Short And To The Catholic Point

There have been many exceedingly long articles on this site in its nearly seventy-three month existence. There have also been some relatively short articles to appear on this site. This may be the shortest of them all.

William"Cardinal" Levada, fresh from his work at Our Lady of Guadalupe Seminary in Denton, Nebraska, on Wednesday, March 3, 2010, surfaced three days later, Saturday, March 6, 2010, at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, to attempt to explain the false ecumenism that is preached and practiced by the lords of the counterfeit church of conciliarism. There was nothing really new in his address, which you can read for yourselves if you have the stomach to do so and desire a little extra penance in the middle of this Third Week of Lent.

Levada's talk was pure concilairism, including his reassurances that the Catholic Church does indeed possess all of the essential elements, that there is nothing outside of her that she lacks. The goal of false ecumenism is to effect "union" of non-Catholic Christians with the Catholic Church, thereby "enriching" the Catholic Church by incorporating into her different, newer modes of expressing Faith and Worship. Levada cited very specifically the example of Anglicanorum Coetibus as a model for such "enrichment."

There is, of course, a slight problem citing Anglicanorum Coetibus: the conservative/traditional Anglicans who are seeking to shift their seating arrangements on the S. S. One World Church are not being required to abjure their errors and they are being permitted to keep liturgical rites that were deemed heretical by Pope Saint Pius V in Regnans in Excelsis, March 5, 1570. Levada cited none other than a fellow arch-Modernist, the late Father Yves Congar, O.P., to justify this false, erroneous position:

This is the first time that the Catholic Church has reached out in response to men and women of Western Christianity who desire full communion and accorded them not just a place among many, but a distinctive place. This is not surprising. Twenty-eight years ago, the great historian of ecumenism, Fr. Yves Congar, wrote that if we take seriously that the Holy Spirit has been working among our fellow Christians, we have to take seriously the ways they express their beliefs. When their particular expression of faith adds harmony to ours, and ours add harmony to theirs, the logical step is to pass from talking longingly about unity to living in unity, a unity whose essence is revealed in harmonious diversity. The unity Christ desires is visible; it is not elusive or even unreachable. Likewise, the totality that Christ desires is visible. These assertions lie behind the famous teachings of Lumen gentium that the Church of Christ subsists in the Catholic Church, but it is equally true to say that the unity Christ desires for His Church can always be added to, just as there is room for another instrument in the orchestra. The totality that Christ desires does exist in terms of the elements of sanctification and truth that the Church possesses, but the sharing of those elements, then the manner of celebrating them, is still far from complete. We sometimes do not know the value of what we possess and we need the spirit-filled insights of others to recognize the treasures we have.

"Spirit-filled insights of others"? While it is certainly true that Protestantism has "spirit-filled insights," the "spirit" responsible for those "insights" is named the devil. Who says so? The devil himself, that's who:

As the strange circumstances of Nicola's possession became known everywhere, several Calvinist preachers came with their followers, to "expose this popish cheat," as they said. On their entrance, the devil saluted them mockingly, called them by name, and told them that they had come in obedience to him. One of the preachers took his Protestant prayer book, and began to read it with a very solemn face. The devil laughed at him, and putting on a most comical look, he said: "Ho! Ho! My good friend; do you intend to expel me with your prayers and hymns? Do you think that they will cause me any pain? Don't you know that they are mine? I helped to compose them!"

"I will expel thee in the name of God," said the preacher, solemnly.

"You!" said the devil mockingly. "You will not expel me either in the name of God, or in the name of the devil. Did you ever hear of one devil driving out another?"

"I am not a devil," said the preacher, angrily, "I am a servant of Christ."

"A servant of Christ, indeed!" said Satan, with a sneer. "What! I tell you, you are worse than I am. I believe, and you do not want to believe. Do you suppose that you can expel me from the body of this miserable wretch? Ha! Go first and expel all the devils that are in your own heart!"

The preacher took his leave, somewhat discomfited. On going away, he said, turning up the whites of his eyes, "O Lord, I pray thee, assist this poor creature!"

