Submerged in Novelty

by Thomas A. Droleskey

Conciliarism's embrace of one novelty, both doctrinal and liturgical, has produced engendered novelties in the lives of ordinary Catholics who remain in the conciliar structures. That is, conservative Catholics (and I was one of these for much, much longer than I should have been) believe that it is both necessary and useful to fight various conciliarist novelties with novel devices that have been heretofore the province of Protestant sects. Although a Catholic should be able to trust his pastor to shepherd his soul safely to Heaven, conciliarism's many novelties have forced many Catholics to be on their "guard" all of the time, ready to pounce with words and signs of protest when a pastor or a curate betrays the authentic sensus Catholicus and does things that are considered to be beyond the pale even in ethos where an egregious Protestant novelty, the Novus Ordo Missae, is the "norm" and the clear certainty provided by the Catholic Faith has been muddied as a result of the very murky waters of conciliarism.

As mentioned above, I know all about the battles fought by conservative Catholics to try to restrain the "excesses" of a revolution against the Faith that I have come to understand in the past fifteen years cannot be restrained by any force on earth. The conciliarist revolution, which is the triumph of the Modernist spirit, is just as much a revolt against the Divine Plan instituted by God to help to effect man's return to Him through the Catholic Church as was the Protestant Revolt in the Sixteenth Century. An entire council, the Council of Trent, dealt with the novelties of Protestantism and instituted safeguards against the infiltration of those novelties into the lives of ordinary Catholics. Sadly, the conciliar church's institutional structures exist to propagate some of the same novelties (as well as many others having their origin in some of the philosophies that emerged in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, such as Liberalism and Kantianism and Idealism and Hegelianism, among others) that were condemned by the Council of Trent. A Catholic who has a general sense of what is authentically in accord with the Church's perennial Tradition, therefore, finds himself attempting to erect bastions against a revolution that has as one of its chief goals the "razing of the bastions" that served to safeguard the Faith.

Pope Pius VIII put it this way in Traditi Humilitati, May 24, 1829, which dealt not only with warning bishops about those who wanted to raze the bastions of the Faith but against those who contended that non-Catholic religions were effective means of salvation for others, which is pretty much what conciliarism in general and Benedict XVI in particular contend:

Although God may console Us with you, We are nonetheless sad. This is due to the numberless errors and the teachings of perverse doctrines which, no longer secretly and clandestinely but openly and vigorously, attack the Catholic faith. You know how evil men have raised the standard of revolt against religion through philosophy (of which they proclaim themselves doctors) and through empty fallacies devised according to natural reason. In the first place, the Roman See is assailed and the bonds of unity are, every day, being severed. The authority of the Church is weakened and the protectors of things sacred are snatched away and held in contempt. The holy precepts are despised, the celebration of divine offices is ridiculed, and the worship of God is cursed by the sinner.All things which concern religion are relegated to the fables of old women and the superstitions of priests. Truly lions have roared in Israel. With tears We say: "Truly they have conspired against the Lord and against His Christ." Truly the impious have said: "Raze it, raze it down to its foundations."

Among these heresies belongs that foul contrivance of the sophists of this age who do not admit any difference among the different professions of faith and who think that the portal of eternal salvation opens for all from any religion. They, therefore, label with the stigma of levity and stupidity those who, having abandoned the religion which they learned, embrace another of any kind, even Catholicism. This is certainly a monstrous impiety which assigns the same praise and the mark of the just and upright man to truth and to error, to virtue and to vice, to goodness and to turpitude. Indeed this deadly idea concerning the lack of difference among religions is refuted even by the light of natural reason. We are assured of this because the various religions do not often agree among themselves. If one is true, the other must be false; there can be no society of darkness with light. Against these experienced sophists the people must be taught that the profession of the Catholic faith is uniquely true, as the apostle proclaims: one Lord, one faith, one baptism. Jerome used to say it this way: he who eats the lamb outside this house will perish as did those during the flood who were not with Noah in the ark. Indeed, no other name than the name of Jesus is given to men, by which they may be saved. He who believes shall be saved; he who does not believe shall be condemned.

