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Ratzinger's Revolution Unravels
Part One
by Thomas A. Droleskey
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The world is still suffering from the consequences of Martin Luther's Protestant Revolution.
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The Protestant Revolution, not a "reformation," was a revolt against the Divine Plan that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ had specifically instituted to effect man's return to Him through the Catholic Church. The Protestant Revolution was born in blood, overturning the Social Reign of Christ the King in the German states as one prince after another provided protection to Luther in order to be "liberated" from the "yoke" of "Roman interference. (This is yet another example of the misuse of language that was mentioned in a brief way in Always Trying To Find A Way two days ago now. Martin Luther led a revolt, a revolution, not a "reformation.")
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That is, various German princes, influenced by the realpolitik ("real" politics" or "power" politics) of Niccolo Machiavelli's The Prince and Discourses on Livy, wanted to rule without having to pay deference of any type, especially by means of monetary tribute, to the temporal of the peoples and desirous principally of personal power and not the pursuit of the common good in light of man's Last End. These rulers wanted to govern without even the possibility of having their actions that could be deemed as grievously harmful to souls countermanded by Holy Mother Church. They also wanted to live in the manner Herod the Tetrarch, preferring that the nasty voices of Catholic bishops be silenced such as the original Herod the Tetrarch silenced Saint John the Baptist. Martin Luther's revolution suited their own political and personal purposes quite well, which is why they gave him and his false theology, about which they cared nothing, such protection.
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The social chaos caused by the Protestant Revolution was summarized by Father Edward Cahill, S.J., in The Framework of a Christian State, which was published in 1932:
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The assumption that Protestantism brought a higher and purer moral life to the nations that came under its influence does not need elaborate refutation. It is a fact of uncontroverted history that "public morality did at once deteriorate to an appalling degree wherever Protestantism was introduced. Not to mention robberies of church goods, brutal treatment meted out to the clergy, secular and regular, who remained faithful, and the horrors of so many wars of religion," we have the express testimony of [Martin] Luther himself and several other leaders of the revolt, such as [Martin] Bucer and [Philip] Melancthon, as to the evil effects of their teaching; and this testimony is confirmed by contemporaries. Luther's own avowals on this matter are numberless. Thus he writes:
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"There is not one of our Evangelicals, who is not seven times worse than before he belonged to us, stealing the goods of others, lying, deceiving, eating, getting drunk, and indulging in every vice, as if he had not received the Holy Word. If we have been delivered from one spirit of evil, seven others worse than the first have come to take its place."
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And again:
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"Men who live under the Gospel are more uncharitable, more irascible, more greedy, more avaricious than they were before as Papists."
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Even Erasmus, who had at first favoured Luther's movement, was soon disillusioned. Thus he writes:
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"The New Gospel has at least the advantage of showing us a new race of men, haughty, impudent, cunning, blasphemous . . . quarrellers, seditious, furious, to whom I have, to say truth, so great an antipathy that if I knew a place in the world free of them, I would not hesitate to take refuge therein."
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That these evil effects of Protestantism were not merely temporary--the accidental results of the excitement and confusion which are peculiar to a stage of transition (although they were no doubt intensified thereby)--is shown from present-day statistics. The condition of domestic morality is usually best indicated by the statistics of divorce, and of illegitimate births, and by the proportion of legitimate children to the number of marriages; while statistics of general criminality, where they can be had, would convey a fair idea of the individual and public morality in any given place. According to these tests Protestant countries are at the present day much inferior to Catholic countries in domestic and public morality.
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The following examples will help to illustrate this:
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Italy, Spain and Ireland are perhaps the most Catholic countries of the world, while Britain, the United States of America, with Denmark and Scandinavia, are the most Protestant. Legalised divorce does not exist at all (1930-1931) in any country of the former group. It exists in all the countries of the latter group; and the number of divorces is increasing year by year. In England and Wales there were 3,740 divorces in 1928, being about one divorce to every 114 marriages. In the United States of America the number of divorces in 1916 was 112,031, being one divorce in every 10 marriages. Ten years later (viz., in 1926), the number of divorces reached the appalling total of 181,000, being about one to every seven marriages. The statistics of illegitimate births tell a similar tale. Thus in 1927 the proportion of illegitimate births was at 44 per 1,000 for England and Wales, and 29 per 1,000 for the Irish Free State.
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Again, the Irish Free State has a very high proportion of births to marriages, one of the highest in Europe. England, where the birth-rate has now fallen to nearly 16 per 1,000, has the lowest birth-rate in the world as compared with the marriage rate. While all Catholic countries have a fairly high birth-rate, the birth-rate is so low in some Protestant or non-Catholic countries that the human race there is hastening to extinction. This is in fact what has occurred to the original Protestant settlers in the New England States of America, who have practically disappeared, being in large measure supplanted by the Irish, the Canadians and others.
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Exact statistics of criminality are difficulty to obtain; and trustworthy comparisons between different countries are more difficult still. Anyone, however, who remembers the constant recurrence of the ceremony of presenting "white gloves" to the judges of the criminal courts in Ireland owing to the complete absence of criminal indictments a few years ago, when the country was in its normal state, and contrasts this fact with the records of the criminal courts of Great Britain and U.S.A. may draw his own conclusions.
