by
Thomas A. Droleskey
So few commentators, including professional Vaticanologists such as John L. Allen, Jr., of the National Catholic Reporter (aka National Catholic Distorter), understand that the mind of Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI is steeped in contradiction and paradox and ambiguity. Rejecting Scholasticism (see
Ratzinger's War Against Catholicism), the official philosophy of the Catholic Church in favor of the condemned precepts of the "new theology" of Hans Urs von Balthasar and Henri de Lubac and Maurice Blondel, et al., Ratzinger/Benedict is prone to contradict himself within the context of his own writing, a fact that was pointed out by the anti-sedeplenist journal New Oxford Review:
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.”
So the Church’s Magisterium will not “exert itself with all its vigor,” because “conscience has the last word.” Indeed, Ratzinger says that “one must follow the erring conscience.” Does the Church support relativism too? Pope John Paul II said in his Encyclical Veritatis Splendor, “Conscience is not an infallible judge” (n. 62; italics in original).
What happened to a rightly formed conscience? The Catechism says, “Personal conscience and reason should not be set in opposition to the moral law or the Magisterium of the Church” (n. 2039), and “One must therefore work to correct the errors of moral conscience” (n. 1793). (A Contradictory Definition of Relativism. See also: 
Cardinal Ratzinger's Subjectivism.)
It is precisely because Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI rejects the clarity and certitude of Scholasticism that his Modernist mind is lost in the fog of contradiction and paradox and ambiguity. Ratzinger/Benedict believes in pure Modernist conception of truth, contending that dogmatic truth is so complex and fraught with multiple meanings that it can never be expressed adequately in human language at any one time, which is why it is always necessary to re-examine and reformulate such truths over and over again with the passage of time and in light of the "different" circumstances in which men find themselves. As I have pointed out endlessly on this site and noted in any number of lectures (see Errors of Benedict XVI, part 1, Errors of Benedict XVI, part 2, Errors of Benedict XVI, part 3, and Errors of Benedict XVI, part 4), Ratzinger/Benedict's conception of dogmatic truth is contrary to right reason and has been condemned by the authority of the Catholic Church. Ratzinger/Benedict's conception of dogmatic truth is also an act of blasphemy against the Third Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, God the Holy Ghost, as it is He who has inspired the Fathers of various dogmatic councils to express dogmatic formulae in the precise language that they used to do so.
Ratzinger/Benedict does not believe, ultimately, that God reveals Himself clearly and unambiguously. Ratzinger/Benedict believes in a conception of false god, one who is obscure in his revelation, one whose work must always be refined by human effort, one who "reveals" himself even through false religions, including those the Sacred Divinity of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
To give just one example of this "obscure" "god" who hides his "revelation," one can look at Ratzinger/Benedict's philosophically absurd and dogmatically condemned "hermeneutic of continuity and discontinuity." Ratzinger/Benedict's "god" had to this "truth" from men prior to his, Ratzinger/Benedict's, making it known to us in his Christmas address to the members of the conciliar curia on December 22, 2005. Yes, Ratzinger/Benedict's "god" kept the "knowledge" of the "hermeneutic of continuity and discontinuity" from the minds of men hidden until Ratzinger/Benedict revealed it when he wrote:
"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.)
"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"? It was necessary to learn? This means that God had hidden this "truth," which is, of course a philosophically absurd and dogmatically condemned exercise in blasphemy against God the Holy Ghost, for nearly two millennia. This means that the following dogmatic degree of the [First] Vatican Council was erroneous, that God the Holy Ghost failed the Fathers of that Vatican Council, that God the Holy Ghost failed Pope Pius IX, under whose solemn authority the following decree was issued:
- For the doctrine of the faith which God has revealed is put forward
- not as some philosophical discovery capable of being perfected by human intelligence,
- but as a divine deposit committed to the spouse of Christ to be faithfully protected and infallibly promulgated.
- Hence, too, that meaning of the sacred dogmas is ever to be maintained which has once been declared by holy mother church, and there must never be any abandonment of this sense under the pretext or in the name of a more profound understanding.
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. . . .
3. If anyone says that it is possible that at some time, given the advancement of knowledge, a sense may be assigned to the dogmas propounded by the church which is different from that which the church has understood and understands: let him be anathema.