Most Catholics today do not have any knowledge of the wisdom provided by the preconciliar popes, who warned us repeatedly of the very things that have been embraced by the conciliar church with its counterfeit religion. The Catholic Faith is immutable because God, who deposited the totality of His Revelation exclusively in the Catholic Church, is immutable. It has never been the case in the history of the Catholic Church that a series of ostensible pontiffs have dared to contradict the teachings of their preconciliar predecessors as they went about the business of propagating the very errors that had been condemned in no uncertain terms.

Thus it is that truly good people who love God with all of their hearts attempt to fight this or that novelty (Communion in the hand, Communion under both kinds, altar girls, standing for the reception of Holy Communion, the wreckovation of churches, etc.) without realizing that the revolutionaries know full well what it is they are doing and that they intend to brook no opposition from anyone on any point whatsoever. And one of the chief means by which the liturgical and doctrinal revolutionaries of conciliarism seek to suppress all opposition is by appealing to the sensus Catholicus of ordinary Catholics, insisting that the sheep "obey" their shepherds and accept change and novelty as coming form God Himself. Alas, change and novelty are from the devil, not from God. Pope Saint Pius X made this telling plea in Pascendi Dominci Gregis, September 8, 1907, for the clergy to keep the love of novelty far, far from their lives as they are careful not to be influenced by authors who believe that it is possible reconcile modern philosophy with the Faith:

They [the Modernists] exercise all their ingenuity in an effort to weaken the force and falsify the character of tradition, so as to rob it of all its weight and authority. But for Catholics nothing will remove the authority of the second Council of Nicea, where it condemns those "who dare, after the impious fashion of heretics, to deride the ecclesiastical traditions, to invent novelties of some kind...or endeavor by malice or craft to overthrow any one of the legitimate traditions of the Catholic Church"; nor that of the declaration of the fourth Council of Constantinople: "We therefore profess to preserve and guard the rules bequeathed to the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, by the Holy and most illustrious Apostles, by the orthodox Councils, both general and local, and by everyone of those divine interpreters, the Fathers and Doctors of the Church." Wherefore the Roman Pontiffs, Pius IV and Pius IX, ordered the insertion in the profession of faith of the following declaration: "I most firmly admit and embrace the apostolic and ecclesiastical traditions and other observances and constitutions of the Church.''

Equal diligence and severity are to be used in examining and selecting candidates for Holy Orders. Far, far from the clergy be the love of novelty! God hateth the proud and the obstinate mind. For the future the doctorate of theology and canon law must never be conferred on anyone who has not first of all made the regular course of scholastic philosophy; if conferred, it shall be held as null and void. The rules laid down in 1896 by the Sacred Congregation of Bishops and Regulars for the clerics, both secular and regular, of Italy, concerning the frequenting of the Universities, We now decree to be extended to all nation. Clerics and priests inscribed in a Catholic Institute or University must not in the future follow in civil Universities those courses for which there are chairs in the Catholic Institutes to which they belong. If this has been permitted anywhere in the past, We ordain that it be not allowed for the future. Let the Bishops who form the Governing Board of such Catholic Institutes or Universities watch with all care that these Our commands be constantly observed.

It is also the duty of the Bishops to prevent writings of Modernists, or whatever savors of Modernism or promotes it, from being read when they have been published, and to hinder their publication when they have not. No books or papers or periodicals whatever of this kind are to be permitted to seminarists or university students. The injury to them would be not less than that which is caused by immoral reading -- nay, it would be greater, for such writings poison Christian life at its very fount. The same decision is to be taken concerning the writings of some Catholics, who, though not evilly disposed themselves, are ill-instructed in theological studies and imbued with modern philosophy, and strive to make this harmonize with the faith, and, as they say, to turn it to the profit of the faith. The name and reputation of these authors cause them to read without suspicion, and they are, therefore, all the more dangerous in gradually preparing the way for Modernism.

