Red China: Workshop for the New Ecclesiology

by Thomas A. Droleskey

One of the banes of existence in the structures of the counterfeit church of concilairism is the use of the brainwashing tool called the "workshop," which is a device used to engage in "re-education, "continuing education," and "theological and/or liturgical 'updating.'" Attendance at diocesan "workshops" is compulsory in many instances for priests and presbyters within a diocese. Although some of the more "conservative" or "traditionally-minded" priests and presbyters in the conciliar structures may grumble and grouse privately about these "workshops," most of them will attend these "workshops": in order to not to be sent to their diocesan equivalents of Siberia or to run the risk of losing a chance at promotion or appointment to or retention as the pastor of a parish in conciliar captivity.

Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI has been using his false "pontificate" as a sort of universal "workshop" to institutionalize the conciliar revolution that he helped to plan in the years leading up to the "Second" Vatican Council. Ratzinger/Benedict has never retracted one word of anything he has ever written. He has never abjured any of his errors, some of which, as I pointed out in One Sentence Says It All, used be to pointed out by various bishops and priests associated with the Society of Saint Pius X. He has told us in his very own words that he is, at least in all essential things, the same now as "Benedict XVI" as he has been in the past:

I've been taken apart various times: in my first phase as professor and in the intermediate phase, during my first phase as Cardinal and in the successive phase. Now comes a new division. Of course circumstances and situations and even people influence you because you take on different responsibilities. Let's say that my basic personality and even my basic vision have grown, but in everything that is essential I have remained identical. I'm happy that certain aspects that weren't noticed at first are now coming into the open. Interview with Bayerische Rundfunk (ARD), ZDF, Deutsche Welle and Vatican Radio

 

As I have noted in many articles, including Singing the Old Songs and "Connecting" with Betrayal, I know what it is to "project" one's own sensus Catholicus in the minds and hearts of the conciliar "popes." I did it for far too long with Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II, ignoring the plain evidence that was right in front of my face. This "projection" of Catholicism into the heart and mind of the current conciliar "pontiff," Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI takes place even in spite of such frank admissions as he, Ratzinger/Benedict, gave in an interview to a reporter from a German television station three years ago. Ratzinger/Benedict has abjured nothing from his past.

Thus it is that "conservative" Catholics yet attached to the structures of the counterfeit church of concilairism are continuing to "project" Catholic thoughts and beliefs in the mind and heart of a man, Ratzinger/Benedict who has been at war with the Catholic Faith throughout the course of his priesthood.

Thus it is also that many traditionally-minded Catholics who have pinned their hopes on the "restoration" of the Church by means of Ratzinger/Benedict's Summorum Pontificum, July 7, 2007, are pretending as though their past and most withering critiques of Joseph "Cardinal" Ratzinger next existed, and some even feign righteous indignation when others draw the exact same conclusions now about "Benedict XVI's" words and actions as they did for years and and years about "Cardinal" Ratzinger (and about the words and actions of Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II).

The bishops and priests of the Society of Saint Pius X, believing, evidently, that they can "convert" Ratzinger/Benedict or, at the very least, serve as a "counterweight" to the conciliar revolution by taking their place in the conciliar structures by means of being "regularized" by the currently reigning conciliar "pontiff," have also learned how to be silent in the midst of overt and blatant outrages committed against the honor and glory and majesty of God by the disciple of the "New Theology," Ratzinger/Benedict. (See two interesting posts on these developments at the anti-sedevacantist Tradition in Action website, The ‘Poor Pope Benedict’ Syndrome and Benedict defying God's wrath at the Wailing Wall.)

Ratzinger/Benedict, meanwhile, just goes about his business of institutionalizing the conciliar revolution and using his false "pontificate" as a sort of "workshop" to give a "papal" imprimatur, if you will, to the corpus of his writings over the decades. This is something that ultra-progressivist revolutionaries in the conciliar structures do not understand, believing in the illusion of the false "pope" as a "conservative" because he has "liberalized" the offerings of the modernized version of the Immemorial Mass of Tradition, disregarding the fact that he, Ratzinger/Benedict, is patiently and methodically preparing the way for the introduction of more and more novelties into that modernized version of the Traditional Mass (changing the Good Friday Prayer for the Jews, seeking to have some of the new prefaces used in Motu venues, incorporating the "saints" "canonized" by the conciliar "popes," having readings done in the "vernacular" without being read in Latin at all, not forbidding the use of altar girls or the reception of what purports to be Holy Communion in the hand, to name just a few).

As noted three days ago in Weak In Mind, Weakest Yet In The Faith, Ratzinger/Benedict has told the ultra-progressive revolutionaries, that is, the conciliar "bishops" who were livid with him for "lifting" the "excommunications" on the four bishops of the Society of Saint Pius X on Wednesday, January 21, 2009, the Feast of Saint Agnes, that his intention is to blunt criticism of the conciliar revolution from the Society of Saint Pius X just as such criticism has blunted (indeed, entirely muted) from the existing Motu communities by reforming "one-sided" positions:

So if the arduous task of working for faith, hope and love in the world is presently (and, in various ways, always) the Church's real priority, then part of this is also made up of acts of reconciliation, small and not so small. That the quiet gesture of extending a hand gave rise to a huge uproar, and thus became exactly the opposite of a gesture of reconciliation, is a fact which we must accept. But I ask now: Was it, and is it, truly wrong in this case to meet half-way the brother who 'has something against you' and to seek reconciliation? Should not civil society also try to forestall forms of extremism and to incorporate their eventual adherents - to the extent possible - in the great currents shaping social life, and thus avoid their being segregated, with all its consequences? Can it be completely mistaken to work to break down obstinacy and narrowness, and to make space for what is positive and retrievable for the whole? I myself saw, in the years after 1988, how the return of communities which had been separated from Rome changed their interior attitudes; I saw how returning to the bigger and broader Church enabled them to move beyond one-sided positions and broke down rigidity so that positive energies could emerge for the whole. Can we be totally indifferent about a community which has 491 priests, 215 seminarians, 6 seminaries, 88 schools, 2 university-level institutes, 117 religious brothers, 164 religious sisters and thousands of lay faithful? Should we casually let them drift farther from the Church? I think for example of the 491 priests. We cannot know how mixed their motives may be. All the same, I do not think that they would have chosen the priesthood if, alongside various distorted and unhealthy elements, they did not have a love for Christ and a desire to proclaim Him and, with Him, the living God. Can we simply exclude them, as representatives of a radical fringe, from our pursuit of reconciliation and unity? What would then become of them?

"Certainly, for some time now, and once again on this specific occasion, we have heard from some representatives of that community many unpleasant things - arrogance and presumptuousness, an obsession with one-sided positions, etc. Yet to tell the truth, I must add that I have also received a number of touching testimonials of gratitude which clearly showed an openness of heart. But should not the great Church also allow herself to be generous in the knowledge of her great breadth, in the knowledge of the promise made to her? Should not we, as good educators, also be capable of overlooking various faults and making every effort to open up broader vistas? And should we not admit that some unpleasant things have also emerged in Church circles? At times one gets the impression that our society needs to have at least one group to which no tolerance may be shown; which one can easily attack and hate. And should someone dare to approach them - in this case the Pope - he too loses any right to tolerance; he too can be treated hatefully, without misgiving or restraint. (LETTER ON REMISSION OF EXCOMMUNICATION LEFEBVRE BISHOP)

 

Any Catholic is very badly deceived if he believes, no less publicly asserts as being true, the absurd proposition that that Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict is a restorer of the Catholic Faith even though he, Ratzinger/Benedict, lacks the most rudimentary understanding of the First Commandment's direct and absolute prohibition against any esteem being paid to false religions, no less the public scandal he has caused to Catholics and non-Catholics alike by calling "mosques" as "sacred" places and "jewels" that stand out on the "face of the earth" and by agreeing to refrain from any making efforts at all to seek to convert those steeped in the false religion of Talmudic Judaism. To refuse to rise to the defense of the honor and majesty and glory of God, as so many priests and presbyters in the conciliar structures, including the Motu communities and, now, the Society of Saint Pius X, have done during the most recent "papal" outrages brings to mind once again these telling words of Pope Saint Leo the Great:

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 )

 

I. The "Workshop Against the Nature of Dogmatic Truth

Ratzinger/Benedict has used his false "pontificate" to give "papal" expression to his lifelong warfare against the nature of dogmatic truth, a warfare that has been documented on this site many times. As I am conscious of the fact that there might be a reader or two who is new to this site and who has not read those other articles (and may not know--or have the time--to look for them), I will simply provide one example of "Cardinal" Ratzinger's rejection of the nature of dogmatic truth before repeating "Benedict XVI's" "papal" reiteration of this rejection, followed by the Catholic Church's condemnation of Ratzinger/Benedict's logically absurd and blasphemous contention that the expression of dogmatic truth is conditioned by the historical circumstances which give rise to a particular formulation:

The text [of the document Instruction on the Theologian's Ecclesial Vocation] also presents the various types of bonds that rise from the different degrees of magisterial teaching. It affirms - perhaps for the first time with this clarity - that there are decisions of the magisterium that cannot be the last word on the matter as such, but are, in a substantial fixation of the problem, above all an expression of pastoral prudence, a kind of provisional disposition. The nucleus remains valid, but the particulars, which the circumstances of the times influenced, may need further correction.

In this regard, one may think of the declarations of Popes in the last century [19th century] about religious liberty, as well as the anti-Modernist decisions at the beginning of this century, above all, the decisions of the Biblical Commission of the time [on evolutionism]. As a cry of alarm in the face of hasty and superficial adaptations, they will remain fully justified. A personage such as Johann Baptist Metz said, for example, that the Church's anti-Modernist decisions render the great service of preserving her from falling into the liberal-bourgeois world. But in the details of the determinations they contain, they became obsolete after having fulfilled their pastoral mission at their proper time.  (Joseph Ratzinger, "Instruction on the Theologian's Ecclesial Vocation," published with the title "Rinnovato dialogo fra Magistero e Teologia," in L'Osservatore Romano, June 27, 1990, p. 6, cited at Card. Ratzinger: The teachings of the Popes against Modernism are obsolete)

It is precisely in this combination of continuity and discontinuity at different levels that the very nature of true reform consists. In this process of innovation in continuity we must learn to understand more practically than before that the Church's decisions on contingent matters - for example, certain practical forms of liberalism or a free interpretation of the Bible - should necessarily be contingent themselves, precisely because they refer to a specific reality that is changeable in itself. It was necessary to learn to recognize that in these decisions it is only the principles that express the permanent aspect, since they remain as an undercurrent, motivating decisions from within.

On the other hand, not so permanent are the practical forms that depend on the historical situation and are therefore subject to change. (Christmas greetings to the Members of the Roman Curia and Prelature, December 22, 2005.)

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.]

 

II. The "Workshop" Against Scholasticism and the Church's Dogmatic Teachings

Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI believes that the Scholasticism of Saint Thomas Aquinas has "corrupted" a "proper" reading of Sacred Scripture and of the Fathers of the Church, making "reconciliation" with Protestants and, quite particularly, the Orthodox, more "difficult" as a result. This means, of course, that the Fathers of the dogmatic councils and the popes who have relied upon Saint Thomas Aquinas and the Scholastic method were wrong to have done so. (Please see Ratzinger's War Against Catholicism.)

To this end, therefore, Ratzinger/Benedict has tried to "correct" the "corruption" of Scholasticism by using his "general audience" addresses to make Saint Paul the Apostle and various Fathers of the Church as "witnesses" in behalf of conciliarism (see Attempting to Coerce Perjury).

Ratzinger/Benedict has even tried to make Saint Augustine a witness in behalf of "religious liberty," which Saint Augustine, as Pope Pius VII noted in Post Tam Diuturnas, April 29, 1814, specifically condemned:

For when the liberty of all "religions" is indiscriminately asserted, by this very fact truth is confounded with error and the holy and immaculate Spouse of Christ, the Church, outside of which there can be no salvation, is set on a par with the sects of heretics and with Judaic perfidy itself. For when favour and patronage is promised even to the sects of heretics and their ministers, not only their persons, but also their very errors, are tolerated and fostered: a system of errors in which is contained that fatal and never sufficiently to be deplored HERESY which, as St. Augustine says (de Haeresibus, no.72), "asserts that all heretics proceed correctly and tell the truth: which is so absurd that it seems incredible to me."

III. The "Workshop in Behalf of False Ecumenism

Ratzinger/Benedict has tried to make Saint Paul a "witness" in behalf of a false ecumenism that the Apostle to the Gentiles specifically condemned in no uncertain terms:

For know you this and understand, that no fornicator, or unclean, or covetous person (which is a serving of idols), hath inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.

Let no man deceive you with vain words. For because of these things cometh the anger of God upon the children of unbelief. Be ye not therefore partakers with them. For you were heretofore darkness, but now light in the Lord. Walk then as children of the light. For the fruit of the light is in all goodness, and justice, and truth; Proving what is well pleasing to God:

And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them. For the things that are done by them in secret, it is a shame even to speak of. But all things that are reproved, are made manifest by the light; for all that is made manifest is light. Wherefore he saith: Rise thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead: and Christ shall enlighten thee. See therefore, brethren, how you walk circumspectly: not as unwise, But as wise: redeeming the time, because the days are evil. Wherefore become not unwise, but understanding what is the will of God. (Ephesians 5: 5-17.)

 

Joseph "Cardinal" Ratzinger wrote in Principles of Catholic Theology that the "unity" of the Church could not be effected by demanding the unconditional conversion of Protestants and the Orthodox to the Catholic Faith that would result in the destruction of their "structures" and a denial of their "history:" One will see in the passage below Ratzinger's belief that "distinctions" must be made between what is true "in reality" and what has been "claimed' to be "true" as a result of contingent circumstances. In other words, Protestants and the Orthodox cannot be "forced" to accept  the results various dogmatic councils and/or papal pronouncements that are said to be the "products" of historical circumstances that have now changed:

Against this background we can now weigh the possibilities that are open to Christian ecumenism. The maximum demands on which the search for unity must certainly founder are immediately clear. On the part of the West, the maximum demand would be that the East recognize the primacy of the bishop of Rome in the full scope of the definition of 1870 and in so doing submit in practice, to a primacy such as has been accepted by the Uniate churches. On the part of the East, the maximum demand would be that the West declare the 1870 doctrine of primacy erroneous and in so doing submit, in practice, to a primacy such as has been accepted with the removal of the Filioque from the Creed and including the Marian dogmas of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. As regards Protestantism, the maximum demand of the Catholic Church would be that the Protestant ecclesiological ministers be regarded as totally invalid and that Protestants be converted to Catholicism; the maximum demand of Protestants, on the other hand, would be that the Catholic Church accept, along with the unconditional acknowledgement of all Protestant ministries, the Protestant concept of ministry and their understanding of the Church and thus, in practice, renounce the apostolic and sacramental structure of the Church, which would mean, in practice, the conversion of Catholics to Protestantism and their acceptance of a multiplicity of distinct community structures as the historical form of the Church. While the first three maximum demands are today rather unanimously rejected by Christian consciousness, the fourth exercises a kind of fascination for it – as it were, a certain conclusiveness that makes it appear to be the real solution to the problem. This is all the more true since there is joined to it the expectation that a Parliament of Churches, a "truly ecumenical council’, could then harmonize this pluralism and promote a Christian unity of action.  That no real union would result from this, but that its very impossibility would become a single common dogma, should convince anyone who examines the suggestion closely that such a way would not bring Church unity but only a final renunciation of it.  As a result, none of the maximum solutions offers any real hope of unity.