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It has been not inaptly said that "greed, robbery, oppression, rebellion, repression, wars, devastation, depredation, would be a fitting inscription on the tomb of early Protestantism." We shall see that the latter effects of the new religion, though not so violent or dramatic, have fulfilled the promise of its earlier years. (Father Edward Cahill, S.J., The Framework of a Christian State, first published in 1932, republished by Roman Catholic Books, pp. 102-104.)
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Protestantism is false. It is from the devil. It can never serve as the means of the salvation of anyone's immortal soul. It can never serve as the foundation of social order. Although it is true that social disorder occurred throughout the history of Christendom as men sinned and suffered the consequences both personally and socially of their own rebellion against God by means of those sins, it is also true that Holy Mother Church stood as a beacon to help her wayward children to amend their lives.
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Popes Leo XIII's Immortale Dei, November 1 1885, summarized the glories of Christendom during the Middle Ages:
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There was once a time when States were governed by the philosophy of the Gospel. Then it was that the power and divine virtue of Christian wisdom had diffused itself throughout the laws, institutions, and morals of the people, permeating all ranks and relations of civil society. Then, too, the religion instituted by Jesus Christ, established firmly in befitting dignity, flourished everywhere, by the favor of princes and the legitimate protection of magistrates; and Church and State were happily united in concord and friendly interchange of good offices. The State, constituted in this wise, bore fruits important beyond all expectation, whose remembrance is still, and always will be, in renown, witnessed to as they are by countless proofs which can never be blotted out or ever obscured by any craft of any enemies. Christian Europe has subdued barbarous nations, and changed them from a savage to a civilized condition, from superstition to true worship. It victoriously rolled back the tide of Mohammedan conquest; retained the headship of civilization; stood forth in the front rank as the leader and teacher of all, in every branch of national culture; bestowed on the world the gift of true and many-sided liberty; and most wisely founded very numerous institutions for the solace of human suffering. And if we inquire how it was able to bring about so altered a condition of things, the answer is -- beyond all question, in large measure, through religion, under whose auspices so many great undertakings were set on foot, through whose aid they were brought to completion.
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A similar state of things would certainly have continued had the agreement of the two powers been lasting. More important results even might have been justly looked for, had obedience waited upon the authority, teaching, and counsels of the Church, and had this submission been specially marked by greater and more unswerving loyalty. For that should be regarded in the light of an ever-changeless law which Ivo of Chartres wrote to Pope Paschal II: "When kingdom and priesthood are at one, in complete accord, the world is well ruled, and the Church flourishes, and brings forth abundant fruit. But when they are at variance, not only smaller interests prosper not, but even things of greatest moment fall into deplorable decay."
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But that harmful and deplorable passion for innovation which was aroused in the sixteenth century threw first of all into confusion the Christian religion, and next, by natural sequence, invaded the precincts of philosophy, whence it spread amongst all classes of society. From this source, as from a fountain-head, burst forth all those later tenets of unbridled license which, in the midst of the terrible upheavals of the last century, were wildly conceived and boldly proclaimed as the principles and foundation of that new conception of law which was not merely previously unknown, but was at variance on many points with not only the Christian, but even the natural law. (Pope Leo the Great, Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885.)
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Writing nearly fifty-four years later, Pope Pius XII used his first encyclical letter, Summi Pontificatus, October 10, 1939, to discuss the rapidity by which the old paganism in Europe that had been obliterated by Catholic missionaries in the First Millennium had reappeared and had come to dominate the minds of men and to control the fate of their nations, tracing the roots of the roots of contemporary problems in 1939 at the onset of World War II right back to their proximate roots: the Protestant Revolution:
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The present age, Venerable Brethren, by adding new errors to the doctrinal aberrations of the past, has pushed these to extremes which lead inevitably to a drift towards chaos. Before all else, it is certain that the radical and ultimate cause of the evils which We deplore in modern society is the denial and rejection of a universal norm of morality as well for individual and social life as for international relations; We mean the disregard, so common nowadays, and the forgetfulness of the natural law itself, which has its foundation in God, Almighty Creator and Father of all, supreme and absolute Lawgiver, all-wise and just Judge of human actions. When God is hated, every basis of morality is undermined; the voice of conscience is stilled or at any rate grows very faint, that voice which teaches even to the illiterate and to uncivilized tribes what is good and what is bad, what lawful, what forbidden, and makes men feel themselves responsible for their actions to a Supreme Judge.
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The denial of the fundamentals of morality had its origin, in Europe, in the abandonment of that Christian teaching of which the Chair of Peter is the depository and exponent. That teaching had once given spiritual cohesion to a Europe which, educated, ennobled and civilized by the Cross, had reached such a degree of civil progress as to become the teacher of other peoples, of other continents. But, cut off from the infallible teaching authority of the Church, not a few separated brethren have gone so far as to overthrow the central dogma of Christianity, the Divinity of the Savior, and have hastened thereby the progress of spiritual decay.
