suffer for the sake of the Holy Faith. What a wonderful gift we have been given during this Lenten season to suffer all manner of calumny for rejecting the counterfeit church of conciliarism and the condemned propositions advanced and blasphemous, sacrilegious actions of its lords.

We must fly unto Our Lady through her Most Holy Rosary every day as we seek to keep her Divine Son company before His Real Presence in the Most Blessed Sacrament, which is very difficult for most Catholics in the world to do today given the sacramental barrenness of conciliarism.

Remember, this is the time that God had appointed for us from all eternity to live.

Lift High the Cross!

Ave Crux!

Ave Maria!

The Immaculate Heart of Mary will triumph in the end.

Viva Cristo Rey! Vivat Christus Rex!

 

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

Saints Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar, pray for us.

See also: A Litany of Saints