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As a result, none of the maximum solutions offers any real hope of unity. In any event, church unity is not a political problem that can be solved by means of compromise or the weighing of what is regarded as possible or acceptable. What is at stake here is unity of belief, that is, the question of truth, which cannot be the object of political maneuvering. As long as and to the extent that the maximum solution must be regarded as a requirement of truth itself, just so long and to just that extent there will be no other recourse than simply to strive to convert one's partner in the debate. In other words, the claim of truth ought not to be raised where there is not a compelling and indisputable reason for doing so. We may not interpret as truth that which is, in reality, a historical development with a more or less close relationship to truth. Whenever, then, the weight of truth and its incontrovertibility are involved, they must be met by a corresponding sincerity that avoids laying claim to truth prematurely and is ready to search for the inner fullness of truth with the eyes of love. (Joseph Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology, pp. 197-198)

 

This statement of utter apostasy was "ratified" by Ratzinger as "Benedict XVI" when he made the following statement to an "ecumenical" gathering in Cologne, Germany, on Friday, August 19, 2005:

Benedict XVI: "We all know there are numerous models of unity and you know that the Catholic Church also has as her goal the full visible unity of the disciples of Christ, as defined by the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council in its various Documents (cf. Lumen Gentium, nn. 8, 13; Unitatis Redintegratio, nn. 2, 4, etc.). This unity, we are convinced, indeed subsists in the Catholic Church, without the possibility of ever being lost (cf. Unitatis Redintegratio, n. 4); the Church in fact has not totally disappeared from the world.

On the other hand, this unity does not mean what could be called ecumenism of the return:  that is, to deny and to reject one's own faith history. Absolutely not!

It does not mean uniformity in all expressions of theology and spirituality, in liturgical forms and in discipline. Unity in multiplicity, and multiplicity in unity:  in my Homily for the Solemnity of Sts Peter and Paul on 29 June last, I insisted that full unity and true catholicity in the original sense of the word go together. As a necessary condition for the achievement of this coexistence, the commitment to unity must be constantly purified and renewed; it must constantly grow and mature. (Ecumenical meeting at the Archbishopric of Cologne English)

 

It matters not to Ratzinger/Benedict that his belief in the new ecclesiology's "partial communion" of non-Catholics with the Catholic Church has been condemned (see His Excellency Bishop Donald Sanborn in The New Ecclesiology: An Overview and The New Ecclesiology: Documentation and Ratzinger's Dominus Jesus: A Critical Analysis and Communion: Ratzinger's Ecumenical One-World Church) or that Pope Pius IX, Iam Vos Omnes, September 13, 1868, specifically called for the return of Protestants to the Catholic Church and that Popes Leo XIII and Pius XI called for the return of Protestants and the Orthodox to the true Church in, respectively, Praeclara Gratulationis Publicae, June 20, 1894, and Mortalium Animos, January 6, 1928

No, what matters to Ratzinger/Benedict is to deconstruct the nature of dogmatic truth so as to find what is "really" true in dogmatic pronouncements from what is an "historical development" so that "impediments" to "unity" may be overcome, which is why it is so necessary to understand Ratzinger/Benedict's warfare against the nature of dogmatic truth, which is really a warfare against the very nature of God as He has revealed Himself to be through His Catholic Church, in order to understand the entirety of his Modernist agenda.

Pope Pius XI specifically rejected "distinctions" between "fundamental" and "non-fundamental" truths as a condition of effecting the reunion of non-Catholics with the true Church:

We know not; that unity can only arise from one teaching authority, one law of belief and one faith of Christians. But We do know that from this it is an easy step to the neglect of religion or indifferentism and to modernism, as they call it. Those, who are unhappily infected with these errors, hold that dogmatic truth is not absolute but relative, that is, it agrees with the varying necessities of time and place and with the varying tendencies of the mind, since it is not contained in immutable revelation, but is capable of being accommodated to human life. Besides this, in connection with things which must be believed, it is nowise licit to use that distinction which some have seen fit to introduce between those articles of faith which are fundamental and those which are not fundamental, as they say, as if the former are to be accepted by all, while the latter may be left to the free assent of the faithful: for the supernatural virtue of faith has a formal cause, namely the authority of God revealing, and this is patient of no such distinction. For this reason it is that all who are truly Christ's believe, for example, the Conception of the Mother of God without stain of original sin with the same faith as they believe the mystery of the August Trinity, and the Incarnation of our Lord just as they do the infallible teaching authority of the Roman Pontiff, according to the sense in which it was defined by the Ecumenical Council of the Vatican. Are these truths not equally certain, or not equally to be believed, because the Church has solemnly sanctioned and defined them, some in one age and some in another, even in those times immediately before our own? Has not God revealed them all? For the teaching authority of the Church, which in the divine wisdom was constituted on earth in order that revealed doctrines might remain intact for ever, and that they might be brought with ease and security to the knowledge of men, and which is daily exercised through the Roman Pontiff and the Bishops who are in communion with him, has also the office of defining, when it sees fit, any truth with solemn rites and decrees, whenever this is necessary either to oppose the errors or the attacks of heretics, or more clearly and in greater detail to stamp the minds of the faithful with the articles of sacred doctrine which have been explained. But in the use of this extraordinary teaching authority no newly invented matter is brought in, nor is anything new added to the number of those truths which are at least implicitly contained in the deposit of Revelation, divinely handed down to the Church: only those which are made clear which perhaps may still seem obscure to some, or that which some have previously called into question is declared to be of faith. (Pope Pius XI, Mortalium Animos, January 6, 1928.)

 

It is because of such pronouncements that Ratzinger/Benedict, like Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II, must rely almost entirely, save for some gratuitous references in "cf" (confer) footnotes now and again, upon the documents of the counterfeit church of conciliarism and the statements of the conciliar "pontiffs" to justify their apostasies, including the "new ecclesiology" that can be used to place a Protestant syncretist, Roger Schutz, in "Heaven" even though he was a lifelong Protestant. And it is the new ecclesiology of effecting "unity" by means of "spiritual reconciliation," which is a variation on the theme of "spiritual ecumenism" of the late Abbe Paul Couturier, a direct disciple of the late Father Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J., who believed that God Himself was in "the process of becoming" and that our "understanding" of Him must ever evolve as He "evolves," that Ratzinger/Benedict himself has directly endorsed on numerous occasions, including explicitly in his August 19, 2005, address to "ecumenical" leaders in Cologne, Germany, that is the basis of his, Ratzinger/Benedict's efforts to forge "unity" between the heretical and schismatic rump "church" in Red China with the underground church of suffering Catholics there.

IV. Red China: "Workshop" for the New Ecclesiology

Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI's Letter to Bishops, Priests, Consecrated Persons and Lay Faithful of Red China, June 30, 2007, is using the situation facing Catholics in the "People's Republic of China" (hereinafter referred to as Red China) the most elaborate "workshop" of all as means of making the "new ecclesiology" (bringing "full communion" out of "partial communion") a "workable" reality for relations with the Orthodox (as well as those Anglicans who might be interested in "converting" to what they think, albeit falsely, is the Catholic Church without having to "give up" their own structures and "traditions," each of which was born as a result of a rebellion against Papal Primacy by King Henry VIII in 1534 and then by Henry's daughter by Anne Boleyn, in 1558 and thereafter). There is only one little problem with the grand schema of this "workshop" in the new ecclesiology: many Catholics in Red China are confused about how it is supposed to work, thus the "need" for the Compendium to make Ratzinger/Benedict's Letter more "comprehensible."

Ratzinger/Benedict's lifelong rejection of Scholasticism leads to all manner of internal contradictions in his writing that he does recognize. The New Oxford Review, whose editors reject sedevacantism, noted Ratzinger/Benedict's penchant in this regard, as did the anti-sedevacantist Tradition in Action site:

In Cardinal Ratzinger’s Values in a Time of Upheaval, he muddies up his phrase [the dictatorship of relativism]; indeed, he reverses his position. He says, “The modem concept of democracy seems indissolubly linked to that of relativism.” Well, well! But then he backtracks: “This means that a basic element of truth, namely, ethical truth, is indispensable to democracy.” But then he backtracks again: “We do not want the State to impose one particular idea of the good on us. ... Truth is controversial, and the attempt to impose on all persons what one part of the citizenry holds to be true looks like enslavement of people’s consciences.” And he says this on the same page!

Yes, we know: Some of our readers feel that the Pope is above all criticism; he cannot make a mistake, even in his previous writings. But what he has written here is contradictory and inscrutable.

Ratzinger says, “The relativists ...[are] flirting with totalitarianism even though they seek to establish the primacy of freedom ...” Huh?

So, what is he saying? “The State is not itself the source of truth and morality.... Accordingly, the State must receive from outside itself the essential measure of knowledge and truth with regard to that which is good. ... The Church remains outside’ the State. ... The Church must exert itself with all its vigor so that in it there may shine forth moral truth ...”

Then he says, “Conscience is the highest norm [italics in original] and ... and one must follow it even against authority. When authority - in this case the Church’s Magisterium - speaks on matters of morality, it supplies the material that helps the conscience form its own judgment, but ultimately it is only conscience that has the last word.” (A Contradictory Definition of Relativism.)

Cardinal Ratzinger's belief that the conscience can disobey the objective Moral teaching of the Church clearly admits, as did Descartes, that the soul comes first, and God only afterwards.

The error is now within the Church. It is supported even by the highest Catholic authorities. Their current of thought, Progressivism, is nothing more than the exaltation of the self. Its most malicious ingredient is Immanentism, the error that the soul contains a divine immanence: "The principle of immanence essentially states that the first thing we know is ourselves and that all our knowledge of external reality is judged in light of it" (8). Because self has been placed first as "the last word," at the highest level of the Church, this should be a clarion call to Catholics to pray to Our Lady of Good Success for all who have succumbed to Progressivism, and also for all who are trying to maintain their Catholic faith in the increasingly more dominant Progressivist heresy. (Cardinal Ratzinger's Subjectivism)

 

Ratzinger/Benedict's writings also contain multiple contradictions of Catholic truth and of the most basic elements of logic as they cleave to condemned propositions of Modernism and the faulty non-Scholastic "reasoning" contained in the condemned methods of the "new theology."

Ratzinger/Benedict's Letter of June 30, 2007, contains the following basic contradictions, some of which conflict with Catholic truth and logic, others of which conflict with each other in the body of his Letter.

IV. 1.  A conflict with Faith and with truth on the merely natural level:

History remains indecipherable, incomprehensible. No one can read it. (Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, Letter to Bishops, Priests, Consecrated Persons and Lay Faithful of Red China, June 30, 2007.)

 

If this expression of Kantian immanentism is correct, then true pope after true pope who referred to the lessons of history dared to venture into the realm of the "indecipherable," the "incomprehensible." How can one claim to learn any lessons from history when it is alleged to be "indecipherable" and "incomprehensible"?

For Ratzinger/Benedict to be correct, therefore, Pope Gregory XVI, writing in Mirari Vos, August 15, 1832, had to be wrong when he taught us the lessons of history about the effects produced by "liberty of conscience" that is one of the prime constituent elements of Modernism and thus of the lords of the counterfeit church of conciliarism:

This shameful font of indifferentism gives rise to that absurd and erroneous proposition which claims that liberty of conscience must be maintained for everyone. It spreads ruin in sacred and civil affairs, though some repeat over and over again with the greatest impudence that some advantage accrues to religion from it. "But the death of the soul is worse than freedom of error," as Augustine was wont to say. When all restraints are removed by which men are kept on the narrow path of truth, their nature, which is already inclined to evil, propels them to ruin. Then truly "the bottomless pit" is open from which John saw smoke ascending which obscured the sun, and out of which locusts flew forth to devastate the earth. Thence comes transformation of minds, corruption of youths, contempt of sacred things and holy laws -- in other words, a pestilence more deadly to the state than any other. Experience shows, even from earliest times, that cities renowned for wealth, dominion, and glory perished as a result of this single evil, namely immoderate freedom of opinion, license of free speech, and desire for novelty.

 

Pope Pius IX himself must have been wrong when he used history in Quanta Cura, December 8, 1862, to condemn the falsehood that is "religious liberty:"

For you well know, venerable brethren, that at this time men are found not a few who, applying to civil society the impious and absurd principle of "naturalism," as they call it, dare to teach that "the best constitution of public society and (also) civil progress altogether require that human society be conducted and governed without regard being had to religion any more than if it did not exist; or, at least, without any distinction being made between the true religion and false ones." And, against the doctrine of Scripture, of the Church, and of the Holy Fathers, they do not hesitate to assert that "that is the best condition of civil society, in which no duty is recognized, as attached to the civil power, of restraining by enacted penalties, offenders against the Catholic religion, except so far as public peace may require." From which totally false idea of social government they do not fear to foster that erroneous opinion, most fatal in its effects on the Catholic Church and the salvation of souls, called by Our Predecessor, Gregory XVI, an "insanity," viz., that "liberty of conscience and worship is each man's personal right, which ought to be legally proclaimed and asserted in every rightly constituted society; and that a right resides in the citizens to an absolute liberty, which should be restrained by no authority whether ecclesiastical or civil, whereby they may be able openly and publicly to manifest and declare any of their ideas whatever, either by word of mouth, by the press, or in any other way." But, while they rashly affirm this, they do not think and consider that they are preaching "liberty of perdition;" and that "if human arguments are always allowed free room for discussion, there will never be wanting men who will dare to resist truth, and to trust in the flowing speech of human wisdom; whereas we know, from the very teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ, how carefully Christian faith and wisdom should avoid this most injurious babbling."