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The Holy Gospel narrates that when Jesus was crucified "there was darkness over the whole earth" (Matthew xxvii. 45); a terrifying symbol of what happened and what still happens spiritually wherever incredulity, blind and proud of itself, has succeeded in excluding Christ from modern life, especially from public life, and has undermined faith in God as well as faith in Christ. The consequence is that the moral values by which in other times public and private conduct was gauged have fallen into disuse; and the much vaunted civilization of society, which has made ever more rapid progress, withdrawing man, the family and the State from the beneficent and regenerating effects of the idea of God and the teaching of the Church, has caused to reappear, in regions in which for many centuries shone the splendors of Christian civilization, in a manner ever clearer, ever more distinct, ever more distressing, the signs of a corrupt and corrupting paganism: "There was darkness when they crucified Jesus" (Roman Breviary, Good Friday, Response Five).
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Many perhaps, while abandoning the teaching of Christ, were not fully conscious of being led astray by a mirage of glittering phrases, which proclaimed such estrangement as an escape from the slavery in which they were before held; nor did they then foresee the bitter consequences of bartering the truth that sets free, for error which enslaves. They did not realize that, in renouncing the infinitely wise and paternal laws of God, and the unifying and elevating doctrines of Christ's love, they were resigning themselves to the whim of a poor, fickle human wisdom; they spoke of progress, when they were going back; of being raised, when they groveled; of arriving at man's estate, when they stooped to servility. They did not perceive the inability of all human effort to replace the law of Christ by anything equal to it; "they became vain in their thoughts" (Romans i. 21).
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With the weakening of faith in God and in Jesus Christ, and the darkening in men's minds of the light of moral principles, there disappeared the indispensable foundation of the stability and quiet of that internal and external, private and public order, which alone can support and safeguard the prosperity of States.
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It is true that even when Europe had a cohesion of brotherhood through identical ideals gathered from Christian preaching, she was not free from divisions, convulsions and wars which laid her waste; but perhaps they never felt the intense pessimism of today as to the possibility of settling them, for they had then an effective moral sense of the just and of the unjust, of the lawful and of the unlawful, which, by restraining outbreaks of passion, left the way open to an honorable settlement. In Our days, on the contrary, dissensions come not only from the surge of rebellious passion, but also from a deep spiritual crisis which has overthrown the sound principles of private and public morality. (Pope Pius XII, Summi Pontificatus, October 10, 1939.)
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The Protestant Revolution made possible the rise of Judeo-Masonry and of the false "philosophers" who set the stage for the French Revolution, a social revolution founded in the hatred of God (anti-Theism) that was to influence in its own wake all subsequent social revolutions, including the Bolshevik Revolution. Every single political "ideology" of the false opposites of the naturalist "left" and the naturalist "right" is an attempt to replace the social order that Catholicism once provided to the Western world. As alluded to by Pope Leo XIII and Pius XII in the passages provided above, all secular "'isms" (belief systems) have the proximate causes in the Protestant Revolution, including the spirit of nationalism, which is but a counterfeit of ape of true love of one's nation (patria that wills the good of one's nation without exalting a nation over God and His Church, that was responsible for the needless war of national pride, ambition and aggression that was World War I, the harbinger of World II.
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Remember, my good and very few readers and fewer still financial supporters, who must, it appears, be on "strike" at this time, that it was Martin Luther, who had been ordained a priest for the Order of Saint Augustine in 1507, who specifically sought to overthrow the Social Reign of Christ the King, justifying it as follows:
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“Assuredly, a
prince can be a Christian, but it is not as a Christian that he
ought to govern. As a ruler, he is not called a Christian, but a
prince. The man is a Christian, but his function does not concern
his religion.” (As quoted by Father Denis Fahey, The Mystical Body of Christ in the Modern World.)
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Catholicism was once the foundation of all social order in Europe. It is now relativized to the margins as the people of once Catholic Europe have abandoned the Faith and as God has withdrawn His Sanctifying Graces from those lands as a result of the conciliar revolution, which continues to produce devastating consequences in its own sordid wake.
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Cradle to the grave socialism, replete with entitlement programs that have corrupted all sense of personal responsibility, has brought Europe to its knees financially and produced social chaos and vast disorder.
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The continent wide prevalence of baby-killing, both by chemical and surgical means, has depopulated the countries of Europe to such an extent as that Mohammedans have flocked there in droves and are having large families that will constitute sizable electoral majorities within two or three decades. A separate court system has been established in England to administer justice in some case according to Mohammedan law for adherents of this false religion. Mosques have sprung up all over Europe.
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Martin Luther saw his revolution crumble before his very eyes without realizing that he was solely responsible for its collapse by rebelling against the Divine Plan that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ instituted to effect man's return to Him through the Catholic Church. He is reported to have said before he died, "Maybe it was all a big mistake," a quote that could, quite obviously, be apocryphal and that I do not have time for source. Even if he didn't say it, however, he found out at his Particular Judgment the truth of what he did and of the consequences that resulted when he faced the One Whose Social Kingship he had overthrown.