Like so much else in Pascendi and in the writings of other preconciliar popes, the warnings about the very novelties and innovations that are part and parcel of conciliarism are clear and unequivocal. Pope Saint Pius X stated the matter clearly when he said that "But for Catholics nothing will remove the authority of the second Council of Nicea, where it condemns those 'who dare, after the impious fashion of heretics, to deride the ecclesiastical traditions, to invent novelties of some kind...or endeavor by malice or craft to overthrow any one of the legitimate traditions of the Catholic Church. . . ." Nothing means nothing, including the documents of the Second Vatican Council and the beliefs, whether held in the capacity of "private theologians" or stated as the official position of the conciliar church, of the conciliar popes can make novelty and innovation acceptable.

Benedict XVI flaunts this. Let me be blunt: he spits in the face of Popes Gregory XVI, Pius IX, Leo XIII, St. Pius X, and Pius XI as he exalts the very spirit of innovation that these popes condemned time and time and time again. Benedict did this on December 22, 2005, in his address to the Roman Curia, stating that things that represent a "discontinuity" with the past (separation of Church and State, religious liberty, the new relationship between the Church and the "Faith of Israel" in light of the crimes of the Third Reich) have to be accepted as necessary innovations as the Church and the "world" "meet" each other:

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.

As he had done in Principles of Catholic Theology, Benedict XVI stated nine months ago that the statements of past popes and of the First Vatican Council do not bind the conciliar church at the present time. The statements and dogmatic pronouncements of the past were merely decisions on what he terms, quite gratuitously, it should be noted, "contingent matters," what he has called at other times "anchorages" that were used at various times but need to be lifted up as the conciliar church "anchors" itself in a new place more suited to the demands of "modern" man. However, Pope Saint Pius X contradicted Benedict and conciliarism clearly and unequivocally with one simple statement:

"But for Catholics nothing will remove the authority of the second Council of Nicea, where it condemns those 'who dare, after the impious fashion of heretics, to deride the ecclesiastical traditions, to invent novelties of some kind...or endeavor by malice or craft to overthrow any one of the legitimate traditions of the Catholic Church. . . ."

Among the novelties that Benedict embraces is the very separation of Church and State in the United States of America that was condemned by Pope Leo XIII in Longiqua Oceani and condemned in the context of its manifestation in France by Pope Saint Pius X in Vehementer Nos, February 11, 1906. Here is a simple compare and contrast, starting with Benedict's December 22, 2005, address to the Curia:

Secondly, it was necessary to give a new definition to the relationship between the Church and the modern State that would make room impartially for citizens of various religions and ideologies, merely assuming responsibility for an orderly and tolerant coexistence among them and for the freedom to practise their own religion. . . .

In the 19th century under Pius IX, the clash between the Church's faith and a radical liberalism and the natural sciences, which also claimed to embrace with their knowledge the whole of reality to its limit, stubbornly proposing to make the "hypothesis of God" superfluous, had elicited from the Church a bitter and radical condemnation of this spirit of the modern age. Thus, it seemed that there was no longer any milieu open to a positive and fruitful understanding, and the rejection by those who felt they were the representatives of the modern era was also drastic.

In the meantime, however, the modern age had also experienced developments. People came to realize that the American Revolution was offering a model of a modern State that differed from the theoretical model with radical tendencies that had emerged during the second phase of the French Revolution.

Benedict is saying that the Chuch, the infallible voice of Christ on earth, was wrong in condemning the "spirit of the modern age" and that the "bitter and radical condemnation" of that spirit resulted in a sense of  a drastic "rejection" by the representatives of the modern era." Thus, past popes were wrong, drastically so as they offended the "sensibilities" of men who were dedicated to the overthrow of the remnants of Christendom in order to force the Church to accommodate itself to the blasphemous monstrosity known as the modern secular state.

Pope Leo XIII put this attitude in its proper perspective in Custodi Di Quella Fede, December 8, 1892:

Everyone should avoid familiarity or friendship with anyone suspected of belonging to masonry or to affiliated groups. Know them by their fruits and avoid them. Every familiarity should be avoided, not only with those impious libertines who openly promote the character of the sect, but also with those who hide under the mask of universal tolerance, respect for all religions, and the craving to reconcile the maxims of the Gospel with those of the revolution. These men seek to reconcile Christ and Belial, the Church of God and the state without God.