And, since where religion has been removed from civil society, and the doctrine and authority of divine revelation repudiated, the genuine notion itself of justice and human right is darkened and lost, and the place of true justice and legitimate right is supplied by material force, thence it appears why it is that some, utterly neglecting and disregarding the surest principles of sound reason, dare to proclaim that "the people's will, manifested by what is called public opinion or in some other way, constitutes a supreme law, free from all divine and human control; and that in the political order accomplished facts, from the very circumstance that they are accomplished, have the force of right." But who, does not see and clearly perceive that human society, when set loose from the bonds of religion and true justice, can have, in truth, no other end than the purpose of obtaining and amassing wealth, and that (society under such circumstances) follows no other law in its actions, except the unchastened desire of ministering to its own pleasure and interests? For this reason, men of the kind pursue with bitter hatred the Religious Orders, although these have deserved extremely well of Christendom, civilization and literature, and cry out that the same have no legitimate reason for being permitted to exist; and thus (these evil men) applaud the calumnies of heretics. For, as Pius VI, Our Predecessor, taught most wisely, "the abolition of regulars is injurious to that state in which the Evangelical counsels are openly professed; it is injurious to a method of life praised in the Church as agreeable to Apostolic doctrine; it is injurious to the illustrious founders, themselves, whom we venerate on our altars, who did not establish these societies but by God's inspiration." And (these wretches) also impiously declare that permission should be refused to citizens and to the Church, "whereby they may openly give alms for the sake of Christian charity"; and that the law should be abrogated "whereby on certain fixed days servile works are prohibited because of God's worship;" and on the most deceptive pretext that the said permission and law are opposed to the principles of the best public economy. Moreover, not content with removing religion from public society, they wish to banish it also from private families. For, teaching and professing the most fatal error of "Communism and Socialism," they assert that "domestic society or the family derives the whole principle of its existence from the civil law alone; and, consequently, that on civil law alone depend all rights of parents over their children, and especially that of providing for education." By which impious opinions and machinations these most deceitful men chiefly aim at this result, viz., that the salutary teaching and influence of the Catholic Church may be entirely banished from the instruction and education of youth, and that the tender and flexible minds of young men may be infected and depraved by every most pernicious error and vice. For all who have endeavored to throw into confusion things both sacred and secular, and to subvert the right order of society, and to abolish all rights, human and divine, have always (as we above hinted) devoted all their nefarious schemes, devices and efforts, to deceiving and depraving incautious youth and have placed all their hope in its corruption. For which reason they never cease by every wicked method to assail the clergy, both secular and regular, from whom (as the surest monuments of history conspicuously attest), so many great advantages have abundantly flowed to Christianity, civilization and literature, and to proclaim that "the clergy, as being hostile to the true and beneficial advance of science and civilization, should be removed from the whole charge and duty of instructing and educating youth."

 

Moreover, if history is "indecipherable" and "incomprehensible," as Ratzinger/Benedict contended in his Letter to Bishops, Priests, Consecrated Persons and Lay Faithful of Red China of June 30, 2007, what business did have a week later trying to "teach" us about alleged "missed opportunities" to prevent or heal schisms in the past?

Looking back over the past, to the divisions which in the course of the centuries have rent the Body of Christ, one continually has the impression that, at critical moments when divisions were coming about, not enough was done by the Church's leaders to maintain or regain reconciliation and unity. One has the impression that omissions on the part of the Church have had their share of blame for the fact that these divisions were able to harden. This glance at the past imposes an obligation on us today: to make every effort to unable for all those who truly desire unity to remain in that unity or to attain it anew. I think of a sentence in the Second Letter to the Corinthians, where Paul writes: "Our mouth is open to you, Corinthians; our heart is wide. You are not restricted by us, but you are restricted in your own affections. In return … widen your hearts also!" (2 Corinthians 6:11-13). Paul was certainly speaking in another context, but his exhortation can and must touch us too, precisely on this subject. Let us generously open our hearts and make room for everything that the faith itself allows. (Explanatory Letter on "Summorum Pontificum")

 

If history is "indecipherable" and "incomprehensible, as Ratzinger/Benedict contended in his Letter to Bishops, Priests, Consecrated Persons and Lay Faithful of Red China on June 30, 2007, then how was it possible on July 7, 2007, to "decipher" that "not enough was done by the Church's leaders to maintain or regain reconciliation and unity?"

Remember, Ratzinger/Benedict wrote the following in his Letter to Bishops, Priests, Consecrated Persons and Lay Faithful of Red China:

 

History remains indecipherable, incomprehensible. No one can read it. (Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, Letter to Bishops, Priests, Consecrated Persons and Lay Faithful of Red China, June 30, 2007.)

 

If "no one can read" history, then how can Ratzinger/Benedict claim to know that "not enough was done by the Church's leaders to maintain or regain reconciliation and unity"?

Obviously, the contention made on June 30, 2007, is completely contradictory of his statement seven days later. Ratzinger/Benedict's statement about the "incomprehensible" and "indecipherable" nature of a history that "no one can read" also makes it impossible for him to "know" the alleged "historical circumstances" that he contends, contrary to right reason and Catholic dogma, that make specific dogma formulae and papal pronouncement "obsolete after having fulfilled their pastoral mission at their proper time."

Ratzinger/Benedict, a disciple of the late Father Hans Urs von Balthasar, an Hegelian who believed in the heresy of "universal salvation" that contradicts the plain words of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, daring to impute "ignorance" to Our Lord on the matter of the time of His Second Coming to judge the living and the dead on the Last Day (see Father Regis Scanlon, O.F.M., Cap., The Inflated Reputation of Hans Urs von Balthasar), is as blithe to his contradictions as he blithe to the fact that errors can in no way serve as the foundation of personal sanctity or of social order, as an article in Si, Si, No, No made clear:

Up to the very end of his conference, Card. Ratzinger resolutely continues on this road of agnosticism and now logically comes to the most disastrous of conclusions. He writes:

In conclusion, as we contemplate our present-day religious situation, of which I have tried to throw some light on some of its elements, we may well marvel at the fact that, after all, people still continue believing in a Christian manner, not only according to Hick's, Knitter's as well as others' substitute ways or forms, but also according to that full and joyous Faith found in the New Testament of the Church of all time.

 

So, there it is: For Card. Ratzinger, "Hick, Knitter, and others" who deny the divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ, His Church, His sacraments, and, in short, all of Christianity, continue "despite everything" "believing in a Christian manner," even though they do so using "substitute forms of belief"! Here, the Cardinal Prefect of the Congregation for the Faith leaves us wondering indeed, just what it is he means by "believing in a Christian manner."

Moreover, once the "preambula fidei" have been eliminated, that "full and joyous Faith of the Church of all time" which seems [for Card. Ratzinger] to be no different from modern-day apostasies other than by its style and total character, is utterly lacking in any rational credibility in comparison with and in relation to what he refers to as "substitute ways or forms" of faith. "How is it," Card. Ratzinger wonders, "in fact, that the Faith [the one of all time] still has a chance of success?" Answer:

I would say that it is because it finds a correspondence in man's nature…..There is, in man, an insatiable desire for the infinite. None of the answers we have sought is sufficient [but must we take his own word for it, or must we go through the exercise of experiencing all religions?]. God alone [but Whom, according to Card. Ratzinger, human reason cannot prove to be truly God], Who made Himself finite in order to shatter the bonds of our own finitude and bring us to the dimension of His infinity [...and not to redeem us from the slavery of sin?] is able to meet all the needs of our human existence.

According to this, it is therefore not objective motives based on history and reason, and thus the truth of Christianity, but only a subjective appreciation which brings us to "see" that it [Christianity] is able to satisfy the profound needs of human nature and which would explain the "success" [modernists would say the "vitality"] of the "faith" ["of all time" or in its "substitute forms," it is of but little importance]. Such, however, is not at all Catholic doctrine: this is simply modernist apologetics (cf. Pope St. Pius X, Pascendi), based on their affirmed impossibility of grasping metaphysical knowledge (or agnosticism or skepticism), which Card. Ratzinger seemed to want to shun in the first part of his address.

Now we are in a position to better understand why Card. Ratzinger has such a wide-open concept of "theology" and of "faith" that he includes everything: theology as well as heresies, faith and apostasy. On that road of denial of the human reason's ability of attaining metaphysical knowledge, a road which he continues to follow, he lacks the "means of discerning the difference between faith and non-faith" (R. Amerio, op. cit., p.340) and, consequently, theology from pseudo-theology, truth from heresy:

All theologies are nullified, because all are regarded as equivalent; the heart or kernel of religion is located in feelings or experiences, as the Modernists held at the beginning of this century (Amerio, op. cit., p.542).

 

We cannot see how this position of Card. Ratzinger can escape that solemn condemnation proclaimed at Vatican I: "If anyone says...that men must be brought to the Faith solely by their own personal interior experience...let him be anathema" (DB 1812). (Cardinal Ratzinger)

 

Actually, there is an explanation for Ratzinger's statement on June 30, 2007, that history is "indecipherable" and his exercise in deciphering history just seven days later by daring to state that true popes did not "do enough" "to maintain or regain reconciliation and unity." Ratzinger/Benedict does and says those things that he believes he "must" do or say to accomplish a given end. As a pure subjectivist, Ratzinger/Benedict simply does and says what he wants to do if he believes he can "reconcile" his words and actions with "elements" of the Catholic Faith by means of his "hermeneutic of continuity and discontinuity."

Calling a mosque a "jewel" or "sacred" place? Well, he just has to do that to foster inter-religious dialogue and so as not to offend those who could be "instruments of peace" in the Middle East if only they could accept his appeal to them on the grounds of "reason."

Praying as a Jew at the Wailing Wall and refusing to invoke the Holy Name of the Divine Redeemer, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ? Well, this is "justifiable" by making advertence to the crimes committed against Jews (and others) by the Third Reich. Ratzinger/Benedict himself has told us that "things" have changed as a result of a "look" at that which he called on June 30, 2007, "indecipherable:" history!

In particular, before the recent crimes of the Nazi regime and, in general, with a retrospective look at a long and difficult history, it was necessary to evaluate and define in a new way the relationship between the Church and the faith of Israel. (Christmas greetings to the Members of the Roman Curia and Prelature, December 22, 2005.)

 

It was expedient for Ratzinger/Benedict to appeal to the "indecipherability" of history on June 30, 2007, in order to overlook--or "purify the memory" about-- the crimes committed by the Red Chinese government and its Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association against the persecuted Catholics of the underground Church in Red China. Ratzinger/Benedict wants to forge a "unity" between the schismatic and heretical rump church that is a tool of the Communist Red Chinese government and the underground Church in China at the expense of truth, willing to jettison a complete adherence to principles of Faith and any discussion at all of Pope Pius XII's condemnation of the actions of the renegade bishops in Red China in Ad Sinarum Gentem, October 7, 1954, and Ad Apostolorum Principis, June 29, 1958, and Pope Pius XII's plea for prayers for the Church in Red China, Meminisse Iuvat, June 14, 1958, none of which were referenced in Ratzinger/Benedict's Letter to Bishops, Priests, Consecrated Persons and Lay Faithful of Red China, of June 30, 2007. Indeed, there are no references at all in any of that letter's fifty-six footnotes to any "preconciliar" document. Talk about "purification of memory."

It was also expedient for Ratzinger/Benedict to appeal his own understanding of history, that which had termed "indecipherable" ("who can read it") on June 30, 2007, in his Explanatory Letter on "Summorum Pontificum" on July 7, 2007, as doing so made it appear to conciliar "bishops" opposed to any "liberation" of the modernized version of the Immemorial Mass of Tradition that was promulgated by Angelo Roncalli/John XXIII in 1961 and 1962 that he, Ratzinger/Benedict, wanted to prove himself better in the "eyes of history," shall we say, than Pope Leo IX, who did not "do enough" to prevent the Greek Schism in 1054, and better than Pope Leo X, who excommunicated the hideous drunkard named Martin Luther in the Papal Bull Exsurge Domini, June 15, 1520, and better than Pope Saint Pius V, who excommunicated the bloodthirsty Queen Elizabeth I in Regnans in Excelsis, March 5, 1570. Ratzinger/Benedict believes his own understanding of dogmatic truth and of a "reconciled diversity" might have "saved the day" in the past, which is why it was necessary to make "reference" in his Explanatory Letter on "Summorum Pontificum" to a word that he called indecipherable in his Letter to Bishops, Priests, Consecrated Persons and Lay Faithful of Red China.

 

Ratzinger/Benedict, of course, is not above rank deconstruction his own "history," which was on display in his Explanatory Letter on "Summorum Pontificum" when he claimed the following:

There is no contradiction between the two editions of the Roman Missal. In the history of the liturgy there is growth and progress, but no rupture. What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too, and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful. It behooves all of us to preserve the riches which have developed in the Church's faith and prayer, and to give them their proper place. Needless to say, in order to experience full communion, the priests of the communities adhering to the former usage cannot, as a matter of principle, exclude celebrating according to the new books. The total exclusion of the new rite would not in fact be consistent with the recognition of its value and holiness (Explanatory Letter on "Summorum Pontificum".)

 

This is, of course, the exact opposite of what Ratzinger contended in his preface to the French language edition of the late Monsignor Klaus Gamber's The Reform of the Roman Liturgy, in which Gamber wrote of the "destruction of the Roman Rite," and in his own memoirs, Milestones:

What happened after the Council was something else entirely: in the place of liturgy as the fruit of development came fabricated liturgy. We abandoned the organic, living process of growth and development over centuries, and replaced it--as in a manufacturing process--with a fabrication, a banal on-the-spot product. Gamber, with the vigilance of a true prophet and the courage of a true witness, oppose this falsification, and thanks to his incredibly rich knowledge, indefatigably taught us about the living fullness of a true liturgy. As a man who knew and loved history, he showed us the multiple forms and paths of liturgical development; as a man who looked at history form the inside, he saw in this development and its fruit the intangible reflection of the eternal liturgy, that which is not the object of our action but which can continue marvelously to mature and blossom if we unite ourselves intimately with its mystery. (Joseph Ratzinger, Preface to the French language edition of Monsignor Klaus Gamber's The Reform of the Roman Liturgy.)

The prohibition of the missal that was now decreed, a missal that had known continuous growth over the centuries, starting with the sacramentaries of the ancient Church, introduced a breach into the history of the liturgy whose consequences could only be tragic. It was reasonable and right of the Council to order a revision of the missal such as had often taken place before and which this time had to be more thorough than before, above all because of the introduction of the vernacular.

But more than this now happened: the old building was demolished, and another was built, to be sure largely using materials from the previous one and even using the old building plans. There is no doubt that this new missal in many respects brought with it a real improvement and enrichment; but setting it as a new construction over against what had grown historically, forbidding the results of this historical growth. thereby makes the liturgy appear to be no longer living development but the produce of erudite work and juridical authority; this has caused an enormous harm. For then the impress had to emerge that liturgy is something "made", not something given in advance but something lying without our own power of decision. (Joseph Ratzinger, Milestones.)

 

One will also note that Ratzinger/Benedict wrote in his Explanatory Letter on "Summorum Pontificum" that the 1962 Missal "was never judicially abrogated" even though he had written in Milestones the exact opposite:

The prohibition of the missal that was now decreed, a missal that had known continuous growth over the centuries, starting with the sacramentaries of the ancient Church, introduced a breach into the history of the liturgy whose consequences could only be tragic

 

Dizzying? To quote a governor of Alaska who specializes in her own brand of illogic and contradiction, "You betcha."

A final point needs to be noted before moving on to discuss Ratzinger/Benedict's desire to "forge" a "spiritual reconciliation" in Red China that concedes authority to the Communist authorities there that Pope Pius VI refused to accord to the "Constitutional Church" of the revolutionary First Republic of France and makes no direct mention at all of the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association's support for the Communist government's "population control" programs, including mandatory sterilizations and the policy of one-child-per-family (as well as the supposedly "former" policy of forced abortions in some regions of China).