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In like manner, Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict does not see that the conciliar revolution he had helped to plan, being personally responsible for having convinced the fathers of the "Second" Vatican Council to insert the phrase "the Church of Christ subsists in the Catholic Church" in the text of Lumen Gentium, November 21, 1964, upon the suggestion to him of a Lutheran "theologian" from Germany, and institute is crumbling all around him. Try as he has in the past seventy-five months to further institutionalize the doctrinal and conciliar revolutions of conciliarism, and he has tried mightily to steer his SS One World Ecumenical Church in the direction he wants it to sail, the revolutionary currents that he helped to unleash are crumbling before him as he, one of conciliarism's chief progenitors, faces the same sort of wreckage that faced Martin Luther within a short time after his own revolution that shaped the one he, Ratzinger/Benedict, helped to undertake.
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Consider this report from a Society of Saint Pius X website that is designed to curry sympathy for the "poor, suffering 'pope' of tradition:"
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Over 300 of Austria’s 4,200 priests have pledged to
take part in a “Call to Disobedience”, an initiative launched in
June. The document cites “the Roman refusal of a long-overdue
Church reform and the inaction of bishops.” Priests who
support the document pledge among other things:
to pray for
Church reform at every liturgy based on “freedom of speech”
to offer the
Holy Eucharist to “believers of good will,” including
non-Catholic Christians and those who have remarried outside the
Church
to describe
such a Liturgy of the Word with the distribution of Holy
Communion as a “priestless Eucharistic celebration”; “thus we
fulfill the Sunday obligation in a time of priest shortage”
to “ignore”
canonical norms that restrict the preaching of the homily to
clergy
to promote
individual leaders in parishes without a priest, “whether man or
woman”
to “use every
opportunity to speak out openly in favor of the admission of the
married and of women to the priesthood.”
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“The open call to disobedience shocked me,” Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna said in a July 7 letter, noting that many professionals would have “long since lost their jobs” if they had called for disobedience. Reminding priests that they had freely promised obedience to their bishop at ordination, he asked, “Can I rely on you?”
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Those who truly in conscience believe that they must disobey the hierarchy ought in consequence to “travel the way no more with the Roman Catholic Church… The one who gives up the principle of obedience dissolves unity.” He pointed out its “inconsistencies,” such as “priestless Eucharist.”
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Here are our comments on this piece of news. What is happening in Europe, Austria, and Holland is threatening us too. You can find similar things in America already. As an example, the Bishop of Green Bay, WI recently appointed a dynamic nun as parish administrator/liturgy director/extraordinary minister of Communion, etc. in charge of two parishes because of the shortage of priests. Priests will visit the parishes once in a while to make sure other sacraments will be offered to the communities. This is creating a precedent which could very soon change the face of normal Catholic parish life. Does he have the support of Rome for such a appointment or even that of the USCCB?
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We are dealing with an open attack on the celibacy of the priesthood, the hierarchical function of the Church, and on the principle of unity to the successors of the Apostles. Needless to say, we are well aware of the modernist trends which have been slowly injected into the veins of the Church. Now, we are rapidly witnessing the conclusion of this revolutionary process.
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This sounds very much like what de Lubac (in his Mémoire sur l’occasion de mes écrits1) was complaining about when he referred to the “para-Council” set up by radicals like Schillebeeckx and Rahner, promoters of a miserable secularization and spiritual desert. The message of de Lubac and Benedict XVI is clear: without going back to the past, we need to salvage the Church from the progressivists who put in jeopardy the work of the true Council which has not yet been received.
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Sounds like déjà vu. Those who sowed the wind are now complaining about the impending storm. The extravagance of avant-garde priests is the logical conclusion of the very spirit of liberty which they promoted so forcefully. (Traces of Schism in Austria.)
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The Society of Saint Pius X is, evidently, "shocked" at this turn of events in the counterfeit church of conciliarism with which they are affiliated and whose "pope" its bishops and priests recognize but resist.
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Christoph Schonborn, who has presided over some of the most abominable liturgical sacrileges that have been spawned by the liturgical revolution of conciliarism, is "shocked" by this rebellion amongst his priests? The man who was supported the ideology of "theistic evolution" and has been one of the chief promoters of the conciliar revolution's "approved" apostasies, blasphemies and sacrileges? He is shocked. (See Almost Always At Odds With Themselves, Negotiating To Become An Apostate, They Continue to Caricature Themselves, and Meltdown to see why you should be be shocked only by the fact that Christoph Schonborn is shocked at this "schism" in the counterfeit church of conciliarism.
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This is all reminiscent of how French Vichy police captain Louis Renault was "shocked" to find out that gambling was going on in the very cafe he was gambling when seeking a pretext to close it down because a leader of the French resistance, the underground, to the Vichy government, was causing a tumult:
STRASSER
You see what I mean? If Laszlo's presence in a cafe can inspire this unfortunate demonstration, what more his presence in Casablanca bring
on? I advise that this place be shut up at once.
RENAULT
(innocently)
But everybody's having such a good time.