"And I pray Lucifer," cried the evil spirit, "that he may never leave you, but may always keep you firmly in his power, as he does now. Go about your business, now. You are all mine, and I am your master." (Exorcism of Nicola Aubrey)

Who says that Protestants are in danger of losing their souls for all eternity? The Mother of God, that's who:

Then the Lady said, "Where does that heretic live who cut the willow tree? Does he not want to be converted?"

Pierre [Port-Combet, who had become a Calvinist] mumbled an answer. The Lady became more serious, "Do you think that I do not know that you are the heretic? Realize that your end is at hand. If you do not return to the True Faith, you will be cast into Hell! But if you change your beliefs, I shall protect you before God. Tell people to pray that they may gain the good graces which, God in His mercy has offered to them."

Pierre was filled with sorrow and shame and moved away from the Lady. Suddenly realizing that he was being rude, Pierre stepped closer to her, but she had moved away and was already near the little hill. He ran after her begging, "Please stop and listen to me. I want to apologize to you and I want you to help me!"

The Lady stopped and turned. By the time Pierre caught up to her, she was floating in the air and was already disappearing from sight. Suddenly, Pierre realized that the Most Blessed Virgin Mary had appeared to him! He fell to his knees and cried buckets of tears, "Jesus and Mary I promise you that I will change my life and become a good Catholic. I am sorry for what I have done and I beg you please, to help me change my life…"

On August 14, 1656, Pierre became very sick. An Augustinian priest came to hear his confession and accepted him back into the Catholic Church. Pierre received Holy Communion the next day on the Feast of the Assumption. After Pierre returned to the Catholic Faith, many others followed him. His son and five daughters came back to the Catholic Church as well as many Calvinists and Protestants. Five weeks later on September 8, 1656, Pierre died and was buried under the miraculous willow tree, just as he had asked. (Our Lady of the Willow Tree.)

Protestantism is of its very nature a diabolically planned and executed revolution against the Divine Plan that God Himself instituted to effect man's return to Him through the Catholic Church. Conciliarists, however, believe that Protestantism has gained "legitimacy" over the course of time as the very existence of its over thirty-three thousand different sects has been the working of God the Holy Ghost, Who means to "enrich" what is believed to be the Catholic Church by means of "grafting" the liturgies and "spiritualities" of the Protestants sects into her own life. This belief, of course, is false. It is ruinous to the Catholic Faith, which can having nothing to do with liturgies that have been inspired by the devil and forms of "spirituality" that make no place at all for the woman the devil hates, Mary our Immaculate Queen, and her Most Holy Rosary.

The Congarian-Ratzingerian-Levadian-Kasperian approach to false ecumenism is nothing new. It has been emerging for the better part of the past century. Indeed, Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI himself has praised the "World Missionary Meeting" of Protestants in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1910 that marked the formal beginning of false ecumenism (see Getting Bolder In His Apostasy and Still In Defiance of the Truth).

It was one of the chief goals of the leaders of the hijacked Liturgical Movement that had been started by the late Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., to overcome the lingering effects of Jansenism in liturgical studies to use the Sacred Liturgy as a vessel to promote false ecumenism. And the goal of engaging in "spiritual ecumenism" that "respects" the "diverse" "spiritualities" of Protestant sects was established in Catholic circles by Abbe Paul Couturier, a direct disciple of the late scientific and theological evolutionist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J., whose work was cited by Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II at footnote fifty in Ut Unum Sint, May 25, 1995, and directly by Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI in Cologne, Germany, on Friday, August 19, 2005 (Ecumenical meeting at the Archbishopric of Cologne English).

The passage of time does not confer legitimacy on that which is false, and everything that is false has its origin in the author of lies himself, the devil. Does the passage of time confer legitimacy on the devil? Conciliarists are willing to accept that Protestantism is false. Its liturgical rites are false. Each sect of Protestantism is based upon a reject of Catholicism in whole or in part, and it is only when Protestants reject Protestantism entirely in an formal statement of abjuration that they can be received into the Catholic Church as they accept absolutely everything she teaches in the Holy Name of her Divine Founder and Invisible Head, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Yet the conciliarists speak and act that absolutely no one in any Protestant sect is in any danger at all of losing his immortal soul for all eternity, which is an act of unspeakable cruelty to Protestants (and to the Orthodox) and a slap in the face to Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ Who wants everyone on the face of this earth to be converted unconditionally to the true Faith.