And so in the performance of our supreme pastoral office, we beseech for the love of Jesus Christ and we command, by the authority of him who is also our God and saviour, all faithful Christians, especially those in authority or who have the duty of teaching, that they contribute their zeal and labour to the warding off and elimination of these errors from the church and to the spreading of the light of the pure faith.
But since it is not enough to avoid the contamination of heresy unless those errors are carefully shunned which approach it in greater or less degree, we warn all of their duty to observe the constitutions and decrees in which such wrong opinions, though not expressly mentioned in this document, have been banned and forbidden by this holy see. (Pope Pius IX, Vatican Council, Session III, Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith, Chapter 4, On Faith and Reason, April 24, 1870. SESSION 3 : 24 April 1870.)
If it was, as Ratzinger/Benedict contends, "necessary" to "learn" how we can "understand" the expressions of dogmatic truths differently at different times, then God the Holy Ghost did indeed fail Holy Mother Church at the [First] Vatican Council. Ratzinger/Benedict does not think in these terms, however, as to disbelieve in the nature of dogmatic truth as it has been defined by Holy Mother Church is to disbelieve in the very nature of God, which means that Ratzinger/Benedict, like his late mentor Hans Urs von Balthasar before him, believes that Divine revelation is obscure of its nature and is subject to perfection over time. And it is in this regard that Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI is of one mind and heart on many matters with the penultimate theological and biological evolutionist, a man who believed that God Himself was in the "process" of "becoming," the late Father Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J.
Although the Vaticanologist John Allen, Jr., is a bit confounded by Ratzinger/Benedict's past criticism of Teilhard de Chardin and his current praise of him. There is nothing, however, about which to be confounded. Ratzinger/Benedict lives in his foggy world of paradox and contradiction and ambiguity and thus has no problem finding "good" in the writings of one he has disagreed with in the past. That was then. This is now. The "anchorage" of truth has been moved and it is now useful for Ratzinger/Benedict to cite Chardin favorably as a means of "protecting" the environment, as the false "pontiff" did just six days ago, on Friday, July 24, 2009:
Though few might have cast him in advance as a "green pope," Pope Benedict XVI has amassed a striking environmental record, from installing solar panels in the Vatican to calling for ecological conversion. Now the pontiff has also hinted at a possible new look at the undeclared patron saint of Catholic ecology, the late French Jesuit scientist and philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.
Benedict's brief July 24 reference to Teilhard, praising his vision of the entire cosmos as a "living host," can be read on multiple levels -- as part of the pontiff's rapprochement with the Jesuits, or as a further instance of finding something positive to say about thinkers whose works have set off doctrinal alarms, as Benedict previously did with rebel Swiss theologian and former colleague
The potential implications for environmental theology, however, are likely to generate the greatest interest among Teilhard's fans and foes alike -- and more than a half-century after his death in 1955, the daring Jesuit still has plenty of both. Admirers trumpet Teilhard as a pioneer, harmonizing Christianity with the theory of evolution; critics charge that Teilhard's optimistic view of nature flirts with pantheism.
Benedict's comment came during a July 24 vespers service in the Cathedral of Aosta in northern Italy, where the pope took his annual summer vacation July 13-29.
Toward the end of a reflection upon the Letter to the Romans, in which St. Paul writes that the world itself will one day become a form of living worship, the pope said, "It's the great vision that later Teilhard de Chardin also had: At the end we will have a true cosmic liturgy, where the cosmos becomes a living host.
"Let's pray to the Lord that he help us be priests in this sense," the pope said, "to help in the transformation of the world in adoration of God, beginning with ourselves."
Though offered only in passing, and doubtless subject to overinterpretation, Benedict's line nevertheless triggered headlines in the Italian press about a possible "rehabilitation" of Teilhard, sometimes referred to as the "Catholic Darwin." That reading seemed especially tempting since, as a consummate theologian, Benedict is aware of the controversy that swirls around Teilhard, and would thus grasp the likely impact of a positive papal reference.
At the very least, the line seemed to offer a blessing for exploration of the late Jesuit's ideas. That impression appeared to be confirmed by the Vatican spokesperson, Jesuit Fr. Federico Lombardi, who said afterward, "By now, no one would dream of saying that [Teilhard] is a heterodox author who shouldn't be studied."