STRASSER
Yes, much too good a time. The place is to be closed.
RENAULT
But I have no excuse to close it.
STRASSER
(snapping)
Find one.
Several French officers surround Laszlo, offering him a drink.
Renault thinks a moment, then blows a loud BLAST on his whistle. The room grows quiet, all eyes turn toward Renault.
RENAULT
(loudly)
Everybody is to leave here immediately! This cafe is closed until further notice! Clear the room at once!
An angry murmur starts among the crowd. People get up and begin to leave.
Rick comes quickly up to Renault.
RICK
How can you close me up? On what grounds?
RENAULT
I am shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!
This display of nerve leaves Rick at a loss. The croupier comes out of the gambling room and up to Renault. He hands him a roll of bills.
CROUPIER
Your winnings, sir.
RENAULT
Oh. Thank you very much.
He turns to the crowd again.
RENAULT
Everybody out at once! (Screenplay for Casablanca.)
The only thing to be "shocked" about concerning the report out of Austria is that anyone at all, no less those in the Society of Saint Pius X, is capable of being shocked about it.
Look, revolutions produce consequences, and the conciliar revolution has produced an absurd conglomeration of errors that wind up producing comedic (in the classic sense of the word "comedy") scenarios wherein men are unable to see the teleology (the logical end to which a particular thought or action or belief leads) of their words and deeds and beliefs. And the only logical end of a false idea is absurdity, which is ignored in order to "save" the revolution's false precepts.
Why be shocked at the "revolt" being staged by priests and presbyters attached to the counterfeit church of conciliarism in Austria? These men are only useful stooges being used by the devil to make a progenitor of their revolution, Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, appear to be a sympathetic figure in the eyes of "conservative" and traditionally-minded Catholics attached to the structures of the counterfeit church of conciliarism. Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, a scion of Modernism by way of the the "nouvelle theologie" (new theology) in which he was trained by which he views and teaches the entirety of the patrimony of the Catholic Faith, has lost control of his revolution, which is eating him alive even though he is oblivious to this fact.
In order to be "shocked" by the unfolding events in Austria, one has to continue to play the "let's pretend" game. Have you forgotten? Here is a little reminder if you have:
Yes, let's pretend that the Protestant and Novus Ordo worship service is not offensive to God, that it was not designed to be
a vessel of ecumenism and a means by which unsuspecting Catholics could
have their sensus Catholicus broken down by a steady barrage
of liturgical changes that were designed to accustom them to changes in
matters of doctrine and discipline that are alien to Catholicism.
Let's pretend that Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI has
not denied the nature of dogmatic truth by insisting over and over and
over again, whether it has been as Father Joseph Ratzinger or
"Archbishop" Joseph Ratzinger or Joseph "Cardinal Ratzinger or as "Pope"
Benedict XVI, that it is not possible for dogmatic truth to expressed
precisely in human language at any one time, which is why some
expressions of the Faith become "obsolete" and must be replaced with
newer ones that can appeal to the "mind," such as it is, of the mythical
entity known as "modern man."
Let's just pretend that the [First] Vatican Council did not anathematize these repeated assertions.
Let's pretend that Pope Saint Pius X's Pascendi Dominici Gregis (September 8, 1907) did not condemn such denials of the nature of dogmatic truth.
Let's pretend that Pope Pius XII's Humani Generis (August 12, 1950) did not condemn these falsehoods.
It's time for the "Let's Pretend" game, right?
Let's pretend that Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI's
endorsement of religious liberty and constant praise for the "ability"
of false religions to contribute to the "betterment" of the world do
not offend the true God of Divine Revelation.
Let's pretend that religious liberty has not been condemned forcefully by, among others, Pope Pius VII in Post Tam Diuturnas (April 29, 1814) and Pope Gregory XVI in Mirari Vos (August 15, 1832) and Pope Pius IX in Quanta Cura (December 8, 1964.)
Let's pretend that Pope Pius VII did not call
religious liberty a heresy and that Pope Gregory XVI called it insanity
and that Pope Pius IX referred to it as "injurious babbling."
It's time to play the "Let's Pretend" game.
Let's pretend that Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI has not endorsed the thesis of the se parti on of Church and State.
Let's pretend that Pope Gregory XVI's Mirari Vos and Pope Pius IX's Syllabus of Errors (December 7, 1864) and Pope Leo XIII's Immortale Dei (November 1, 1885) and Tametsi Futura Prospicientibus (November 1, 1900) and Pope Saint Pius X's Vehementer Nos (February 11, 1906) did not condemn the separation of Church and State.
Let's pretend that Pope Saint Pius X did not call
separation of church and state a thesis "absolutely false" and that he
reminded us that our popes had never stopped condemning it as the
circumstances required them to do.
Let's pretend that Pope Saint Pius X's Iamdudum (May 24, 1911) did not condemn the separation of Church and State in
Portugal that was praised by Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI upon his
arrival there on May 11, 2010.
It's time for the "Let's Pretend" game. Let's pretend
all is well so that we can live in comity and unity with our fellows in
what we think is the Catholic Church. Ah, what a fun game this is.