The paradoxes of conciliarism are stupefying to behold. Conciliarists believe that Protestantism has gained legitimacy over the course of time and that its "spiritualities" can "enrich" the "Christian religion" while contending at the same time that the immutable teachings of the Catholic Church have lost legitimacy as they were conditioned by the historical circumstances in which they were pronounced blaspheming, of course, God the Holy Ghost. That which is false can be rendered true with the passage of time while that which is true becomes obsolete in its "particulars"? Never. Not according to the true God of Divine Revelation.

Unity-in-diversity? That shibboleth was handled by Father Francis Connell in the decade before the "Second" Vatican Council met to agree on an apostasy that the "Church of Christ subsists in the Catholic Church" (Lumen Gentium, November 21, 1964.)

"To characterize the relation between Catholics and Protestants as 'unity-in-diversity' is misleading, inasmuch as it implies that essentially Catholics are one with heretics, and that their diversities are only accidental. Actually, the very opposite is the true situation. For, however near an heretical sect may seem to be to the Catholic Church in its particular beliefs, a wide gulf separates them, insofar as the divinely established means whereby the message of God is to be communicated to souls--the infallible Magisterium of the Church--is rejected by every heretical sect. By telling Protestants that they are one with us in certain beliefs, in such wise as to give the impression that we regard this unity as the predominant feature of our relation with them, we are actually misleading them regarding the true attitude of the Catholic Church toward those who do not acknowledge Her teaching authority. (Father Francis Connell, Father Connell Answers Moral Questions, published in 1959 by Catholic University of America Press, p. 11; quoted in Fathers Dominic and Francisco Radecki, CMRI, TUMULTUOUS TIMES, p. 348.)

Short and to the Catholic point, my good and very few readers, our true popes have taught us that the only way to effect the conversion of non-Catholics to the true Church is to exhort them to do so urgently and conditionally:

"It is for this reason that so many who do not share 'the communion and the truth of the Catholic Church' must make use of the occasion of the Council, by the means of the Catholic Church, which received in Her bosom their ancestors, proposes [further] demonstration of profound unity and of firm vital force; hear the requirements [demands] of her heart, they must engage themselves to leave this state that does not guarantee for them the security of salvation. She does not hesitate to raise to the Lord of mercy most fervent prayers to tear down of the walls of division, to dissipate the haze of errors, and lead them back within holy Mother Church, where their Ancestors found salutary pastures of life; where, in an exclusive way, is conserved and transmitted whole the doctrine of Jesus Christ and wherein is dispensed the mysteries of heavenly grace.

"It is therefore by force of the right of Our supreme Apostolic ministry, entrusted to us by the same Christ the Lord, which, having to carry out with [supreme] participation all the duties of the good Shepherd and to follow and embrace with paternal love all the men of the world, we send this Letter of Ours to all the Christians from whom We are separated, with which we exhort them warmly and beseech them with insistence to hasten to return to the one fold of Christ; we desire in fact from the depths of the heart their salvation in Christ Jesus, and we fear having to render an account one day to Him, Our Judge, if, through some possibility, we have not pointed out and prepared the way for them to attain eternal salvation. In all Our prayers and supplications, with thankfulness, day and night we never omit to ask for them, with humble insistence, from the eternal Shepherd of souls the abundance of goods and heavenly graces. And since, if also, we fulfill in the earth the office of vicar, with all our heart we await with open arms the return of the wayward sons to the Catholic Church, in order to receive them with infinite fondness into the house of the Heavenly Father and to enrich them with its inexhaustible treasures. By our greatest wish for the return to the truth and the communion with the Catholic Church, upon which depends not only the salvation of all of them, but above all also of the whole Christian society: the entire world in fact cannot enjoy true peace if it is not of one fold and one shepherd." (Pope Pius IX, Iam Vos Omnes, September 13, 1868.)

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. (Pope Leo XIII, referring to the Orthodox in Praeclara Gratulationis Publicae, June 20, 1884.)