If history is so "indecipherable" and so "incomprehensible" that no one "can read it," then how is Ratzinger/Benedict so very certain that Bishop Richard Williamson of the Society of Saint Pius X, which has now learned how to mirror the silence of the Society of Saint John Mary Vianney in Campos, Brazil, and the other "Motu" communities in the face of Ratzinger/Benedict's Mortal Sins, objectively speaking, committed against the First Commandment throughout his false "pontificate," including his recently concluded visit to Jordan and Israel, has reached erroneous conclusions about the nature and extent of the crimes committed by the agents of the Third Reich upon Jews and others?

For Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, you see, "history" is, like the Faith itself, whatever it is he wants to make of it in light of the "needs" of the moment and/or the "historical circumstances" in which "modern man" finds himself. Such a view of the Faith and of the world is contrary to right reason and condemned dogmatically by the authority of the Catholic Church:

God cannot deny himself, nor can truth ever be in opposition to truth.

The appearance of this kind of specious contradiction is chiefly due to the fact that either:

the dogmas of faith are not understood and explained in accordance with the mind of the church, or

unsound views are mistaken for the conclusions of reason.

Therefore we define that every assertion contrary to the truth of enlightened faith is totally false. (Vatican Council, Session III, Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith, Chapter 4, On Faith and Reason, April 24, 1870. SESSION 3 : 24 April 1870.)

 

It is upon the false, gratuitous assertion that history is "indecipherable, incomprehensible," a proposition that, as noted above most extensively, Ratzinger/Benedict has contradicted himself, sometimes in the most concrete of terms (see Williamson, Bishop Richard), upon which the entirety of Ratzinger/Benedict's Letter to Bishops, Priests, Consecrated Persons and Lay Faithful of Red China is founded, which is why, after having examined the falsity of this assertion, one can make short work of the letter and the recently issued Compendium that is designed to "clarify" points made in 2007 that still have many Chinese Catholics in Red China of Americans of Chinese ancestry in the United States of America scratching their hands in utter mystification at how something so simple, the evil of a Communist effort to control the life of the Catholic Church, can be made so complex.

IV. 2: "Reconciliation" At the Price of Truth

One of the essential constituent elements of conciliarism's "new ecclesiology" of "partial" and "full communion" is that recognition of and adherence to a true and legitimate Successor of Saint Peter is not essential for salvation. If conciliarists such as Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI believed that recognition of and adherence to a true and legitimate Successor of Saint is indeed essential for salvation, you see, they would be seeking with urgency the unconditional conversion of all non-Catholics to the true Church, outside of which there is no salvation and without which there can be no true social order.

As noted above, Ratzinger/Benedict specifically rejects what he refers to disparagingly as "the ecumenism of the return."

Ratzinger/Benedict has said that a Jewish reading of the Bible is a "possible" one, meaning that God has revealed Himself so obscurely as to make it difficult for those to deny the Sacred Divinity of His Co-Equal and Co-Eternal Son made Flesh in Our Lady's Virginal and Immaculate Womb by the power of God the Holy Ghost to recognize that everything in the Old Testament does indeed point unequivocally to Christ the King as Our Divine Redeemer.

Ratzinger/Benedict has called Mount Hiei in Japan, where the Tendei sect of Buddhism established itself, as "sacred." He has not sought the conversion of Buddhists. Indeed, a symbol of Buddhism (along with symbols of Judaism, Mohammedanism, Jainism and Hinduism) was presented to him on Thursday, April 17, 2008, at the John Paul II Cultural Center in Washington, District of Columbia, and he received it with great admiration and joy.

All of this means that Ratzinger/Benedict does not believe that anyone in these non-Catholic religions is in danger of losing their immortal souls for all eternity, which is, as I have noted before, a "back door" way of propagandizing in behalf of his mentor Von Balthasar's heresy of "universal salvation.

Indeed, the man who still serves as the "preacher" to the "papal household," Father Raniero Cantalamessa, O.F.M., Cap., said the following on Good Friday in 2002 in the Basilica of Saint Peter in the presence of then governing conciliar "pontiff," Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II, and, most likely, in the presence of the then Joseph "Cardinal" Ratzinger (if reasons of health did not preclude him from attending; I saw right behind "Cardinal" Ratzinger at the Novus Ordo Easter Vigil service in the Basilica of Saint Peter on Holy Saturday in 2005):

“It is more important that men and women become holy,” Cantalamessa said, standing in the center of a magnificent basilica erected to celebrate the earthly might of Catholicism and the papacy, “than that they know the name of the one Savior.” (National Catholic Reporter)

 

Men and women cannot, however, become holy unless they know the Name of the one Saviour and adhere to everything he has entrusted exclusively to the Catholic Church and unless they submit to everything decreed by a true and legitimate Successor of Saint Peter, who, of course, can never do or say things that put the Church's perennial and immutable teaching in doubt or cast upon that teaching an interpretation that makes that teaching "obsolete" in light of the supposed "impossibility"of the human being's ability to know and to express the fullness of all truth with exactitude given the changing historical circumstances in which men find themselves. 

Ratzinger/Benedict makes it appear in his Letter to Bishops, Priests, Consecrated Persons and Lay Faithful of Red China that the "particular" churches in China are indeed united to the Roman Pontiff in the person of himself., which, he states, most correctly, is indeed a necessary element of the Catholic Faith, a necessity that he, of course, contradicts and vitiates later in his letter. However, this is not so. No such unity in Red China exists between the rump Church and the Catholic Church.

Quite specifically, many of the rump bishops in the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association are not in "communion" with the man who believes himself to be, albeit falsely, the Successor of Saint Peter, and many of these same bishops defect from the Catholic Faith in matters concerning the Fifth, Sixth and Ninth Commandments, a subject never raised directly by Ratzinger/Benedict in his June 30, 2007, letter, placing these bishops outside out of the Catholic Church (along, of course, with Ratzinger/Benedict himself because of his own multiple defections from the Faith long before his "election"on Tuesday, April 19, 2005).

Ratzinger/Benedict referred obliquely to these matters in the section of his letter that dealt with the situation facing the family in China:

The above-mentioned values form part of the relevant Chinese cultural context, but also in your land there is no lack of forces that influence the family negatively in various ways. Therefore the Church which is in China, aware that the good of society and her own good are profoundly linked to the good of the family, must have a keener and more urgent sense of her mission to proclaim to all people God's plan for marriage and the family, ensuring the full vitality of each

 

No lack of "forces that influence the family negatively in various ways"? Those forces are called Communism. And members of the true Church in Red China, the underground Church, have denounced Communism and its anti-family policies, which are state-sponsored and monitored, admitting regional variations in the enforcement of those policies, and have been persecuted mercilessly and relentlessly as a result. Referring to no "lack of forces that influence the family negatively" is somewhat akin to "Monsignor" Pietro Parolin saying that the conciliar Vatican has "disagreements" with the administration on Barack Hussein Obama on "bioethical matters." Such euphemisms are worthy of George Orwell's 1984 and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. (See Respect Those Who Break the First Commandment? Respect Those Who Break the Fifth Commandment.)

Union with a true and legitimate Successor of Saint Peter must be real and without any reservation or qualification:

Hence We teach and declare that by the appointment of Our Lord the Roman Church possesses a sovereignty of ordinary power over all other Churches, and that this power of jurisdiction of the Roman Pontiff which is truly episcopal, is immediate;...so that the Church of Christ may be one flock under one supreme pastor, through the preservation of unity both of communion and of profession of the same faith, with the Roman Pontiff. This is the teaching of Catholic truth from which no one can deviate without loss of faith and of salvation. (Pope Pius IX, Pastor Aeternus, July 18, 1870, cited in Bishop Donald Sanborn, The New Ecclesiology: Documentation.)

 

There is no such unity of "communion and of profession of the same faith" between the rump church in Red China and the Catholic Church. Leaving aside the inconvenient little fact that the counterfeit church of conciliarism is not the Catholic Church, the rump church in Red China can never be reconciled to the Catholic Church until its bishops and priests publicly abjure their errors, among which is the concession that they need to "register" with the civil authorities to exercise their priestly duties and exercise them only according to the conditions outlined by the Communist authorities, and are then and only then received back into the Catholic Church. No such demand is being made of the clergy who belong to the rump church in Red China.

Indeed, public abjuration of error is not a requirement for most of those who are "reconciled" to the structures of the counterfeit church of conciliarism. It was a little a year ago now that I wrote in Not Such a Triumph After All about a bishop, Mar Bawai Soro, from the Assyrian Apostolic Church of the East, who, along with his clergy, were received into the conciliar structures by the Chaldean Rite Bishop of the Eparchy of Saint James the Apostle, the Most Reverend Yawsip Jammo, without making any public abjuration of errors, which prompted me to write to Bishop Jammo as follows:

I want you to know this, Your Excellency, as it is important for me to be completely honest with you. My concern with the reception of His Excellency Bishop Mar Bawai Soro by the Eparchy of Saint Peter the Apostle goes to the heart of the problems with the conciliar notion of ecumenism that was condemned in no uncertain terms by His Holiness Pope Pius XI in Mortalium Animos, January 6, 1928. That conciliar notion of ecumenism  is premised upon not insisting that those outside of the Catholic Church return to her maternal bosom unconditionally and without any preconditions whatsoever. No "negotiations" are needed to become Catholic. The only thing that one needs to do is to submit humbly and with docility to the entirety of the Deposit of Faith as It has been entrusted to the true Church by Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ Himself, assenting to all of its tenets as they have been defined by the magisterial authority of that same Catholic Church.

It appears (and I place an emphasis on the word appears) that Bishop Mar Bawai Soro did not convert unconditionally to Chaldean Rite of the Catholic Church. This appearance is given by the fact that Bishop Soro's 2005 address to his brother Assyrian bishops accepted the primacy of Saint Peter as the head of the Universal Church because he had governed in Rome. There was no reference to the simple fact that Our Lord Himself founded that same Catholic Church upon Saint Peter, appointing Him and His Successors as the visible heads of the true Church, His own very Mystical Body. It is not clear that Bishop Soro believes in Papal Primacy as defined by the Catholic Church, especially by the First Vatican Council. Indeed, it is troubling to learn, as Father Michael Bazzi informed me today, that you, Your Excellency, engaged in "negotiations" with Bishop Soro

Thus, Your Excellency, my first question to you is this: What is there to negotiate with a potential convert to the Catholic Faith? What is negotiable about the truth?

My second question to you is this: Does Bishop Mar Bawai Soro believe in Papal Primacy and Papal Infallibility as taught solemnly by the First Vatican Council, which was presided over by His Holiness Pope Pius IX?

My third question to you is this: Does Bishop Mar Bawai Soro accept the Marian dogmas proclaimed by Pope Pius IX and Pope Pius XII in exactly the sense in which they were promulgated by the authority given them as Successors of Saint Peter? Does he accept the doctrine of Purgatory as taught solemnly by the Council of Trent?

My fourth question to you is this: Did Bishop Mar Bawai Soro and his priests and faithful have to make a formal, solemn and public Abjuration of Error before being received into the Chaldean Rite of the Catholic Church?

His Holiness Pope Leo XIII explained that there must be a perfect concord of Faith for there to be a true union between West and East. This is what he wrote in Praeclara Gratulationis Publicae, June 20, 1894:

"Weigh carefully in your minds and before God the nature of Our request. It is not for any human motive, but impelled by Divine Charity and a desire for the salvation of all, that We advise the reconciliation and union with the Church of Rome; and We mean a perfect and complete union, such as could not subsist in any way if nothing else was brought about but a certain kind of agreement in the Tenets of Belief and an intercourse of Fraternal love. The True Union between Christians is that which Jesus Christ, the Author of the Church, instituted and desired, and which consists in a Unity of Faith and Unity of Government."

My fifth question to you is this: Was the Profession of Faith made by Bishop Mar Bawai Soro presaged or conditioned in way by the "nuancing" of language on various points, such as his notion of Papal Primacy and other doctrinal points, so that he could make "mental reservations" to hold him "harmless" for not assenting to every point of doctrine as it has been defined by the authority of the Catholic Church?

My sixth question to you is this: Did Walter Cardinal Kasper, the President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, play any role in the negotiations between Bishop Mar Bawai Soro and you, Your Excellency? 

The Ravenna Document, October 13, 2007, leaves open the possibility that some kind of union between the Catholic Church and the Orthdox confessions can be brought about if an agreement was reached to accept the Orthodox's misrepresentation (my characterization) of the "Petrine Ministry" in the First Millennium. This misrepresentation of true history was exploded by Pope Leo XIII in the aforementioned Praeclara Gratulationis Publicae, but has found itself expressed by none other than the then Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger in Principles of Catholic Theology in 1982 and in The Ravenna Document itself.

My seventh question to you is this: Was The Ravenna Document used as any kind of guideline or foundation to develop a mutually acceptable "understanding" about the doctrine of Papal Primacy between Bishop Mar Bawai Soro and you, Your Excellency?

My eighth question to you is this: Are the terms of the agreement you reached with Bishop Mar Bawai Soro "sensitive" because said terms might be used as the prototype for effecting a possible reconciliation of the entire Assyrian Apostolic Church of the East (and the Orthdox Churches) with the Catholic Church? Is there a fear that the questions being raised might undermine efforts to effect such future "reconciliations"?

A further concern held by many Catholics, Your Excellency, revolves around the Assyrian Anaphora of Addai and Mari without the words of consecration contained with its text. Although Father Michael Bazzi informed me on Friday, May 16, 2008, that Bishop Mar Bawai Soro and his priests will use the Assyrian anaphora without the words of consecration for the time being, there is no indication of how long "the time being" might be (other than until they are "get used to" the Chaldean formula, which is identical to that of the traditional Roman Rite of the Catholic Church).

My ninth question to you is this: Was Catholic Church wrong to have commanded the Chaldean Rite to use the proper form of consecration in the Sixteenth Century? Was the Catholic Church wrong to reaffirm this command in 1902 under the pontificate of Pope Leo XIII? How could the Catholic Church be wrong for 440 years before Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger finally "got it right" in 2001, thus affirming, for the first time in the history of the Catholic Church, a Canon of the Mass without any words of consecration?

My tenth and final question to you is this: Did Bishop Mar Bawai Soro, who has certainly suffered much injustice and excoriation at the hands of his former confreres of the Assyrian Apostolic Church of the East, take the initiative to commence discussions/negotiations with you, Your Excellency? Were Roman authorities involved prior to Bishop Soro's contacts with you?

The fear of many of us, Your Excellency, is that the recent agreement between the Bishop Mar Bawai Soro and the Chaldean Rite Eparchy of Saint Peter the Apostle is but another example of a false "reconciliation" that is presaged on preconditions that have nothing to do with a genuine conversion to and acceptance of the Catholic Faith.

Pope Saint Pius X put the matter this way in Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910:

Alas! this organization [The Sillon, which had views identical to those expressed in Gaudium et Spes] 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."