Let's pretend that Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI does
believe in the "ecumenism of the return," that he does not believe
that it is not necessary to seek with urgency the unconditional
conversion of all non-Catholics to the the maternal bosom of the
Catholic Church.
Let's pretend that Pope Pius IX's Iam Vos Omnes (September 13, 1868) and Pope Leo XIII's Praeclara Gratulationis Publicae (June 20, 1894) and Pope Pius XI's Mortalium Animos (January 6, 1928) did not exhort non-Catholic Christians to return unconditionally to the Catholic Church.
Let's pretend that Pope Pius XI's Mortalium Animos did not condemn the sort of false ecumenism that Joseph
Ratzinger/Benedict XVI has praised throughout the course of his
priesthood, the sort of ecumenism that originated at the so-called
"World Missionary Conference" in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1910 and was
specifically praised by the current "pope" on its one hundredth
anniversary.
The "Let's Pretend" game is better that the "Let's
Make a Deal" game being played between Bishop Bernard Fellay of the
Society of Saint Pius X and William "Cardinal" Levada of the misnamed
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
Gee, this game is fun. Let's play some more, OK?
Sure, let's play some more, although we can't play
for too much longer as there is so very much about which we must pretend
these days (including that our "pope" has not rejected Scholasticism
and is not a disciple of the "new theology" condemned by Pope Pius XII
in Humani Generis and has not put into question the traditional
Catholic teaching on Limbo and the immutable Catholic doctrine on
Purgatory and has not endorsed a motion picture, The Nativity Story, that
was produced by Protestants and denied the doctrinal effects of Our
Lady's Immaculate Conception by portraying her to be a sulky, moody and
even rebellious teenager). So little time. So much about which to
pretend!
All right. All right. To make the game a little shorter, let's pretend a few more things.
Let's pretend that Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI has not given joint "blessings" with the "clergy" of non-Catholic religions.
Let's pretend that Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI has
not entered into synagogues while praising the false religion of
Talmudic Judaism, content to be treated as a person of lesser
significance even though he believes himself to be the Vicar of Our Lord
Jesus Christ on earth.
Let's pretend that Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI has
not entered into mosques and has called them "sacred" places while
treating them as "sacred" places by removing his shoes.
Let's pretend that Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI has not esteemed the symbols of false religions with his own hands.
Let's pretend that Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI has
not engaged in the forbidden practice of "inter-religious prayer" or
that he has not omitted the Holy Name of the Divine Redeemer, Our
Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, when engaged in such prayer with
those who deny His Sacred Divinity?
Let's pretend that Pope Saint Leo the Great never wrote the following:
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 )
Every little bit of this is just as offensive to God as what is happening in Austria. It is beyond absurd to pretend otherwise
Think about it.
God hates each and every false religion.
He hates word and deed that the convey any notion whatsoever that these false religions are pleasing to Him, no less a means of human sanctification and salvation.
Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ has entrusted His Sacred Deposit of Faith to the Catholic Church to be safeguarded until the end of time and taught without a shadow of change, no less contradiction, as God is immutable by His very nature. God the Holy Ghost has directed our true popes and the fathers of Holy Mother Church's true councils to issue dogmatic decrees in clear, precise terms.
God Himself directed the organic growth of the Sacred Liturgy in the first centuries of Holy Mother Church that, in truth, did Adrian Fortescue write the following about one hundred years ago:
Essentially, the Missal of Pius V is the Gregorian Sacramentary; that
again is formed from the Gelasian book, which depends upon the Leonine
collection. We find prayers of our Canon in the treatise de Sacramentis
and allusions to it in the [Fourth] Century. So the Mass goes back,
without essential change, to the age when it first developed out of the
oldest Liturgy of all. It is still redolent of that Liturgy, of the days
when Caesar ruled the world, and thought he could stamp out the Faith
of Christ, when our fathers met together before dawn and sang a hymn to
Christ as God. The final result of our enquiry is that, in spite of some
unresolved problems, in spite of later changes there is not in
Christendom another rite so venerable as ours. (As found in The Wisdom of Adrian Fortescue, edited by Michael Davies.)