Teilhard's most prominent living disciple in Italy, lay theologian Vito Mancuso, told reporters that he was "pleasantly surprised" by Benedict's words and that they have "great importance."
Teilhard, who died in 1955 at the age of 73, was a French Jesuit who studied paleontology and participated in the 1920s-era discovery of "Peking Man" in China, a find that seemed to confirm a gradual development in the human species. Teilhard has also been linked to the 1912 discovery of "Piltdown Man" in England, later exposed as a hoax.
On the basis of his scientific work, Teilhard developed an evolutionary theology asserting that all creation is developing towards an "Omega Point," which he identified with Christ as the Logos, or "Word" of God. In that sense, Teilhard broadened the concept of salvation history to embrace not only individual persons and human culture, but the entire universe. In short order, Teilhard's thought became the obligatory point of departure for any Catholic treatment of the environment.
Yet from the beginning, Teilhard's theology was also viewed with caution by officials both of the Jesuit order and in the Vatican. Among other things, officials worried that his optimistic reading of nature compromised church teaching on original sin. In 1962 -- seven years after his death -- the Vatican's doctrinal office issued a warning that his works "abound in such ambiguities and indeed even serious errors, as to offend Catholic doctrine."
In 1981, on the 100th anniversary of Teilhard's birth, speculation erupted about a possible rehabilitation. It was fueled by a letter published in L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, by the then-Cardinal Secretary of State Agostino Casaroli, who praised the "astonishing resonance of his research, as well as the brilliance of his personality and richness of his thinking." Casaroli asserted that Teilhard had anticipated John Paul II's call to "be not afraid," embracing "culture, civilization and progress."
Responding to ferment created by the letter, the Vatican issued a statement insisting that its 1962 verdict on Teilhard still stands -- to date, Rome's last official pronouncement on Teilhard. (The statement was issued in July 1981, four months before then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI, took over as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.)
Across the years, Benedict has sometimes seemed to be of two minds himself.
In his 1968 work Introduction to Christianity, Ratzinger wrote that Eastern Christianity has a deeper appreciation for the "cosmic and metaphysical" dimension of Christianity than the West, but that the West seemed to be recovering that perspective, "especially as a result of stimuli from the work of Teilhard." He argued that Teilhard gave authentic expression to the Christology of St. Paul.
As pope, Benedict has occasionally used language that seems to reflect a Teilhardian touch. In his 2006 Easter homily, the pontiff referred to the theory of evolution, describing the Resurrection as "the greatest 'mutation,' absolutely the most crucial leap into a totally new dimension that there has ever been in the long history of life and its development."
Yet Ratzinger's ambivalence about Teilhard is of equally long vintage. In a commentary on the final session of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), a young Ratzinger complained that Gaudium et Spes, the "Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World," played down the reality of sin because of an overly "French," and specifically "Teilhardian," influence.
Overall, the impression is that Benedict finds much to like about Teilhard's cosmic vision, even if he also worries about interpretations at odds with orthodox faith.
Benedict's July 24 remark on Teilhard builds upon the pope's strong record on the environment, considered by many observers to be the most original feature of his social teaching. Most recently, Benedict devoted a section of his new social encyclical, Caritas in Veritate, to a call for deepening what he called "that covenant between human beings and the environment, which should mirror the creative love of God."
In her recent book Ten Commandments for the Environment: Pope Benedict XVI Speaks Out for Creation and Justice, Catholic writer Woodeene Koenig-Bricker described Benedict as "the greenest pope in history," arguing that he has not only made strong environmental statements but also put them into practice.