 

Pope Pius XI put the matter this way in Mortalium Animos, January 6, 1928:

Those, who are unhappily infected with these errors, hold that dogmatic truth is not absolute but relative, that is, it agrees with the varying necessities of time and place and with the varying tendencies of the mind, since it is not contained in immutable revelation, but is capable of being accommodated to human life. Besides this, in connection with things which must be believed, it is nowise licit to use that distinction which some have seen fit to introduce between those articles of faith which are fundamental and those which are not fundamental, as they say, as if the former are to be accepted by all, while the latter may be left to the free assent of the faithful: for the supernatural virtue of faith has a formal cause, namely the authority of God revealing, and this is patient of no such distinction. For this reason it is that all who are truly Christ's believe, for example, the Conception of the Mother of God without stain of original sin with the same faith as they believe the mystery of the August Trinity, and the Incarnation of our Lord just as they do the infallible teaching authority of the Roman Pontiff, according to the sense in which it was defined by the Ecumenical Council of the Vatican. Are these truths not equally certain, or not equally to be believed, because the Church has solemnly sanctioned and defined them, some in one age and some in another, even in those times immediately before our own? Has not God revealed them all? For the teaching authority of the Church, which in the divine wisdom was constituted on earth in order that revealed doctrines might remain intact for ever, and that they might be brought with ease and security to the knowledge of men, and which is daily exercised through the Roman Pontiff and the Bishops who are in communion with him, has also the office of defining, when it sees fit, any truth with solemn rites and decrees, whenever this is necessary either to oppose the errors or the attacks of heretics, or more clearly and in greater detail to stamp the minds of the faithful with the articles of sacred doctrine which have been explained. But in the use of this extraordinary teaching authority no newly invented matter is brought in, nor is anything new added to the number of those truths which are at least implicitly contained in the deposit of Revelation, divinely handed down to the Church: only those which are made clear which perhaps may still seem obscure to some, or that which some have previously called into question is declared to be of faith."

Can it be said, Your Excellency, in all truth and without any reservations whatsoever, that Bishop Mar Bawai Soro accepts each of the doctrines enumerated by Pope Pius XI in exactly the sense that they have been taught by the authority of the Catholic Church without any degree of qualification or reservation, being willing to explicate and to defend these doctrines from his pulpit and in his apostolic work for souls? There is no such thing as "partial" communion with the Catholic Church.

As I noted before, Your Excellency, I realize that you may not be willing to answer these questions. If that is the case, fiat voluntas tua. I would simply appreciate your indicating this to me, at which point I will proceed with my article, Your Excellency, including the questions that I have just asked you. (Bishop Jammo refused to respond to my questions. See Not Such a Triumph After All .)

 

True to his subjectivist self, the chief apostle of the "new ecclesiology" (termed "Frankenchurch" by Father Anthony Cekada), is using the situation in Red China as a grand "workshop" to "perfect" a "communion" among the "particular churches" in China without requiring members of the rump church to renounce their errors publicly and while strongly "encouraging" those who have suffered in the underground Church to cooperate with the Communist officials there so that the "suffering" of the past can be overcome by means of the aforementioned "spiritual reconciliation," which must necessarily precede the "difficulties" of differences of Faith:

Addressing the whole Church in his Apostolic Letter Novo Millennio Ineunte, my venerable predecessor Pope John Paul II, stated that an "important area in which there has to be commitment and planning on the part of the universal Church and the particular Churches [is] the domain of communion (koinonia), which embodies and reveals the very essence of the mystery of the Church. Communion is the fruit and demonstration of that love which springs from the heart of the Eternal Father and is poured out upon us through the Spirit whom Jesus gives us (cf. Rom 5:5), to make us all 'one heart and one soul' (Acts 4:32). It is in building this communion of love that the Church appears as 'sacrament', as the 'sign and instrument of intimate union with God and of the unity of the human race.' The Lord's words on this point are too precise for us to diminish their import. Many things are necessary for the Church's journey through history, not least in this new century; but without charity (agape) all will be in vain. It is again the Apostle Paul who in his hymn to love reminds us: even if we speak the tongues of men and of angels, and if we have faith 'to move mountains', but are without love, all will come to 'nothing' (cf. 1 Cor 13:2). Love is truly the 'heart' of the Church"

These matters, which concern the very nature of the universal Church, have a particular significance for the Church which is in China. Indeed you are aware of the problems that she is seeking to overcome – within herself and in her relations with Chinese civil society – tensions, divisions and recriminations.

In this regard, last year, while speaking of the nascent Church, I had occasion to recall that "from the start the community of the disciples has known not only the joy of the Holy Spirit, the grace of truth and love, but also trials that are constituted above all by disagreements about the truths of faith, with the consequent wounds to communion. Just as the fellowship of love has existed since the outset and will continue to the end (cf. 1 Jn 1:1ff.), so also, from the start, division unfortunately arose. We should not be surprised that it still exists today ... Thus, in the events of the world but also in the weaknesses of the Church, there is always a risk of losing faith, hence, also love and brotherhood. Consequently it is a specific duty of those who believe in the Church of love and want to live in her to recognize this danger too"

The history of the Church teaches us, then, that authentic communion is not expressed without arduous efforts at reconciliation . Indeed, the purification of memory, the pardoning of wrong-doers, the forgetting of injustices suffered and the loving restoration to serenity of troubled hearts, all to be accomplished in the name of Jesus crucified and risen, can require moving beyond personal positions or viewpoints, born of painful or difficult experiences. These are urgent steps that must be taken if the bonds of communion between the faithful and the Pastors of the Church in China are to grow and be made visible. (Letter to Bishops, Priests, Consecrated Persons and Lay Faithful of Red China)

 

In other words, Ratzinger/Benedict is telling the members of the underground Church in Red China that it is up to them to make "visible" a "communion" with the "pastors"of the rump church that supports the Communist regime's "population control" policies. "Communion" depends upon them being willing to forgive past--and present!--injustices as well as to forget the inconvenient truth that the most of the leaders of the rump church defect from several of the Church's defined teachings on Faith and Morals, placing them totally outside of the pale of the Catholic Church, as Pope Leo XIII noted in Satis Cognitum, June 29, 1896.

Ratzinger/Benedict is telling the long-suffering Catholics in the underground Church in Red China that their suffering is appreciated and noted. It is time, however, to "move on" and purify "memories" so that a "reconciliation" based on a deliberate and calculated overlooking of defections from Faith and Morals on the part of the rump church in China can take place, leaving to a later date--perhaps--"discussions" on the more "delicate" matters that might seem to the Communist authorities to be an "interference" in their "internal affairs." Just be quiet, therefore, don't complain about the government's "population control policies," be good citizens and be content that you have the sacraments and are in "communion" with your fellow Chinese Catholics.

An unfair reading of Ratzinger/Benedict's June 30, 2007 letter. Read this footnote from the recently released Compendium and decide for yourselves:

We can see that the Holy Father is talking about a spiritual reconciliation, which can and must take place now, even before a structural merger of official and unofficial Catholic communities takes place. As a matter of fact, the Holy Father seems to make a distinction between “a spiritual reconciliation” and “a structural merger”. He recognizes that the reconciliation is like a journey that “cannot be accomplished overnight” (6.6): however, he emphasizes that the steps to be taken on the way are necessary and urgent, and cannot therefore be postponed because - or on the pretext that - they are difficult since they require the overcoming of personal positions or views. Times and ways may vary according to local situations, but the commitment to reconciliation cannot be abandoned. This path of reconciliation, furthermore, cannot be limited to the spiritual realm of prayer alone but must also be expressed through practical steps of effective ecclesial communion (exchange of experiences, sharing of pastoral projects, common initiatives, etc.). Finally, it should not be forgotten that all without exception are invited to engage in these steps: Bishops, priests, religious and lay faithful. It is by means of practical steps that spiritual reconciliation, including visible reconciliation, will gradually occur, which will culminate one day in the complete structural unity of every diocesan community around its one Bishop and of every diocesan community with each other and with the universal Church. In this context, it is licit and fitting to encourage clergy and lay faithful to make gestures of forgiveness and reconciliation in this direction. (Footnote 2, Compendium, pp. 8-9.)

 

This footnote reflects entirely Joseph Ratzinger's abject rejection of the "ecumenism of the return." Ratzinger/Benedict believes that people are gradually "absorbed" into the Church by means of "perfecting" their "communion" with other Christians. This is heretical. This is condemned by the authority of the Catholic Church. Yet it is of the essence of Ratzinger/Benedict's theology, which is reflected so completely in his June 30, 2007, Letter to Bishops, Priests, Consecrated Persons and Lay Faithful of Red China and in the Compendium released on May 24, 2009.

After all, it is "reconciliation" and "love" that matters the most, although Catholics understand that true love of God can never sanction anything that is offensive to Him, making, therefore, Ratzinger's appeal for a "reconciliation" with authorities of a rump church who support (or are silent about) government polices contrary to Faith and Morals nothing other than an exercise in pure subjectivism.

Ratzinger/Benedict's subjectivism is further displayed when he vitiates his earlier affirmation of Papal Primacy when excusing Catholics who seek out the sacraments from "pastors" who are not in "communion" with the Roman Pontiff, who he believes himself to be:

In not a few situations, then, you have faced the problem of concelebration of the Eucharist. In this regard, I remind you that this presupposes, as conditions, profession of the same faith and hierarchical communion with the Pope and with the universal Church. Therefore it is licit to concelebrate with Bishops and with priests who are in communion with the Pope, even if they are recognized by the civil authorities and maintain a relationship with entities desired by the State and extraneous to the structure of the Church, provided – as was said earlier (cf. section 7 above, paragraph 8) – that this recognition and this relationship do not entail the denial of unrenounceable principles of the faith and of ecclesiastical communion.

The lay faithful too, who are animated by a sincere love for Christ and for the Church, must not hesitate to participate in the Eucharist celebrated by Bishops and by priests who are in full communion with the Successor of Peter and are recognized by the civil authorities. The same applies for all the other sacraments.

Concerning Bishops whose consecrations took place without the pontifical mandate yet respecting the Catholic rite of episcopal ordination, the resulting problems must always be resolved in the light of the principles of Catholic doctrine. Their ordination – as I have already said (cf. section 8 above, paragraph 12) – is illegitimate but valid, just as priestly ordinations conferred by them are valid, and sacraments administered by such Bishops and priests are likewise valid. Therefore the faithful, taking this into account, where the eucharistic celebration and the other sacraments are concerned, must, within the limits of the possible, seek Bishops and priests who are in communion with the Pope: nevertheless, where this cannot be achieved without grave inconvenience, they may, for the sake of their spiritual good, turn also to those who are not in communion with the Pope.  (Letter to Bishops, Priests, Consecrated Persons and Lay Faithful of Red China. )

 

Never mind the fact that the rump church in Red China is a tool of the government. Never mind that there might be some "differences" between the teachings of the rump church in Red China and the Catholic Church. These differences do not matter to Ratzinger/Benedict unless they involve a "denial of unrenounceable principles of the faith and of ecclesiastical communion," although there is not one article of the Faith that is "renounceable." For if it is permissible to participate in the liturgical services of heretics who defect from the Catholic Faith, then Pope Saint Pius V was himself wrong when he told Catholics, many of whom did not look forward to heavy fines or the confiscation of their properties or imprisonment or martyrdom--or all of those things, in England not to assist at the liturgies of the heretical and schismatic Anglican Church.

Or, my friends, is that what Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI is saying? Is he saying, as he made reference to in his Explanatory Letter on "Summorum Pontificum, that he is doing now what others did not do in the past, that is, being willing to "bend" a little bit on some points in order to effect a "reconciliation" which comes at the price of truth itself? What an affront to the witness of the martyrs over the history of the Church, including the martyrs of the underground Church in Red China in the past sixty years, who refused to make one compromise with error or heresy or any interference at all on the part of the civil state with the life and mission of the Catholic Church.

Then again, of course, the counterfeit church of conciliarism is "rife" with members in "good standing" who support some of the very evils promoted by the Communist regime in Red China. Others are in "good standing" despite supporting the promotion of perversity under cover of the civil law. Thus it is that Edward Moore Kennedy and John F. Kerry and Mario Matthew Cuomo and Andrew Cuomo and David Paterson and Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., and Arnold Schwarzenegger and Richard Durbin and Thomas Harkin and Jim Doyle and Kathleen Sebelius and Jennifer Granholm and Christopher Dodd, et al., can retain their "good standing" despite their open support for baby-killing and perversity under cover of the civil law.

Father John Jenkins is considered to be a "fit" president of an allegedly Catholic University after bestowing an award upon a man, Barack Hussein Obama, who is at war with God by means of supporting--and issuing Executive Orders permitting--the slaughter of the preborn under cover of the civil law.

Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Tony Blair was "received" into the counterfeit church of conciliarism without renouncing his support for baby-killing under cover of the civil law.

Conciliar "bishops," are permitted to renounce that are supposed to part of the "official" doctrines of the Catholic Church that have been maintained by the counterfeit church of conciliarism. Robert Zollitsch maintains his own "good standing" despite having denied that Our Lord died in atonement for our sins.

There is, you see, quite a bit of logic involved in requesting the Catholics of the underground church in Red China to join up with the rump church that promotes some of the very evils that are support by "Catholics" in the counterfeit church of conciliarism without forfeiting their place in the One World Church of Ecumenism born of the new ecclesiology.

IV. 3  The New Ecclesiology Is Heretical

To seek to "perfect" a "communion" among Catholics who have suffered in the underground Church in Red China with the bishops and priests of the rump church without requiring an abjuration of errors, including a formal dissociation from the Communist authorities who have "licensed" that renegade church, is to attempt to put into practice on a large scale Ratzinger/Benedict's "new ecclesiology," which was summarized very succinctly by Bishop Donald Sanborn in The New Ecclesiology: An Overview:

The new ecclesiology reduces the Church of Christ to an amalgam of many different churches with different and opposing doctrines, disciplines, and hierarchies. Membership in this great and broad Church of Christ is subject to degrees. The more elements you have, the better off you are, and the closer you are to the “fullness,” which is found in the Roman Catholic Church.

It is something like bingo. If your card has all the numbers, you have the “fullness” — you have bingo. But even if you miss bingo, your card could be half filled or a quarter filled. While you do not have bingo, your card nevertheless has value, since you have an imperfect collection of what makes up bingo.

Everything in this new ecclesiology is “partial” and “full.” You are partially Church of Christ if you are non-Catholic, but fully if you are Catholic. Catholics are in “partial communion” with non-Catholics, but wait for the day when they can be in “full communion,” i.e., when Modernism erodes the faith enough that people will not care anymore if they are Protestant, Orthodox, or Catholic. Likewise these non-Catholic churches are means of salvation to the extent that they possess valid sacraments and true doctrines. This is as silly as saying that an aircraft has the capacity to take you to Europe to the extent that it has a half a tank of fuel. The fact that it is lacking the other half of the fuel means that you and your fellow passengers are going to be food for the eyeless aquatic creatures that inhabit the dark depths of the Atlantic Ocean.

In other words, the true Church of Christ is not a collection of true elements, like a pile of rocks, but is a unified essence, a single thing, just as Christ, its head, is one Person. What is outside of Christ cannot be “partially Christ.” You cannot be partially a member of Christ, and partially not, any more than you could be partially someone’s son, and partially not. Essence does not admit of degrees or separable parts. Either the whole essence (nature) is there, or none of it is there. Imagine a gas station that advertised that it sold a product “with elements of true gasoline.” Imagine an airline that boasted of a fleet of aircraft which possessed “elements of true airplanes,” or bragged that its pilots had “elements of true pilot training.” Imagine if a waiter put a steak in front of you, and said that it came from an animal that had “elements of true cow.” I think the point is made.