It was, as has been noted on this site so many times before, the revolution against Catholic Worship that resulted in the overthrow of the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church as a synthetic concoction, designed to appeal to Protestants and unbelievers, replaced it as a means to propagandize a new and false religion,
conciliarism, with such lightning speed so as to break down the
supernatural resistance of ordinary Catholics to un-Catholic and
anti-Catholic "innovations" by calling upon them to be "obedient" and by
helping to disseminate propaganda designed to "erase" true memories of
the glories of the Catholic past in order to create artificial" memories
that would justify their efforts to "restore" liturgical rites that
either next existed or that were used by heretical sects. Most Catholics
were so convinced by the revolutionaries that the "past" had been bad
that they came to accept the innovations in what was said to be the
Catholic liturgy in the name of a "renewal" that was nothing other than a
revival of the spirit of antiquarianism (claiming to "restore" ancient
rites that never existed or that were used by heretics) that was
condemned by Pope Pius VI in Auctorem Fidei on August 28, 1794, and condemned as well by Pope Pius XII in Mediator Dei, November 20, 1947:
The Church is without question a living organism,
and as an organism, in respect of the sacred liturgy also, she grows,
matures, develops, adapts and accommodates herself to temporal needs and
circumstances, provided only that the integrity of her doctrine be
safeguarded. This notwithstanding, the temerity and daring of
those who introduce novel liturgical practices, or call for the revival
of obsolete rites out of harmony with prevailing laws and rubrics,
deserve severe reproof. It has pained Us grievously to note, Venerable
Brethren, that such innovations are actually being introduced, not
merely in minor details but in matters of major importance as well. We
instance, in point of fact, those who make use of the vernacular in the
celebration of the august eucharistic sacrifice; those who transfer
certain feast-days -- which have been appointed and established after
mature deliberation -- to other dates; those, finally, who delete from
the prayer books approved for public use the sacred texts of the Old
Testament, deeming them little suited and inopportune for modern times.
The use of the Latin language, customary in a
considerable portion of the Church, is a manifest and beautiful sign of
unity, as well as an effective antidote for any corruption of doctrinal
truth. In spite of this, the use of the mother tongue in connection with
several of the rites may be of much advantage to the people. But the
Apostolic See alone is empowered to grant this permission. It is
forbidden, therefore, to take any action whatever of this nature without
having requested and obtained such consent, since the sacred liturgy,
as We have said, is entirely subject to the discretion and approval of
the Holy See.
The same reasoning holds in the case of
some persons who are bent on the restoration of all the ancient rites
and ceremonies indiscriminately. The liturgy of the early ages is most
certainly worthy of all veneration. But ancient usage must not be
esteemed more suitable and proper, either in its own right or in its
significance for later times and new situations, on the simple ground
that it carries the savor and aroma of antiquity. The more recent
liturgical rites likewise deserve reverence and respect. They,
too, owe their inspiration to the Holy Spirit, who assists the Church in
every age even to the consummation of the world. They are equally the
resources used by the majestic Spouse of Jesus Christ to promote and
procure the sanctity of man.
Assuredly it is a wise and most laudable thing to
return in spirit and affection to the sources of the sacred liturgy. For
research in this field of study, by tracing it back to its origins,
contributes valuable assistance towards a more thorough and careful
investigation of the significance of feast-days, and of the meaning of
the texts and sacred ceremonies employed on their occasion. But it is
neither wise nor laudable to reduce everything to antiquity by every
possible device. Thus, to cite some instances, one would be
straying from the straight path were he to wish the altar restored to
its primitive table form; were he to want black excluded as a color for
the liturgical vestments; were he to forbid the use of sacred images and
statues in Churches; were he to order the crucifix so designed that the
divine Redeemer's body shows no trace of His cruel sufferings; and
lastly were he to disdain and reject polyphonic music or singing in
parts, even where it conforms to regulations issued by the Holy See.
Clearly no sincere
Catholic can refuse to accept the formulation of Christian doctrine more
recently elaborated and proclaimed as dogmas by the Church, under the
inspiration and guidance of the Holy Spirit with abundant fruit for
souls, because it pleases him to hark back to the old formulas. No more
can any Catholic in his right senses repudiate existing legislation of
the Church to revert to prescriptions based on the earliest sources of
canon law. Just as obviously unwise and mistaken is the zeal of one who
in matters liturgical would go back to the rites and usage of antiquity,
discarding the new patterns introduced by disposition of divine
Providence to meet the changes of circumstances and situation.
This way of acting
bids fair to revive the exaggerated and senseless antiquarianism to
which the illegal Council of Pistoia gave rise. It likewise attempts to
reinstate a series of errors which were responsible for the calling of
that meeting as well as for those resulting from it, with grievous harm
to souls, and which the Church, the ever watchful guardian of the
"deposit of faith" committed to her charge by her divine Founder, had
every right and reason to condemn. For perverse designs and ventures of
this sort tend to paralyze and weaken that process of sanctification by
which the sacred liturgy directs the sons of adoption to their Heavenly
Father of their souls' salvation. (Pope Pius XII, Mediator Dei, November 20, 1947.)
"For perverse designs and
ventures of this sort tend to paralyze and weaken that process of
sanctification by which the sacred liturgy directs the sons of adoption
to their Heavenly Father of their souls' salvation." Anyone who cannot
see that this one sentence describes the effects of the innovations of
the abomination that is the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo service is not being intellectually honest. The Novus Ordo service
is of its very nature as much a revolution against Catholic Faith and
Worship as that represented by the liturgies of Protestant sects.
The revolutionaries themselves--and their apologists--have told us that this is so:
We must strip from our Catholic prayers and from
the Catholic liturgy everything which can be the shadow of a stumbling
block for our separated brethren that is for the Protestants." (Annibale
Bugnini, L'Osservatore Romano, March 19, 1965.)
"[T]he intention of Pope Paul VI with regard to
what is commonly called the Mass, was to reform the Catholic liturgy in
such a way that it should coincide with the Protestant liturgy....