In that light, one wonders if Benedict's shade of green could eventually allow Teilhard to be named the patron saint of Catholic ecology de jure, as well as de facto. If so, July 24 could be remembered as the first stirring of an "evolutionary leap" in the late Jesuit's reputation and official standing. (http://ncronline.org/news/ecology/pope-cites-teilhardian-vision-cosmos-living-host)
The "cosmos as a living host"? No true Successor of Saint Peter has ever spoken in such a way. And while some who are desperate to maintain that Ratzinger/Benedict is indeed a true Successor of Peter might contend that the views about Chardin expressed by Ratzinger/Benedict are merely "personal" views, it is indeed one's personal views that cause one to defect from the Faith by virtue of violating the Divine Positive Law. One falls from the Faith by holding even just one proposition that has been condemned by the authority of the Catholic Church. One does not need to make any "formal" declaration to fall from the Faith. An antipope does not need to attempt to exercise papal infallibility to pronounce a false doctrine as true in order to fall from the Faith. All one needs to do is to hold to one proposition that has been condemned by the authority of the Catholic Church. (See Pope Leo XIII, Satis Cognitum, June 29, 1896, Number 9.)
Thus is that John L. Allen, Jr., does not understand that Ratzinger/Benedict does indeed believe in a similar, although not entirely identical, concept of dogmatic truth as that held by the late Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Although Ratzinger/Benedict uses a different linguistic device (the "hermeneutic of continuity and discontinuity), he believes in the sort of evolutionary principles of doctrine and liturgy as did Chardin, whose "cosmic Christ" is a denial of the God of Revelation, the God Who became Man in Our Lady's Virginal and Immaculate Womb by the power of God the Holy Ghost at the Annunciation and Who made of Himself a propiatory offering for our sins on the wood of the Holy Cross to make it possible for us to eternal life in the glory of the Beatific Vision for all eternity.
Ratzinger/Benedict has twice cited with great approval the work of a direct disciple of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the late Abbe Paul Couturier:
A third influence on Couturier was Teilhard de Chardin. Both men were scientists, and Teilhard's vision of the unity of creation and humanity expressed in the unity of Christ and the life of the Church appealed both scientifically and spiritually to Couturier. A reasoned consequence for him was that the unity of Christians was the sign for the unity of humanity, and that praying for the sanctification of Jews, Muslims and Hindus, among many others, could not fail but to lead to a new spiritual understanding of God where Christ could at last be recognised and understood. Couturier felt this keenly as he was partly Jewish and had been raised among Muslims in North Africa. It is worth noting that among Couturier's voluminous correspondents were Jews, Muslims, and Hindus, as well as every kind of Christian, all caught up in the Abbé's spirit of prayer, realising the significance and dimensions of prayer for the unity of Christians. Coincidentally, years later Mother Theresa spoke of the considerable number of Muslims who volunteered and worked at her house in Calcutta: 'If you are a Christian, I want to make you a better Christian - if you are a Muslim, I want to make you a better Muslim'. It cannot be denied that what those Muslims were seeing in Mother Theresa was Jesus Christ himself, just as the Abbe attracted so many to prayer across previously unbridgeable divides by his humility, penitence, and joyful charity in the peace of Christ.
2003-2004 also marks the 50th Anniversary of the launch of the Week of Prayer in Morocco as an act of charity and prayer among the people of Islam, a significant milestone in the experiences of today as much as then. (The Abbé Paul Couturier and Spiritual Ecumenism)
Does one begin to see a "convergence" in the direction of the the "Omega point" of the "synthesis of faith" in Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI's mind? A belief in some form of the evolution of the species is necessary to justify the evolution of dogma, to justify "evolving" the modernized version of the Immemorial Mass of Tradition into a form of the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo service by means of Summorum Pontificum. He wants traditionally-minded Catholics to "evolve" to a blithe acceptance of the Novus Ordo service and of conciliarism's novelties.
Having neutralized most, although not all, traditionally-minded Catholics attached to the Motu Mass and having succeeded in at least turning "down the dial" on criticism emanating from the ranks of the Society of Saint Pius X (no bishop or priest of the Society of Saint Pius X has yet to utter one word about Ratzinger/Benedict's blasphemous words and actions during his visit to Jordan and Israel from May 8, 2009, to May 15, 2009), Ratzinger/Benedict now cites Chardin directly in the case of "ecological" protection and the mythical "cosmic liturgy." Ratzinger/Benedict, who feels free to recast Catholic teaching in terms of Modernism and its step-child, the "new theology," is now "liberated" to cite Chardin more favorably even though he has been citing the work a disciple of Chardin, Paul Couturier, for some time now. This is only a logical "progression," an "evolution," if you will, of Ratzinger/Benedict's own Chardinian-like approach to the nature of dogmatic truth and the liturgy itself.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was wholly immersed in error. To cite him favorably is encourage interest in his work, which undermined belief in almost the entirety of the Catholic Faith in favor of a "new age" concoction that, in essence, said that humanity itself will evolve in progressive stages into "Christ" one day. Chardin's false, evolutionist theology was explored in Gerard Keane's Creation Rediscovered:
According to Professor Wolfgang Smith, Teilhard was convinced that God could only create "evolutively," and he thus believed the Church was wedded to an outmoded scientific outlook. Teilhard believed it was vital to revise doctrine and adapt theology to harmonize with Evolution. In contrast to the objective view of reality, which olds that the Universe is composed of real, distinct things, he proposed a very vague concept of "unification." Everything apparently is evolving through supposed convergence toward a future goal called Omega.