“Elements” of the true Church of Christ do not constitute any false sect as a partial member of the Church of Christ. The “elements” are stolen, like so much booty, from the Catholic Church. They are false churches, sects, and their use of Catholic doctrine and Catholic sacraments is under false pretense and sacrilegious. They are involved in a shameful lie when they present themselves as true Christianity, and their lie should be exposed and condemned.

But let the popes speak. I have prepared a triple-column comparison[1] of the new ecclesiology and the traditional ecclesiology. In the third column, I draw the conclusion from the comparison.

I have reduced the comparison of the two systems to four questions:

• Whether schismatic and/or heretical churches are part of the Church of Christ?
• Whether it is possible to be part of the Church of Christ without being submitted to the Roman Pontiff?
• Whether it is true that in every valid celebration of the Eucharist, the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church becomes present?
• Whether the Holy Ghost uses schismatic and/or heretical sects as means of salvation?

Read it, and see if you can honestly say that Vatican II is not guilty of heresy.

 

In other words, merge now for the sake "love" and "reconciliation." Other, presumably "renounceable" matters of Faith, can wait until people have become used to living in states of apostasy and betrayal. Sounds sort of familiar, doesn't it (see Accustomed to Apostasy)

 

IV. 4 The Catholic Church Forbids the Civil State to Interfere with the Life of the Church and Forbids Cooperation with Communism

Showing his penchant for making one "pastoral" compromise after another, Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, after stating that the civil authorities cannot interfere with the life and the mission of the Catholic Church, "encourages" Catholics in Red China to "register" with the Communist authorities, citing the "Second" Vatican Council's call to "respect" those who think "differently" than do Catholics:

Therefore the Second Vatican Council underlines that "those also have a claim on our respect and charity who think and act differently from us in social, political, and religious matters. In fact, the more deeply, through courtesy and love, we come to understand their ways of thinking, the more easily will we be able to enter into dialogue with them". But, as the same Council admonishes us, "love and courtesy of this kind should not, of course, make us indifferent to truth and goodness."

Considering "Jesus' original plan", it is clear that the claim of some entities, desired by the State and extraneous to the structure of the Church, to place themselves above the Bishops and to guide the life of the ecclesial community, does not correspond to Catholic doctrine, according to which the Church is "apostolic", as the Second Vatican Council underlined. The Church is apostolic "in her origin because she has been built on 'the foundation of the Apostles' (Eph 2:20). She is apostolic in her teaching which is the same as that of the Apostles. She is apostolic by reason of her structure insofar as she is taught, sanctified, and guided until Christ returns by the Apostles through their successors who are the Bishops in communion with the Successor of Peter". Therefore, in every individual particular Church, "it is in the name of the Lord that the diocesan Bishop [and only he] leads the flock entrusted to him, and he does so as the proper, ordinary and immediate Pastor"; at a national level, moreover, only a legitimate Episcopal Conference can formulate pastoral guidelines, valid for the entire Catholic community of the country concerned.

Likewise, the declared purpose of the afore-mentioned entities to implement "the principles of independence and autonomy, self-management and democratic administration of the Church" is incompatible with Catholic doctrine, which from the time of the ancient Creeds professes the Church to be "one, holy, catholic and apostolic".

In the light of the principles here outlined, Pastors and lay faithful will recall that the preaching of the Gospel, catechesis and charitable activity, liturgical and cultic action, as well as all pastoral choices, are uniquely the competence of the Bishops together with their priests in the unbroken continuity of the faith handed down by the Apostles in the Sacred Scriptures and in Tradition, and therefore they cannot be subject to any external interference.

Given this difficult situation, not a few members of the Catholic community are asking whether recognition from the civil authorities – necessary in order to function publicly – somehow compromises communion with the universal Church. I am fully aware that this problem causes painful disquiet in the hearts of Pastors and faithful. In this regard I maintain, in the first place, that the requisite and courageous safeguarding of the deposit of faith and of sacramental and hierarchical communion is not of itself opposed to dialogue with the authorities concerning those aspects of the life of the ecclesial community that fall within the civil sphere. There would not be any particular difficulties with acceptance of the recognition granted by civil authorities on condition that this does not entail the denial of unrenounceable principles of faith and of ecclesiastical communion. In not a few particular instances, however, indeed almost always, in the process of recognition the intervention of certain bodies obliges the people involved to adopt attitudes, make gestures and undertake commitments that are contrary to the dictates of their conscience as Catholics. I understand, therefore, how in such varied conditions and circumstances it is difficult to determine the correct choice to be made. For this reason the Holy See, after restating the principles, leaves the decision to the individual Bishop who, having consulted his presbyterate, is better able to know the local situation, to weigh the concrete possibilities of choice and to evaluate the possible consequences within the diocesan community. It could be that the final decision does not obtain the consensus of all the priests and faithful. I express the hope, however, that it will be accepted, albeit with suffering, and that the unity of the diocesan community with its own Pastor will be maintained.

It would be good, finally, if Bishops and priests, with truly pastoral hearts, were to take every possible step to avoid giving rise to situations of scandal, seizing opportunities to form the consciences of the faithful, with particular attention to the weakest: all this should be lived out in communion and in fraternal understanding, avoiding judgements and mutual condemnations. In this case too, it must be kept in mind, especially where there is little room for freedom, that in order to evaluate the morality of an act it is necessary to devote particular care to establishing the real intentions of the person concerned, in addition to the objective shortcoming. Every case, then, will have to be pondered individually, taking account of the circumstances.

 

In other words, yes, the civil state cannot impose any external constraints on the Catholic Church. In practical terms, however, we just "have" to let the individual bishops make these decisions for themselves as they seek to re-educate the faithful about the fact that their resistance to registering with the Communist authorities over the years has been utterly in vain, which is exactly what Ratzinger/Benedict has sought to do with traditionally-minded Catholics attached to the structures of the counterfeit church of conciliarism by extending to them the "olive branch" of a "liberated" Mass of Tradition in exchange for their silence about the evil that is the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo service and all of the other apostasies and blasphemies and sacrileges associated with the conciliar ethos.

Pope Pius XII, writing in Ad Sinarum Gentem, October 7, 1954, exhorted the bishops and priests and lay faithful in Red China who had defected to the Communist regime to return to the Church unconditionally, reaffirming the brave Catholics of the underground Church to recall the words of the first Pope, Saint Peter, who taught us to obey God rather than men:

We earnestly exhort "in the heart of Christ" (Phil. 1. 8) those faithful of whom We have mournfully written above to come back to the path of repentance and salvation. Let them remember that, when it is necessary, one must render to Caesar what is Caesar's, and with greater reason, one must render to God what is God's (Cf. Luke 20. 25). When men demand things contrary to the Divine Will, then it is necessary to put into practice the maxim of St. Peter: "We must obey God rather than men" (Acts 5. 29). Let them also remember that it is impossible to serve two masters, if these order things opposed to one another (Cf. Matt. 6. 24). Also at times it is impossible to please both Jesus Christ and men (Cf. Gal. 1. 10). But if it sometimes happens that he who wishes to remain faithful to the Divine Redeemer even unto death must suffer great harm, let him bear it with a strong and serene soul.

On the other hand, We wish to congratulate repeatedly those who, suffering severe difficulties, have been outstanding in their loyalty to God and to the Catholic Church, and so have been "counted worthy to suffer disgrace for the name of Jesus" (Acts 5. 41). With a paternal heart We encourage them to continue brave and intrepid along the road they have taken, keeping in mind the words of Jesus Christ: "And do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. But rather be afraid of him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell . . . But as for you, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Therefore do not be afraid . . . Therefore everyone who acknowledges me before men, I will also acknowledge him before my Father in heaven. But whoever disowns me before men, I in turn will disown him before my Father in heaven" (Matt. 10. 28, 30-33). (Pope Pius XII, Ad Sinarum Gentem, October 7, 1954.)

 

Pope Pius XII, writing in Ad Apostolorum Principis on June 29, 1958, just three months and ten days before his death, condemned the evils that were then--and are now to this day--propagated by the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association:

Against methods of acting such as these, which violate the principal rights of the human person and trample on the sacred liberty of the sons of God, all Christians from every part of the world, indeed all men of good sense cannot refrain from raising their voices with Us in real horror and from uttering a protest deploring the deranged conscience of their fellow men.

And since these crimes are being committed under the guise of patriotism, We consider it Our duty to remind everyone once again of the Church's teaching on this subject.'

For the Church exhorts and encourages Catholics to love their country with sincere and strong love, to give due obedience in accord with natural and positive divine law to those who hold public office, to give them active and ready assistance for the promotion of those undertakings by which their native land can in peace and order daily achieve greater prosperity and further true development.

The Church has always impressed on the minds of her children that declaration of the Divine Redeemer: "Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's."[5] We call it a declaration because these words make certain and incontestable the principle that Christianity never opposes or obstructs what is truly useful or advantageous to a country.

However, if Christians are bound in conscience to render to Caesar (that is, to human authority) what belongs to Caesar, then Caesar likewise, or those who control the state, cannot exact obedience when they would be usurping God's rights or forcing Christians either to act at variance with their religious duties or to sever themselves from the unity of the Church and its lawful hierarchy.

Under such circumstances, every Christian should cast aside all doubt and calmly and firmly repeat the words with which Peter and the other Apostles answered the first persecutors of the Church: "We must obey God rather than men."

With emphatic insistence, those who promote the interests of this association which claims a monopoly on patriotism, speak over and over again of peace and admonish Catholics earnestly to exert all their efforts to establish it. On the surface these words are excellent and righteous, for who deserves greater praise than the man who prepares the way to introduce and establish peace?

But peace -- as you well know, Venerable Brethren and beloved sons -- does not consist of words alone and does not rely on changing formulas which are suitable for the moment but contradict one's real plans and practices, which do not conform with the meaning and way of true peace but with hatred, discord, and deceit.

Peace worthy of the name must be founded on the principles of charity and justice which He taught who is the "Prince of Peace," and who adopted this title as a kind of royal standard for Himself. True peace is that which the Church desires to be established: one that is stable, just, fair, and founded on right order; one which binds all together -- citizens, families, and peoples -- by the firm ties of the rights of the Supreme Lawgiver, and by the bonds of mutual fraternal love and cooperation.

As she looks forward to and hopes for this peaceful dwelling together of nations, the Church expects each nation to preserve that degree of dignity which becomes it. For the Church, which has ever kept a friendly attitude toward the various events in your country, long ago spoke through Our late Predecessor of happy memory and expressed the desire that "full recognition be given to the legitimate aspirations and rights of the nation, which is more populous than any other, whose civilization and culture go back to the earliest times, which has, in past ages, with the development of its resources, had periods of great prosperity, and which -- it may be reasonably conjectured -- will become even greater in the future ages, provided it pursues justice and honor." (Pope Pius XII, Ad Apostolorum Principis, June 29, 1858.)

 

Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI has, of course, made reference to none of these remarks made by our last true pope. How can he? They contradict his positivistic assertions that "progress" has been made in Red China that makes possible the implementation of the new ecclesiology's program for a "spiritual reconciliation" as the means of "perfecting" a situation of "partial communion" into one of "full communion." The one and only thing that has changed between June 29, 1958, and May 29, 2009, is that we have had antipopes who have shown us over and over again they are willing to blaspheme God publicly and to sell out the interests of Catholic truth in the name of a "dialogue" that the enemies of the Church, such as Communists and other naturalists, do not want and will never accept until and unless a "concordat" is reached solely on their terms.

Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI not only ignores the words that Pope Pius XII wrote about the situation of Catholics in Red China in 1954 and 1958 that are just as relevant today as they were, respectively, fifty-five and fifty-one years ago now. He ignores Pope Pius XI's absolute prohibition against any and all cooperation with Communist regimes whatsoever:

See to it, Venerable Brethren, that the Faithful do not allow themselves to be deceived! Communism is intrinsically wrong, and no one who would save Christian civilization may collaborate with it in any undertaking whatsoever. Those who permit themselves to be deceived into lending their aid towards the triumph of Communism in their own country, will be the first to fall victims of their error. And the greater the antiquity and grandeur of the Christian civilization in the regions where Communism successfully penetrates, so much more devastating will be the hatred displayed by the godless. (Pope Pius XI, Divini Redemptoris, March 19, 1937.)

 

Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, believing in conciliarism's tolerant attitude about errors and the necessity of entering into "dialogue" with those who hold them so that we can "understand" them better, is one of the most deceived men on the face of this earth. His "new ecclesiology" is from Hell itself.

V. Renouncing the Social Reign of Christ the King and the Conversion of Red China

Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, who believes in the separation of Church and State that was called a "thesis absolutely false" by Pope Saint Pius X in Vehementer Nos, February 11, 1906, renounced all claims to the conversion of Red China and thus of the Social Reign of Christ the King when he wrote the following in his Letter to Bishops, Priests, Consecrated Persons and Lay Faithful of Red China:

As far as relations between the political community and the Church in China are concerned, it is worth calling to mind the enlightening teaching of the Second Vatican Council, which states: "The Church, by reason of her role and competence, is not identified with any political community nor is she tied to any political system. She is at once the sign and the safeguard of the transcendental dimension of the human person". And the Council continues: "The political community and the Church are autonomous and independent of each other in their own fields. They are both at the service of the personal and social vocation of the same individuals, though under different titles. Their service will be more efficient and beneficial to all if both institutions develop better cooperation according to the circumstances of place and time"

Likewise, therefore, the Catholic Church which is in China does not have a mission to change the structure or administration of the State; rather, her mission is to proclaim Christ to men and women, as the Saviour of the world, basing herself – in carrying out her proper apostolate – on the power of God. As I recalled in my Encyclical Deus Caritas Est, "The Church cannot and must not take upon herself the political battle to bring about the most just society possible. She cannot and must not replace the State. Yet at the same time she cannot and must not remain on the sidelines in the fight for justice. She has to play her part through rational argument and she has to reawaken the spiritual energy without which justice, which always demands sacrifice, cannot prevail and prosper. A just society must be the achievement of politics, not of the Church. Yet the promotion of justice through efforts to bring about openness of mind and will to the demands of the common good is something which concerns the Church deeply.

 

Apostasy. The Catholic Church has a mission from her Divine Founder and Invisible Head to convert all men and all nations to the true Faith. The just society is the result of the growth of the Faith in a country, not of politics.

Ratzinger/Benedict categorizes the murderous regime in Red China as nothing other than another kind of "structure" or "administration" of a civil state. It is nothing of the sort. It is an illegitimate regime that seized power by brute force, shedding the blood of millions upon millions of innocent human beings in the process, and it has maintained itself in power by those same means, enabled in the past thirty-seven years by one American presidential administration after another and by large multinational corporations who have exploited the availability of cheap labor in Red China to manufacture substandard merchandise and to produce a food supply that is, in many instances, replete with toxins that have actually killed people.