[T]here was with Pope Paul VI an ecumenical intention to remove, or at
least to correct, or at least to relax, what was too Catholic in
the traditional sense, in the Mass, and I, repeat, to get the Catholic
Mass closer to the Calvinist mass" (Dec. 19, 1993), Apropos,
#17, pp. 8f; quoted in Christian Order, October, 1994. (Jean Guitton, a
close friend of Giovanni Montini/Paul VI. The quotation and citations
are found in Christopher A. Ferrara and Thomas E. Woods, Jr., The Great Facade, The Remnant Publishing Company, 2002, p. 317.)
Let it be candidly said: the Roman Rite which we
have known hitherto no longer exists. It is destroyed. (Father Joseph
Gelineau, an associate of Annibale Bugnini on the Consilium, 1uoted and
footnoted in the work of a John Mole, who believed that the Mass of the
Roman Rite had been "truncated," not destroyed. Assault on the Roman Rite)
What is happening in Austria right now is the simply the logical unraveling of a revolution against God Himself that had many antecedent roots in the decades and centuries before it unfolded into open view, which will be the subject of part two of this commentary at some point tomorrow, July 31, 2011, the Seventh Sunday after Pentecost and the Commemoration of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, S.J., whose Society of Jesus was infested with Modernists long before the "Second" Vatican Council convened on October 11, 1962. And those Modernists in the Society of Jesus, defaming the memory of their saintly founder who hated heresy and formed his "Company of Jesus" to fight it, wrote books with nihil obstats from diocesan censors and imprimaturs from diocesan bishops. Some were protected by high-ranking prelates in the Vatican itself, yes, even during the pontificate of Pope Pius XII.
Ratzinger's revolution did not just "happen." He just "happened" to be one of the principal agents of bringing it to fruition.
How is it possible for one set of "moderate" revolutionaries to command "obedience" to them from "ultra-progressive" revolutionaries when they are not obedient to God?
Why should anyone, including the "ultra-progressive" revolutionaries in Austria consider "Pope" Benedict XVI as the final authority on what they think is Catholic teaching when he has denied the very nature of dogmatic truth, having done so repeatedly throughout the course of his sixty years of priestly life, thereby making Catholic teaching the plaything of a particular pope, who is free to subject his own personal "hermeneutic of continuity and discontinuity" to whatever part of the patrimony of the Holy Faith he does not "like." Why can't the revolutionaries in Austria reject what they don't "like" about the pace of Ratzinger/Benedict's revolution?
Revolutions always unravel.
Revolutions always eat their own.
Revolutions are based in one, firm ironclad rule: the law of unintended consequences.
Behold the unintended consequences of a revolution that continues to offend God and devastates the good of souls to their eternal detriment and thus to the detriment of the common temporal good, something we can see so very clearly at this time.
The conciliarists can have their absurdities and contradictions caused by their revolution. I, for one, am going to stick with Catholic truth as expressed by Pope saint Pius X in the afore cited Notre Charge Apostolique:
This, nevertheless, is what they want to do with human society; they dream of changing its natural and traditional foundations; they dream of a Future City built on different principles, and they dare to proclaim these more fruitful and more beneficial than the principles upon which the present Christian City rests.
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No, Venerable Brethren, We must repeat with the utmost energy in these times of social and intellectual anarchy when everyone takes it upon himself to teach as a teacher and lawmaker - the City cannot be built otherwise than as God has built it; society cannot be setup unless the Church lays the foundations and supervises the work; no, civilization is not something yet to be found, nor is the New City to be built on hazy notions; it has been in existence and still is: it is Christian civilization, it is the Catholic City. It has only to be set up and restored continually against the unremitting attacks of insane dreamers, rebels and miscreants. omnia instaurare in Christo.
Are there any questions?
As will detailed in an upcoming article on this site, which be long (although not quite as long as Forty-Three Years After Humanae Vitae), the conciliar revolution had antecedent precedents right here in the United States of America. For it was the naturalist ethos of Americanism that led to the conciliar revolution just as much as the Modernist ethos of the avant garde theologians of Europe, many of whom published books replete with imprimaturs from their local bishops even though they were filled with Modernist undercurrents that out into the open after the death of Pope Pius XII on October 9, 1958.
Revolutions don't just happen, and they are not without consequences.
Conscious of our need to make reparation for our own many sins, which are so responsible for the worsening of the state of the world and of the Church Militant on the face of earth, may we make the most of the chastisements of the present moment by praying as many Rosaries each day as our state-in-life permits, offering up whatever merit we earn from the bearing the crosses of the moment to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary.
Immaculate Heart of Mary, triumph soon!
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Vivat Christus Rex! Viva Cristo Rey!
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Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us.
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Saint Joseph, pray for us.
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Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.
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Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.
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Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.
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Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.
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Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.
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Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.
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Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.
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Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, pray for us.
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Saint Martha, pray for us. .
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Pope Saint St. Felix II, pray for us,
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Saints Simplicius, Beatrix and Faustinus, pray for us.
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See also: A Litany of Saints
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