For Teilhard, God is a transcendent reality, but not in the sense as usually understood in traditional Christianity. Rather, it seems that god is a secondary to the primary reality, which is the evolutionary unfolding of all things. "God" somehow inserted Himself into this evolving force, and Christ is now the force drawing everything toward Omega. In such a concept God is clearly not the transcendent Creator of all things:
As early as in St. Paul and St. John we read that to create, to fulfill and to purify the world is, for God, to unify it by uniting it organically with himself. How does he unify it? By partially immersing himself in things, by becoming "element," and then, from this point of vantage in the heart of the matter, assuming the control and leadership of what we now call evolution. Christ, principle of universal vitality because sprung up as man among men, put himself in the position (maintained ever since) to subdue under himself, to purify, to direct and superanimate the general ascent of consciousness into which he inserted himself. (Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man, quoted in Creation Rediscovered, p. 304.)
He [Chardin] envisioned a synthesis of the Christian "God up above" with the Marxist "goal up ahead," and in so doing raised the question whether God is a still-evolving entity. Not surprisingly, his words were, and still are, rejected by the teaching Magisterium. He was prohibited by ecclesiastical fiat from publishing his theories during his lifetime and on June 30, 1962, the Holy Office issued a Monitum (or warning) against the writings of Teilhard on the grounds that they contained ambiguities and doctrinal errors. (This warning is still current, having been reaffirmed again on July 20, 1981.) But Teilhard was too shrewd to leave the Church or to get excommunicated, and was effective in subversion from within. (Gerard Keane, Creation Rediscovered, p. 304.)
The other great "synthesizer" of our time, Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, is also very shrewd, making an overt reference to Chardin in order to open up a "discussion" as to whether certain elements of his work can be useful in building the "better," "greener" world. Remember, Ratzinger is always willing to find "good" in those who, whether overtly or subtly, deny the Sacred Divinity of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, believing that error contains within itself some "seeds of truth," if you will, that can be "useful" in "understanding" our "cosmic journey."
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)
How can any honest Catholic contend with a straight face that Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI believes in the entirety of the Catholic Faith as it has been handed down to us without a shadow of change under the direct and infallible protection of God the Holy Ghost in the Catholic Church? Ratzinger/Benedict is indeed a Modernist revolutionary who is intent on using his absurd and dogmatically condemned "hermeneutic of continuity and discontinuity" to create a "synthesis," his own personal "omega point," if you will, between "elements" of the Catholic Faith and his own vision of the "Second" Vatican Council that he helped to planned and of which he has been a prime progenitor.
What was written of the then "Cardinal" Ratzinger in Si, Si, No, No, ten years ago is still true and quite relevant today:
His remarks come across as a fastidious apologia. Cardinal Ratzinger seems to have learned nothing from all that has happened. He is only concerned with showing the continuity of his theology, believing that by so doing he is defending both himself and Vatican II. From this defense a certain image of Cardinal Ratzinger as restorer of the Faith has been created; and it is an image in which many still believe. However, it is only blatant mystification.
The best known work of the Cardinal is the book, Introduction to Christianity, published in 1968 and translated into 17 languages. He speaks of it with satisfaction. Not withstanding, the Christology that he sets forth is scarcely orthodox. Sometimes he only very narrowly avoids the theology of heretics, which has been passively absorbed by the majority of Catholic theologians. He also affirms that Jesus the Messiah is a product of the faith of the primitive community: "He is the One who died on the cross, and Who, to the eyes of faith, rose" (Italian ed., Brescia, 1971, 4th ed., p.171) .The Resurrection is not then an historical fact, but a simple belief of the disciples. Like examples from the book could be multiplied.