The government of the "People"s Republic of China is not based on "neutral" principles of garden-variety naturalism, not that those "ordinary" principles of naturalism are not offensive to God and harmful to social order, of course. The government of Red China is based on a specific and categorical rejection of God and upon the primacy of the civil state over its citizens. It is an evil regime from beginning to end, and it must be the duty of each Catholic in China to pray for an end ot the reign of Communist terror there and to the conversion of this land to the true Faith.

The Catholic Church does not use "force" to effect such conversions. She uses the graces won for us on the wood of the Holy Cross by Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and that flow into our hearts and souls through the loving hands of Our Lady, she who is the Mediatrix of All Graces, to effect such conversions, aided by the blood of the martyrs who refused to compromise one little bit with evil regimes. The Catholic Church seeks the establishment of the Social Reign of Christ the King all nations as each civil government in the world recognizes her as the true religion and as its rulers stand ready to yield to her maternal intervention, exercised judiciously and rarely only after the exhausting of her Indirect Power of teaching and preaching and exhortation, when the good of souls demands such intervention.

Quite opposed to the apostate spirit of Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, Pope Saint Pius X wrote the following in Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910:

But, on the contrary, by ignoring the laws governing human nature and by breaking the bounds within which they operate, the human person is lead, not toward progress, but towards death. 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.

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.

 

Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI does not believe this. He is an apostate.

VI. Selling Out to Communists Over and Over Again

The counterfeit church of conciliarism has sold out to Communists over and over again, continuing in a much more overt manner a form of "diplomacy" that had its roots in the Vatican's Secretariat of State as early as the pontificate of Pope Saint Pius XI and continued during the pontificate of Pope Pius XII, especially by means of the machinations of one Monsignor Giovanni Battista Montini, the future antipope Paul VI. A very good history of this legacy of compromise--and of a refusal to fulfill Our Lady's Fatima Message can be find in an English language reprint of a Si, Si, No, No article, "The Blindness of Catholics and the Social Kingship of Christ."

The countefeit church of conciliarism wasted no time in turning a policy of failed diplomacy into one of outright surrender to the forces of Soviet Communism.

Angelo Roncalli/John XXIII, long a friend of Italian Communists and Socialists assisted by another friend of the Communists and Socialists, the Archbishop of Milan, the aforementioned Giovanni Montini, agreed to exchange absolute silence about evil of Communism at the "Second" Vatican Council in exchange for the presence of "observers" from the Russian Orthodox Church:

In preparation for the Council, Catholic bishops around the world were polled by mail by the Office of the Secretariat to learn their opinions on topics to be considered at the Council. Communism topped the list.

However, as documented in the previous chapter, at the instigation of Cardinal Montini, two months before the opening of the Council, Pope John XXIII approved the signing of the Metz Accord with Moscow officials, whereby the Soviets would permit two representatives from the Russian State Church to attend the Council in exchange for absolute and total silence at the Council on the subject of Communism/Marxism.

With the exceptions of Cardinal Montini, who instructed Pope John to enter into negotiations with the Soviets, Cardinal Eugene Tisserant, who signed the Accord, and Bishop Jan Willebrands, who made the final contacts with the representatives of the Russian State Church, the Church Fathers at the Council were ignorant of the existence and nature of the Metz Agreement and the horrendous betrayal that it represented. (Mrs. Randy Engel, The Rite of Sodomy, pp. 1135-1136)

Why didn’t the last Ecumenical Council condemn Communism? A secret accord made at Metz supplies an answer. 

Those who pass by the convent of the Little Sisters of the Poor in Borny - on the outskirts of the French city of Metz - never imagine that something of transcendental importance occurred in the residence of Fr. Lagarde, the convent’s chaplain. In a hall of this religious residence in August 1962 - two months before Vatican Council II opened - a secret meeting of the greatest importance between two high-ranking personalities took place.

One dignitary was a Cardinal of the Curia, Eugène Tisserant, representing Pope John XXIII; the other was metropolitan Nikodin, who spoke in the name of the Russian Schismatic Church.

This encounter had consequences that changed the direction of Council, which was already prepared to open. In effect, the meeting at Metz determined a change in the trajectory of the very History of the Church in the 20th century.

What was the matter of such great importance that was resolved at his meeting? Based on the documents that are known today, there it was established that Communism would not be condemned by Vatican Council II. In 1962, The Vatican and the Schismatic Russian Church came to an agreement. According to its terms, the Russian “Orthodox Church” agreed to send observers to Vatican II under the condition that no condemnation whatsoever of communism should be made there (1). 1. Ulysses Floridi, Moscou et le Vatican, Paris: France-Empire, Paris, 1979, pp. 147-48; Romano Amerio, Iota Unum, K.C., MO: Sarto House, 1996, pp. 75-76; Ricardo de la Cierva, Oscura rebelion en la Iglesia, Barcelona: Plaza & Janes, 1987, pp. 580-81. And why were the consequences of such a pact so far-reaching and important?

Because in the 20th century a principal enemy of the Catholic Church was Communism. As such, until Vatican II it had been condemned numerous times by the Magisterium. Moreover, in the early ’60s a new condemnation would have been quite damaging, since Communism was passing through a serious crisis, both internally and externally. On one hand, it was losing credibility inside the USSR since the people were becoming increasingly discontent with the horrendous administrative results of 45 years of Communist demagogy. On the other hand, outside the USSR Communism had not been able to persuade the workers and poor of free countries to take up its banner. In fact, up until that time it had never won a free election. Therefore, the leaders of international Communism decided that it was time to begin to change the appearances of the regime in order to retain the power they had and to experiment with new methods of conquest. So in the ‘60s President Nikita Khrushchev suddenly began to smile and talk about dialogue (2). 2. Plinio Correa de Oliveira, Unperceived Ideological Transshipment and Dialogue, New York: Crusade for a Christian Civilization, 1982, pp. 8-15. This would have been a particularly inopportune moment for the Pope or the Council to issue a formal condemnation, which could have either seriously damaged or possibly even destroyed the Communist regime..

A half secret act

Speaking about the liberty at Vatican II to deal with diverse topics, Professor Romano Amerio revealed some previously unpublished facts. “The salient and half secret point that should be noted,” he stated, “is the restriction on the Council’s liberty to which John XXIII had agreed a few months earlier, in making an accord with the Orthodox Church by which the patriarchate of Moscow accepted the papal invitation to send observers to the Council, while the Pope for his part guaranteed the Council would refrain from condemning Communism. The negotiations took place at Metz in August 1962, and all the details of time and place were given at a press conference by Mgr. Paul Joseph Schmitt, the Bishop of that Diocese [newspaper Le Lorrain, 2/9/63]. The negotiations ended in an agreement signed by metropolitan Nikodim for the Orthodox Church and Cardinal Tisserant, the Dean of the Sacred College of Cardinals, for the Holy See.    

“News of the agreement was given in the France Nouvelle, the central bulletin of the French communist party in the edition of January 16-22, 1963 in these terms: ‘Because the world socialist system is showing its superiority in an uncontestable fashion, and is strong through the support of hundreds and hundreds of millions of men, the Church can no longer be content with a crude anti-communism. As part of its dialogue with the Russian Orthodox Church, it has even promised there will be no direct attack on the Communist system at the Council.’ On the Catholic side, the daily La Croix of February 15, 1963 gave notice of the agreement, concluding: “‘As a consequence of this conversation, Msgr. Nikodim agreed that someone should go to Moscow carrying an invitation, on condition that guarantees were given concerning the apolitical attitude of the Council.’

“Moscow’s condition, namely that the Council should say nothing about Communism, was not, therefore, a secret, but the isolated publication of it made no impression on general opinion, as it was not taken up by the press at large and circulated, either because of the apathetic and anaesthetized attitude to Communism common in clerical circles or because the Pope took action to impose silence in the matter. Nonetheless, the agreement had a powerful, albeit silent, effect on the course of the Council when requests for a renewal of the condemnation of Communism were rejected in order to observe this agreement to say nothing about it” (3). 3. Romano Amerio, Iota Unum, pp. 65-66. Thus the Council, which made statements on capitalism and colonialism, said nothing specific about the greatest evil of the age, Communism. While the Vatican Monsignors were smiling at the Russian Schismatic representatives, many Bishops were in prison and innumerable faithful were either persecuted or driven underground for their fidelity to the Holy Roman Catholic Church.

The Kremlin-Vatican negotiations

This important information about Vatican-Kremlin negotiations is confirmed in an article ‘The mystery of the Rome-Moscow pact’ published in the October 1989 issue of 30 Dias, which quotes statements made by the Bishop of Metz, Paul Joseph Schmitt. In a February 9, 1963 interview with the newspaper Republicain Lorrain, Mgr. Schmitt said:

“It was in our region that the ‘secret’ meeting of Cardinal Tisserant with archbishop Nikodin occurred. The exact place was the residence of Fr. Lagarde, chaplain for the Little Sister of the Poor in Borny [on the outskirts of Metz]. Here for the first time the arrival of the prelates of the Russian Church was mentioned. After this meeting, the conditions for the presence of the Russian church’s observers were established by Cardinal Willebrands, an assistant of Cardinal Bea. Archbishop Nikodin agreed that an official invitation should be sent to Moscow, with the guarantee of the apolitical character of the Council” (4). 4. 30 Dias, October 1988, pp. 55-56.

 

The same source also transcribed a letter of Bishop Georges Roches regarding the Pact of Metz:

“That accord was negotiated between the Kremlin and the Vatican at the highest level .… But I can assure you …. that the decision to invite Russian Orthodox observers to Vatican Council II was made personally by His Holiness John XXIII with the encouragement of Cardinal Montini, who was counselor to the Patriarch of Venice when he was Archbishop of Milan…. Cardinal Tisserant received formal orders to negotiate the accord and to make sure that it would be observed during the Council” (5). 5. Ibid. p. 57

In a book published some time after this, German theologian Fr. Bernard Häring - who was secretary-coordinator at the Council for the redaction of Gaudium et Spes - revealed the more profound reason for the ‘pigeon-holing’ of apetition that many conciliar Fathers signed asking Paul VI and the Council to condemn Communism: “When around two dozen Bishops requested a solemn condemnation of Communism,” stated Fr. Häring, “Msgr. Glorieux …. and I were blamed like scapegoats. I have no reason to deny that I did everything possible to avoid this condemnation, which rang out clearly like a political condemnation. I knew that John XXIII had promised Moscow authorities that the Council would not condemn communism in order to assure the participation of observers of the Russian Orthodox church” (6). . . .

1. Catholic doctrine has always emphatically condemned Communism. It would be possible, should it be necessary, to publish a small book composed exclusively of anti-communist pontifical documents.

2. It would have been natural, therefore, for Vatican Council II, which met in Rome from 1962 to 1965, to have confirmed these condemnations against the greatest enemy of the Church and Christian Civilization in the 20th century.

3. In addition to this, 213 Cardinals, Archbishops, and Bishop solicited Paul VI to have the Council make such a condemnation. Later, 435 Conciliar Fathers repeated the same request. The two petitions were duly delivered within the time limits established by the Internal Guidelines of the Council. Nonetheless, inexplicably, neither petition ever came up for debate. The first was not taken into consideration. As for the second, after the Council had closed, it was alleged that it had been “lost” by Mgr. Achille Glorieux, secretary of the commission that would have been entrusted with the request.

4. The Council closed without making any express censure of Communism. Why was no censure made? The matter seemed wrapped in an enigmatic fog. Only later did these significant facts on the topic appear. The point of my article is to gather and present information from several different sources for the consideration of my reader. How can the actions of the Catholic Prelates who inspired, ordered, followed and maintained the decisions of the Pact of Metz be explained? I leave the answer to my reader.  (The Council of Metz)

 

The future Paul VI, Monsignor Giovanni Battista Montini, directly betrayed Catholic priests sent behind the Iron Curtain by Pope Pius XII, effectively sentencing these priests to death or imprisonment:

An elderly gentleman from Paris who worked as an official interpreter for high-level clerics at the Vatican in the early 1950s told this writer that the Soviets blackmailed Montini into revealing the names of priests whom the Vatican had clandestinely sent behind the Iron Curtain to minister to Catholics in the Soviet Union during the Cold War. The Soviet secret police were on hand as soon as the priests crossed over the Russian border and the priest infiltrators were either shot or sent to the gulag.

The extent to which Pope Paul VI was subject to blackmail by the enemies of the Church will probably never be known. It may be that, in so far as the Communists and the Socialists were concerned, blackmail was entirely unnecessary given Montini's cradle to grave fascination and affinity for the Left. On the other hand, the Italian Freemasons, M16, the OSS and later the CIA and the Mafia were likely to have used blackmail and extortion against Montini beginning early in his career as a junior diplomat, then as Archbishop of Milan and finally as Pope Paul VI. (Randy Engel, The Rite of Sodomy, p.1156.)

 

Giovanni Montini/Paul VI engaged in a policy of Communist surrender known as Ostpolik (East politics) wherein he appointed men as "bishops" in Communist countries behind the Iron Curtain who were friendly to, if not actual agents of, the Communist authorities in those countries. These "bishops" had a perverse "apostolic mandate," if you will, given then sub secreto by Montini: never criticize Communism or any Communist officials. In other words, be good stooges for various "people's" and "democratic" republics in exchange for promoting the false "gospel" of conciliarism.

It was also Montini/Paul VI who sold out the courageous Jozsef Cardinal Mindszenty, the Primate of Hungary and the Archbishop of Budapest, Josef Cardinal Mindszenty when the latter, after taking refuge in the American Embassy in Budapest for a decade following the Hungarian Revolution in October of 1956, was forced out of the American Embassy as a result of Vatican pressure and then, after being told by Montini/Paul VI that he remained as the Archbishop of Budapest, has his primatial see declared vacant by the theologically, liturgically and morally corrupt Montini.

This scenario is described by an sedeplenist, Dr. Steve O'Brien, in a review of two motion pictures about the life of Jozsef Cardinal Mindszenty:

The Prisoner, as it happened, was wrapped too soon because Mindszenty's story, which had seemed to be fini, had scarcely begun. By 1956 Stalin was dead and Khrushchev was making some unusual noises. In October the Hungarians rose in revolt. Mindszenty had no clue of what was happening on the street; his guards told him that the rabble outside the prison was shouting for his blood. A few days later he was released and indeed a mob of locals set upon him. But instead of ripping his flesh they grabbed at the liberated hero to kiss his clothes. When he returned to Budapest the deposed Reds quivered over this ghost who would not stay buried, but in a radio broadcast he counseled against revenge. The Soviets were not so forgiving, and tanks rumbled to crush this unpleasant incident. A marked man, Mindszenty sought asylum in the American embassy as his last resort. Now a second long Purgatory had begun. Pius spoke out repeatedly against this latest example of Soviet terror but the West, heedless of its own liberation rhetoric, was deaf.