Let, therefore, the separated children draw nigh to the Apostolic See, set up in the City which Peter and Paul, the Princes of the Apostles, consecrated by their blood; to that See, We repeat, which is "the root and womb whence the Church of God springs," not with the intention and the hope that "the Church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth" will cast aside the integrity of the faith and tolerate their errors, but, on the contrary, that they themselves submit to its teaching and government. Would that it were Our happy lot to do that which so many of Our predecessors could not, to embrace with fatherly affection those children, whose unhappy separation from Us We now bewail. Would that God our Savior, "Who will have all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth,"[29] would hear us when We humbly beg that He would deign to recall all who stray to the unity of the Church! In this most important undertaking We ask and wish that others should ask the prayers of Blessed Mary the Virgin, Mother of divine grace, victorious over all heresies and Help of Christians, that She may implore for Us the speedy coming of the much hoped-for day, when all men shall hear the voice of Her divine Son, and shall be "careful to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace." (Pope Pius XI, Mortalium Animos, January 6, 1928.)

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Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI and William Levada and Walter "Cardinal" Kasper, the President of the "Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, do not accept any of this. Indeed, they reject the Catholic Church's consistent condemnation of "inter-religious" prayer services and of "inter-religious" dialogue that was reiterated so forcefully by Pope Pius XI as he explained in Mortalium Animos that the sort of "inter-religious dialogue" that has been praised and practiced by the conciliar "popes" and their "bishops" and priests/presbyters was condemned long ago by Lactantius:

Furthermore, in this one Church of Christ no man can be or remain who does not accept, recognize and obey the authority and supremacy of Peter and his legitimate successors. Did not the ancestors of those who are now entangled in the errors of Photius and the reformers, obey the Bishop of Rome, the chief shepherd of souls? Alas their children left the home of their fathers, but it did not fall to the ground and perish for ever, for it was supported by God. Let them therefore return to their common Father, who, forgetting the insults previously heaped on the Apostolic See, will receive them in the most loving fashion. For if, as they continually state, they long to be united with Us and ours, why do they not hasten to enter the Church, "the Mother and mistress of all Christ's faithful"? Let them hear Lactantius crying out: "The Catholic Church is alone in keeping the true worship. This is the fount of truth, this the house of Faith, this the temple of God: if any man enter not here, or if any man go forth from it, he is a stranger to the hope of life and salvation. Let none delude himself with obstinate wrangling. For life and salvation are here concerned, which will be lost and entirely destroyed, unless their interests are carefully and assiduously kept in mind."

Pope Pius XI wrote Mortalium Animos to condemn an ecumenical "movement" that originated in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1910 and would be enshrined in the liturgy and praxis of the counterfeit church of conciliarism that has been headed by men who have defected from the Catholic Faith in many ways. Who has praised that Edinburgh conference on no less than two different occasions recently? You got it? Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI.

Let me repeat what I wrote twenty-seven days ago:

We must recognize the simple truth that it is impossible to remain in good standing with the Catholic Church if one believes and speaks and acts in the manner of Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI and Walter Kasper and their fellow conciliarists. The Sixth Ecumenical Council of the Catholic Church, the Third Council of Constantinople, explained that the Catholic Faith is unchanging, rejecting innovation in no uncertain terms, and it is innovation and novelty, such as Ratzinger/Benedict's "hermeneutic of continuity and discontinuity" to justify the apostasies and blasphemies and sacrileges of conciliarism as being in concert with the Catholic Faith, that has led to a meltdown of the Faith--and to silence in the face of abject, open, public and undeniable offenses against the honor and majesty and glory of God by this false "pontiff"--among a large preponderance of Catholics, both clergy and laity alike, who are as of yet attached to the structures of the counterfeit church of conciliarism:

These firings, therefore, with all diligence and care having been formulated by us, we define that it be permitted to no one to bring forward, or to write, or to compose, or to think, or to teach a different faith. Whosoever shall presume to compose a different faith, or to propose, or teach, or hand to those wishing to be converted to the knowledge of the truth, from the Gentiles or Jews, or from any heresy, any different Creed; or to introduce a new voice or invention of speech to subvert these things which now have been determined by us, all these, if they be Bishops or clerics let them be deposed, the Bishops from the Episcopate, the clerics from the clergy; but if they be monks or laymen: let them be anathematized. (Sixth Ecumenical: Constantinople III).