The reputation of Ratzinger as restorer of the Church does not rest on his works. It is probably owing to the fact that several times he has quite clearly described certain disorders, and that he has always dissociated himself from the most extreme factions. But this takes away nothing from the modernist foundation of his theological vision: "Ratzinger is always like that: To counter the excesses, from which he keeps his distance, he never proposes Catholic truth, but rather an apparently more moderate error, which, nevertheless, in the logic of error, leads to the same ruinous conclusions" (SISINONO, no.6, 1993, p.6).
Some commentators have compared the Second Vatican Council to the Estates General of the French Revolution. Developing the analogy, one might say that Cardinal Ratzinger is a Girondist. The members of that faction were certainly more politically moderate than were the Jacobins, and especially their left wing (to which, in theology, we could compare the Kungs, Drewermanns, etc.), but they were no less revolutionary. They wanted to accomplish the same objectives, only in a more gradual, pragmatic manner. Their vision of the world, though, was identical: human reason exalted and placed in the center of the universe, democracy, bourgeois individualism; identical, too, was their hatred of Christianity, their desire to confiscate the goods of the Church, etc. (The Memories of a Destructive Mind: Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger's Milestones, part 2.)
Perhaps it would be good for reflexive defenders of Ratzinger/Benedict to come to grips with the reality that he spends more time discussing the "environment" than he does discussing the daily slaughter of the preborn by chemical and surgical means. Then again, a man who violates the First and Second Commandments so regularly and who offends God daily by offering the Novus Ordo travesty can accept violations of the Fifth Commandment with relative equanimity despite a word or two of condemnation about baby-killing now and again. There can no "better" world as long as Modernist revolutionaries such as himself violate the First and Second Commandments and reassure the "consciences" of men such as Caesar Obamus who violate the Fifth Commandment. The physical environment of the earth will deteriorate the more that grievous sins such as these continue to be committed with impunity.
We must have nothing at all to do with men such as Ratzinger/Benedict who are intent are finding their "inner Teilhard." Indeed, we must flee from them as we pray for their prompt return to the Catholic Faith and as we cleave to shepherds who make no concessions to the nonexistent legitimacy of Ratzinger/Benedict and his "bishops" as shepherds of the Catholic Church.
We, of course, need to make reparation for our own sins. Tomorrow, Saturday, August 1, 2009, is First Saturday, the sixth Saturday of the fifteen Saturdays of Bishop Robert Fidelis McKenna's
Rosary Crusade. We can console the good God and make reparation for our own sins by praying all fifteen decades of Our Lady's Most Holy Rosary, preferably as we spend time in earnest, fervent prayer before Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ's Real Presence in the Most Blessed Sacrament. We can help to build the truly better world by offering up all of our prayers and sacrifices and sufferings and mortifications and humiliations and rejections and other difficulties, both physical and spiritual, to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary.
What are we waiting for?
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 Ignatius of Loyola, pray for us.
Saint Francis Xavier, pray for us.
Saint Alphonsus Rodriguez, pray for us.
Saint Aloysius Gonzaga, pray for us.
Saint John Berchmans, pray for us.
Saint Robert Bellarmine, pray for us.
Saint Isaac Jogues, pray for us.
Saint Rene Goupil, pray for us.
Saint Jean Lalande, pray for us.
Saint Gabriel Lallemant, pray for us.
Saint Noel Chabanel, pray for us.
Saint Anthony Daniel, pray for us.
Saint Charles Garnier, pray for us.
Saint Peter Claver, pray for us.
Saint Stanislaus Kostka, pray for us.
Saint Paul Miki, pray for us.
Blessed Claude de la Colombiere, pray for us.
Blessed Edmund Campion, pray for us.
Blessed Edmund Arrowsmith, pray for us.
Blessed John Southwell, pray for us.
Father Jacques Marquette, pray for us.
Father Pierre-Jean De Smet, pray for us.
Father Miguel Augustin Pro, pray for us.
See also: A Litany of Saints