When The Prisoner was released, the Church was still the implacable foe of communism. Frail Pius stood as a Colossus against both right and left totalitarianism. When Pius departed this world there ensued a moral void in the Vatican that has never been filled. By the early 1960s both the Western governments and the Novus Ordo popes decided that accommodation with the Communists was preferable to the archaic notions of Pius and Mindszenty. John XXIII and successor Paul VI welcomed a breath of fresh air into the Church, and that odor included cooperation with the Reds. The new Ostpolitik, managed by Paul's Secretary of State Agostino Casaroli, hadn't room for Christian warriors of Mindszenty's stamp. The position of the Hungarian government was strengthened when Casaroli entered negotiations with the appalling regime of Janos Kadar. As the Cold War thawed, the freeze was put on Mindszenty. The American government made it understood that he was no longer welcome at the embassy. Worse still, Paul sent a functionary to persuade Mindszenty to leave, but only after signing a document full of stipulations that favored the Reds and essentially blaming himself for his ordeal. The confession that the Communists could not torture out of him was being forced on him by the Pope!

Driven from his native land against his wishes, Mindszenty celebrated Mass in Rome with Paul on October 23, 1971. The Pope told him, "You are and remain archbishop of Esztergom and primate of Hungary." It was the Judas kiss. For two years Mindszenty traveled, a living testament to truth, a man who had been scourged, humiliated, imprisoned and finally banished for the Church's sake. In the fall of 1973, as he prepared to publish his Memoirs, revealing the entire story to the world, he suffered the final betrayal. Paul, fearful that the truth would upset the new spirit of coexistence with the Marxists, "asked" Mindszenty to resign his office. When Mindszenty refused, Paul declared his See vacant, handing the Communists a smashing victory.

If Mindszenty's story is that of the rise and fall of the West's resistance to communism it is also the chronicle of Catholicism's self-emasculation. In the 1950s a man such as Mindszenty could be portrayed as a hero of Western culture even though both American and English history is rife with hatred toward the Church. When the political mood changed to one of coexistence and detente rather than containment, Mindszenty became an albatross to the appeasers and so the Pilates of government were desperate to wash their hands of him. Still, politicians are not expected to act on principle, and therefore the Church's role in Mindszenty's agony is far more damning.

Since movies, for good or ill, have a pervasive influence on American culture, perhaps a serious film that told Mindszenty's whole story could have some effect on the somnolent Catholics in the West. Guilty of Treason and The Prisoner are artifacts of their day. An updated film that follows the prelate through his embassy exile and his pathetic end would be a heart-wrenching drama. But knowing what we know now, the Communists, despicable as they are, would no longer be the primary villains. (Shooting the Cardinal: Film and Betrayal in the Mindszenty Case)

 

As we know, of course, no true pope of the Catholic Church sold out Jozsef Cardinal Mindszenty. A conciliar revolutionary did so.

Another conciliar revolutionary, one who was present at the "beginning" of the conciliar revolution and helped to chart its course, Joseph Ratzinger, has sold out the faithful Catholics of the underground Church in Red China, justifying his June 30, 2007, Letter to Bishops, Priests, Consecrated Persons and Lay Faithful of Red China partially on the assertion that "progress" was being made in that country.

A report issued by another sedeplenist, Dr. Steven W. Mosher, the founder and President of the Population Research Institute, issued just nine days after Ratzinger/Benedict's Letter to Bishops, Priests, Consecrated Persons and Lay Faithful of Red China indicated the sort of "progress" that was taking place at that time in the southern part of Red China:

The forced abortion campaign hit the southern Chinese province like a deadly hurricane. The provincial government decided that too many babies were being born. Local officials were warned that population control quotas had to be met or their heads would be on the chopping block. They reacted by hunting down and arresting hundreds of women for the crime of being pregnant. Taken by force to hospitals and clinics, these were aborted against their will. It did not matter whether the women were past the point of viability, or even whether they were already in labor. Their babies were killed all the same. 

The above could stand as an accurate description of what I witnessed in China's Guangdong province in 1979-80. In reality, it is what is happening right now in the neighboring province of Guangxi. And what has happened in county after county, province after province, over the past 27 years. The one-child terror campaign that started back in 1980 continues to the present day, violating women and tearing apart families throughout China.

Guangxi's proximity to Hong Kong allowed  word of the Communist crackdowns to leak out.

In fact, the only thing unusual about this latest campaign is how quickly news of these atrocities spread outside of China. Guangxi province is not far from Hong Kong. No sooner had the campaign begun in May of this year than word reached the former British colony and from there the outside world. Guangxi, like Guangdong and Hong Kong, is Cantonese speaking. It is also one of the more developed regions of China, where many people have cell phones and access to the Internet. It was by these means that the victims of the terror campaign communicated their suffering to the outside world.  

National Public Radio, the taxpayer-funded alternative to Rush Limbaugh, actually ran a story on the campaign on its Morning Edition show. This described in harrowing detail the plight of Guangxi resident Wei Linrong.  She and her husband, Liang Yage, already had one child but wanted a second. Mrs. Liang was arrested when she was seven months pregnant and forced to abort her child.  The Liangs are Christian, NPR reported, and do not believe in abortion.

The Hong Kong and foreign press also reported how local officials were imposing punitive fines on those who had already given birth to second children.  These fines were, in some cases, equivalent to several years' income. 

In response to these heavy-handed tactics riots broke out in 28 towns throughout the region.  Thousands went on the rampage, storming government buildings, breaking windows, smashing furniture and vandalizing vehicles. Some rioters even tried to set buildings on fire. To quell the unrest, the regional government called in hundreds of armed police.

Tian Congming, President of Xinhua News Agency.  This Agency claimed that the Chinese who rioted against the one-child policy were only to be "re-educated." 

The sympathy of the foreign press was obviously with the victims of forced abortions. NPR’s Morning Edition told not just the Liang's story, but other tales of Chinese women whose babies were aborted weeks, sometimes days before they were due to be born.  The Los Angeles Times published full-color photos of the riots and printed the stories of peasants who had “finally had enough.”  Even the New York Times finally got into the act with a long piece about the tragic inner-city abortion rates among young, unmarried Chinese women.  (It apparently took the Times several days to figure out a pro-abortion slant.)

The official Xinhua News Agency, reacting to the foreign media coverage, went into damage control mode. Xinhua claimed that only 28 people were arrested in the aftermath of the riots, a number which seems ridiculously low under the circumstances.  Xinhua also suggested that instead of jail terms the misguided villagers were to get counseling:  4,200 Communist Party cadres had been dispatched to the area to engage the villagers in dialogue about their complaints and ease tension in the 28 troubled towns. Xinhua did not reveal whether these cadres were armed.

Those arrested, whether 28 or, more likely, several hundred in number cannot expect to be treated well in jail.  A blind attorney, who has been one of the leading activists in China against forced abortions, was recently severely beaten while in jail.  Human rights groups say prison officials ordered fellow inmates to beat him after he resisted having his head shaved and insisted on his legal rights.  This is unusual only in that the officials themselves did not administer the beating.

How many more millions of women will have to suffer forced abortion before China's leaders realize the bankruptcy of the policy they adopted so long ago? (Steven W. Mosher, One-Child Terror Campaign Continues)

 

Additionally, episodic persecution of Catholics in the underground Church in Red China continues in some parts of that country in spite the call for "unity" by Ratzinger/Benedict. A policy of "reconciliation" based on a misrepresentations and contradictions will result in one thing and one thing alone: the silencing of those Catholics in the underground Church who have heretofore been opposed to Communism and who will learn, much so many, although not all, Catholics convinced that Summorum Pontificum represents the start of the "restoration" of the Catholic Church, how to be silent in the face of one outrage after another. Or to quote the words of the fictional John Ross Ewing, Jr., "Once you lose your integrity, the rest is easy."

VII. Caught In the Diabolical Grip of Two Revolutions

The Catholics who remained faithful to the Church in the years following the Maoist Revolution that took control of mainland China October 1, 1949, longed to cling to the Successor of Saint Peter, the Vicar of Christ on earth. Struggling to survive in the midst of terrible persecutions and to practice their Faith as faithfully as they could, Catholics in the underground Church in Red China looked to the Holy Father, Pope Pius XII, for support and consolation and encouragement in the midst of the terrible sufferings that were being visited upon them. They, like most other Catholics in the world,. believed that the men who "succeeded" Pope Pius XII were true and legitimate Successors of Saint Peter, which is why they accepted the conciliar changes.

After all, the devil's men in Peking (now rendered Beijing in English) told Catholics in Red China them that they could not adhere to the Vicar of Christ. These Catholics wanted to demonstrate their loyalty to the men whom they believed to be the Supreme Pastors during their respective false "pontificates." They went along with the changes without realizing that they had been trapped by the devil into believing that the changes he effected as a result of the "Second" Vatican Council and its "popes" thereafter were from God Himself, who is immutable, and that it was necessary to oppose his, the devil's agents in Red China by going along with the conciliar revolution against the Catholic Faith in the name of "loyalty" to the Church.

Catholics in the underground Church in Red China have been struggling to survive. They have not had access to the information that most of us in other parts of the world have been able to access. We must pray to Our Lady, the Queen of the Apostles, that the truth of our ecclesiastical situation will be made manifest to the Catholics in Red China so that they can recognize that Ratzinger/Benedict is not a true Successor of Saint Peter, simply another kind of revolutionary, one who has made war against Catholicism throughout his priesthood, as demonstrated earlier in this article. We need to pray as well that these Catholics will be the beneficiaries of the Triumph of Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart sooner rather than later.

VIII. Answers to Questions

I posed a series of questions in October 2005, six months before I began to write about plausibility of sedevacantism and that it applied in our circumstances, concerning the invitation that Ratzinger/Benedict XVI had made to two bishops of the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association to attend that year's "synod"of conciliar "bishops." These questions have now been answered by Ratzinger/Benedict's Letter to Bishops, Priests, Consecrated Persons and Lay Faithful of Red China and the recently-released Compendium:

1) Have the schismatic bishops been forced to abjure their support of the Red Chinese government's anti-life population policies?

2) Will the "reconciled" bishops who have served in the rump church be able to publicly oppose the evils of the Red Chinese government?

3) Will the Vatican demand the complete dissolution of the entire structure of the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association?

4) If not, will "underground" bishops and priests be required to register with the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association?

5) Is the Vatican going to require a cessation of the persecution and arrest of underground Catholics (bishops, priests, consecrated religious laity) in order to continue its "discussions" about the establishment of "diplomatic relations" with the "People's Republic" of China?

6) Will the Vatican require the marriages officiated by the bishops and the priests of the schismatic church in Red China to be regularized?

7) What will the Vatican do about the confessions heard by priests who were ordained by and associated with schismatic bishops nominated by the pro-abortion, pro-contraception, pro-sterilization, pro-torture, pro-slave-labor Red Chinese communist government?

8) Will the Red Chinese authorities be required by the Vatican to apologize for its torture, imprisonment, execution, and harassment of Catholics faithful to Rome? Will those authorities be forced by the Vatican to clear the names of all persons, living and deceased, who have been branded as "criminals" for adhering to an "illegal" religion?

9) Or will the the Vatican simply wave its bureaucratic hand and pretend, positivistically, that there has "always been one church in China" and seek to "educate" the Catholics who have been suffering in the underground church that they must accommodate themselves to the "actual reality" of the situation in their country and thus silence themselves about the evils being promoted by the government? (See There is Schism and Then There is Schism, 2005)

 

Question number nine has been answered very clearly in the affirmative by Ratzinger/Benedict's Letter to Bishops, Priests, Consecrated Persons and Lay Faithful of Red China and the recently-released Compendium. If you want a nutshell summary of the meaning of Ratzinger/Benedict's Letter to Bishops, Priests, Consecrated Persons and Lay Faithful of Red China and the recently-released Compendium, good readers, just read question nine and you will understand everything you need to know about their contents without having to wade through all of the contradictions and errors.

Even those conditions, whose letter and spirit were violated most knowingly by the lords of the counterfeit church of  conciliarism, that had been imposed in 1988 and 1998 by Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II concerning contacts between members of the underground Church in Red China were swept away by Ratzinger/Benedict in one fell swoop in his Letter to Bishops, Priests, Consecrated Persons and Lay Faithful of Red China:

Considering in the first place some positive developments of the situation of the Church in China, and in the second place the increased opportunities and greater ease in communication, and finally the requests sent to Rome by various Bishops and priests, I hereby revoke all the faculties previously granted in order to address particular pastoral necessities that emerged in truly difficult times.

Let the same be applied to all directives of a pastoral nature, past and recent. The doctrinal principles that inspired them now find a new application in the directives contained herein.

 

Positive developments?

There has been positivism in the mind of Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, reflected in the body of his Letter to Bishops, Priests, Consecrated Persons and Lay Faithful of Red China. Positive developments? Joseph Ratzinger's Letter to Bishops, Priests, Consecrated Persons and Lay Faithful of Red China is a surrender of the faithful Catholics in the underground Church in Red China in an pathetic effort to advance the false premises of his "new ecclesiology." All of the verbiage in Ratzinger/Benedict's Letter to Bishops, Priests, Consecrated Persons and Lay Faithful of Red China is simply a smokescreen to sweep away the "restrictions" of the past and to place the burden of "reconciliation" in Red China upon the very Catholics who have suffered so much and for so long.

 

IX. As We Prepare for the Birthday of Holy Mother Church

Pentecost Sunday is celebrated two days from now. We must continue to keep Our Lady and the Apostles company in prayer as we pray our Novena to God the Holy Ghost, recognizing the Catholic Church, born on Pentecost Sunday, has grown as a result of martyrs who have been willing to shed their blood rather than to compromise one article of the Faith at any time for any reason.

We must be willing to suffer the white martyrdom of ridicule and criticism and rejection and ostracism for refusing to recognize or associate with any of the spiritual robber barons of the counterfeit church of conciliarism who are so blithe in the offenses they commit against God so regularly and who are so dismissive of the gravity of error (save for "defections" from conciliarism by fully traditional Catholics and save for any effort to review the nature and the extent of the crimes of the Third Reich as such defections are "unforgivable" errors that must be "corrected") that do so much harm to the souls for whom Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ on the wood of the Holy Cross in atonement for our sins (a truth of the Faith that "Archbishop" Robert Zollitsch denied forty-nine days ago now and has still remain in "office" without a word of protest from the kindly apostle of the toleration of error, Ratzinger/Benedict). We must cleave exclusively to true bishops and to true priests who make no concessions to conciliarism or its officials in the slightest.

Obviously, we must, as always, spend time in prayer before Our Lord's Real Presence in the Most Blessed Sacrament and pray as many Rosaries each day as our states-in-life permit, using the shield of Our Lady's Brown Scapular of Mount Carmel and the weapon of her Rosary to protect us from the contagion of apostasy and betrayal that is all around us. We must also, of course, make reparation for our own many sins by offering up all of our prayers and sufferings and sacrifices and humiliations and penances and mortifications and fastings to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary.

The final victory belongs to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. We must pray to her, the Spouse of God the Holy Ghost, to cooperate with the Seven Gifts and the Twelve Fruits of the Holy Ghost so that we can be instruments, unworthy though we may be, of planting the seeds for the restoration of Holy Mother Church and of the Social Reign of Christ the King so that everyone in the whole will exclaim with hearts consecrated to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary:

Viva Cristo Rey! Vivat Christus Rex!

Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us.

 

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint 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.

Saint Mary Magdalene de Pazzi, pray for us.

See also: A Litany of Saints

Isn't it time to pray a Rosary now?