No true pope of the Catholic Church can teach error or introduce "innovation" or teach in any way at any time anything contrary to the Faith. Keep focused on the fact that the Catholic Church brings forth her teaching with "ease and security," not with obscurity or ambiguity or any degree of contradiction of her perennial teaching, which is, of course, absolutely immutable:

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. (Pope Pius XI, Mortalium Animos, January 6, 1928.)

This is the day that Our Lady first appeared to the fourteen year old Bernadette Soubirous in the Grotto of Massabielle outside of Lourdes, France. The apparition of Our Lady of Lourdes occurred less than twelve years after her apparition to Maximin Giraud and Melanie Calvat on September 19, 1846, in La Salette, France, and a little less than thirteen years before her apparition in Pontmain, France, and about eighteen years before her apparition in Pellevoisin. That Our Lady should honor France, the elder daughter of the Catholic Church, so many times within a century of the French Revolution speaks to us of the necessity of rejecting all of the evil influences of that revolution that have corrupted the faith of so many Catholics by means of the "Second" Vatican Council and the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo liturgical service.

Mr. Frank Rega, a Third Order Franciscan who is the author of Saint Francis of Assisi and the Conversion of the Muslims, sent the following remarkable quotation from a book dealing about Pope Pius VII's dealings with Napoleon Bonaparte, who wanted to institutionalize the principles of the French Revolution in a "moderate manner" with the full assent of the Catholic Church:

"Times have changed -- times have changed! The Church must adapt and be reconciled with the Revolution." Napoleon Bonaparte haranguing Pope Pius VII, whom he held prisoner in France. (Robin Anderson, Pope Pius VII, TAN Books, 2001, page 131).

Who believes that what he believes to be the Catholic Church has to "adapt and be reconciled with the Revolution"? Of course. Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI:

Let us be content to say here that the text serves as a countersyllabus and, as such, represents on the part of the Church, an attempt at an official reconciliation with the new era inaugurated in 1789. Only from this perspective can we understand, on the one hand, the ghetto-mentality, of which we have spoken above; only from this perspective can we understand, on the other hand, the meaning of the remarkable meeting of the Church and the world. Basically, the word "world" means the spirit of the modern era, in contrast to which the Church's group-consciousness saw itself as a separate subject that now, after a war that had been in turn both hot and cold, was intent on dialogue and cooperation. (Joseph Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology, p. 382.)

Mr. Rega, who is not a sedevacantist, sent me the following observation after I sent him the full version of the quotation above from Principles of Catholic Theology:

Gosh! I never realized that the encyclicals of the prior popes were inspired by group-consciousness!

Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI does not believe that God the Holy Ghost, the very Third Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, inspired the popes of the Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries to write as they did. He believes that such teaching, although valid at a given point in time, can become "obsolete" in the particulars it contains as the particular language used to convey that teaching was "conditioned" by the historical circumstances in which it was formulated, a belief that has been condemned by the authority of the Catholic Church and is completely Modernist. However, Ratzinger/Benedict's logically absurd and philosophically condemned nature of dogmatic truth is what makes it possible for him and for his conciliar cronies, such as Walter Kasper, to eviscerate the teaching of the Catholic Church as the engage in "obstinate wranglings" with non-Catholics who simply need to be converted to the true Faith.

Begging Our Lady to help us in this hour of apostasy and betrayal, may we pray as many Rosaries each day as our states-in-life permit, asking her to help us to cleave exclusively to true bishops and to true priests who make absolutely no concessions to conciliarism or to its false shepherds whatsoever.

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Yes, Our Lady's Immaculate Heart will triumph, and that triumph will sweep away all of conciliarism's apostasies. May it be our privilege during this coming Lent to plant a few seeds for the flowering of this triumph as we die to self and make reparation for our own many sins as the totally consecrated slaves of her Divine Son through that same Immaculate Heart of hers.

Short (well, relatively so) and to the Catholic point.


© Copyright 2010, Thomas A. Droleskey. All rights reserved.

Short And To The Catholic Point

by Thomas A. Droleskey