Pope Gregory XVI had condemned Benedict's novelties in Mirari Vos, August 15, 1832:

These beautiful examples of the unchanging subjection to the princes necessarily proceeded from the most holy precepts of the Christian religion. They condemn the detestable insolence and improbity of those who, consumed with the unbridled lust for freedom, are entirely devoted to impairing and destroying all rights of dominion while bringing servitude to the people under the slogan of liberty. Here surely belong the infamous and wild plans of the Waldensians, the Beghards, the Wycliffites, and other such sons of Belial, who were the sores and disgrace of the human race; they often received a richly deserved anathema from the Holy See. For no other reason do experienced deceivers devote their efforts, except so that they, along with Luther, might joyfully deem themselves "free of all." To attain this end more easily and quickly, they undertake with audacity any infamous plan whatever.

Nor can We predict happier times for religion and government from the plans of those who desire vehemently to separate the Church from the state, and to break the mutual concord between temporal authority and the priesthood. It is certain that that concord which always was favorable and beneficial for the sacred and the civil order is feared by the shameless lovers of liberty.

Pope Saint Pius X said exactly the same thing in Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910:

We know only too well the dark workshops in which are elaborated these mischievous doctrines which ought not to seduce clear-thinking minds. The leaders of the Sillon have not been able to guard against these doctrines. The exaltation of their sentiments, the undiscriminating good-will of their hearts, their philosophical mysticism, mixed with a measure of illuminism, have carried them away towards another Gospel which they thought was the true Gospel of Our Savior. To such an extent that they speak of Our Lord Jesus Christ with a familiarity supremely disrespectful, and that - their ideal being akin to that of the Revolution - they fear not to draw between the Gospel and the Revolution blasphemous comparisons for which the excuse cannot be made that they are due to some confused and over-hasty composition.

One can only ignore the contrast between Catholicism and conciliarism by having recourse to the Hegelian notion of the evolution of ideas, including the evolution of doctrine, which Benedict believes in with all of his might. As the First Vatican Council taught dogmatically, however, the truth is that the understanding of dogma cannot change, it cannot evolve, it cannot be contradicted by notions condemned by the Church throughout her history:

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.

Pope Pius IX used Quanta Cura, December 8, 1864, to denounce the errors that are at the foundation of the errors of Modernity in the world and Modernism in the conciliar church:

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."

Insofar as novelty of the conciliar church's endorsement of the separation of Church and State, Pope Leo XIII dispensed with the notion that the constitutional framework of the United States of America was beneficial to the Church or that it served as the model for the rest of the world (as Benedict stated above, reiterating a position he outlined as Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger in 2004):

For the Church amongst you, unopposed by the Constitution and government of your nation, fettered by no hostile legislation, protected against violence by the common laws and the impartiality of the tribunals, is free to live and act without hindrance. Yet, though all this is true, it would be very erroneous to draw the conclusion that in America is to be sought the type of the most desirable status of the Church, or that it would be universally lawful or expedient for State and Church to be, as in America, dissevered and divorced. The fact that Catholicity with you is in good condition, nay, is even enjoying a prosperous growth, is by all means to be attributed to the fecundity with which God has endowed His Church, in virtue of which unless men or circumstances interfere, she spontaneously expands and propagates herself; but she would bring forth more abundant fruits if, in addition to liberty, she enjoyed the favor of the laws and the patronage of the public authority.

Although the Church has consistently condemned the separation of Church and State throughout her history, Pope Saint Pius X's forceful summary, offered in Vehementer Nos, of the offenses given to God Himself by such a heretical, blasphemous concept is an important counterpoint to Benedict's blithe dismissal of the perennial teaching of the Catholic Church and its relationship to the State:

That the State must be separated from the Church is a thesis absolutely false, a most pernicious error. Based, as it is, on the principle that the State must not recognize any religious cult, it is in the first place guilty of a great injustice to God; for the Creator of man is also the Founder of human societies, and preserves their existence as He preserves our own. We owe Him, therefore, not only a private cult, but a public and social worship to honor Him. Besides, this thesis is an obvious negation of the supernatural order. It limits the action of the State to the pursuit of public prosperity during this life only, which is but the proximate object of political societies; and it occupies itself in no fashion (on the plea that this is foreign to it) with their ultimate object which is man's eternal happiness after this short life shall have run its course. But as the present order of things is temporary and subordinated to the conquest of man's supreme and absolute welfare, it follows that the civil power must not only place no obstacle in the way of this conquest, but must aid us in effecting it. The same thesis also upsets the order providentially established by God in the world, which demands a harmonious agreement between the two societies. Both of them, the civil and the religious society, although each exercises in its own sphere its authority over them. It follows necessarily that there are many things belonging to them in common in which both societies must have relations with one another. Remove the agreement between Church and State, and the result will be that from these common matters will spring the seeds of disputes which will become acute on both sides; it will become more difficult to see where the truth lies, and great confusion is certain to arise. Finally, this thesis inflicts great injury on society itself, for it cannot either prosper or last long when due place is not left for religion, which is the supreme rule and the sovereign mistress in all questions touching the rights and the duties of men. Hence the Roman Pontiffs have never ceased, as circumstances required, to refute and condemn the doctrine of the separation of Church and State. Our illustrious predecessor, Leo XIII, especially, has frequently and magnificently expounded Catholic teaching on the relations which should subsist between the two societies. "Between them," he says, "there must necessarily be a suitable union, which may not improperly be compared with that existing between body and soul.-"Quaedam intercedat necesse est ordinata colligatio (inter illas) quae quidem conjunctioni non immerito comparatur, per quam anima et corpus in homine copulantur." He proceeds: "Human societies cannot, without becoming criminal, act as if God did not exist or refuse to concern themselves with religion, as though it were something foreign to them, or of no purpose to them.... As for the Church, which has God Himself for its author, to exclude her from the active life of the nation, from the laws, the education of the young, the family, is to commit a great and pernicious error. -- "Civitates non possunt, citra scellus, gerere se tamquam si Deus omnino non esset, aut curam religionis velut alienam nihilque profuturam abjicere.... Ecclesiam vero, quam Deus ipse constituit, ab actione vitae excludere, a legibus, ab institutione adolescentium, a societate domestica, magnus et perniciousus est error."

Only an Hegelian can even begin to ignore the immutable Catholic truths contained in this beautiful passage penned by the sainted pontiff from Riese, Italy, the humble son of a postal worker. Apart from calling the separation of Church and State a thesis that is absolutely false, Pope Saint Pius X explained that "it follows that the civil power must not only place no obstacle in the way of this conquest [of obtaining eternal life], but must aid us in effecting it." Pope Saint Pius X, Giuseppe Melchior Sarto, used the word "must," meaning that the civil state has a positive obligation given it by God Himself to aid man in saving his soul by helping to foster those conditions in civil society that are conducive to the pursuit of man's Last End.

Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI does not believe this. He has contempt for it, believing that it is good enough for there to be some "common ground" among people of divergent religious beliefs without insisting on the supremacy of one or other denominational confession, thus blaspheming God by stating that it is pleasing to Him to see false religions placed on a plane of equality with His true Church. Benedict believes that adherents of different religions can work together in furtherance of the common good, thereby adhering to the Judeo-Masonic creed that it is not necessary for the Deposit of Faith God entrusted exclusively to the Catholic Church to be seen as the standard upon which all men and their nations must base all of their actions without any exception whatsoever.

Pope Saint Pius X wrote in Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910, that there is no other answer to the problems of the day than the restoration of the Catholic City:

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.

It cannot be that Pope Saint Pius X and Benedict XVI are both correct. The Catholic City either is the one and only foundation for the just social order or it is not. The novelties of the conciliarism are irreconcilable with Catholicism. Pope Leo XIII noted in A Review of His Pontificate, March 19, 1902, that it is indeed only Catholicism that can be the foundation of order in the lives of men and their nations:

Just as Christianity cannot penetrate into the soul without making it better, so it cannot enter into public life without establishing order.  With the idea of a God Who governs all, Who is infinitely Wise, Good, and Just, the idea of duty seizes upon the consciences of men.  It assuages sorrow, it calms hatred, it engenders heroes.  If it has transformed pagan society--and that transformation was a veritable resurrection--for barabrism disappeared in proportion as Christianity extended its sway, so, after the terrible shocks which unbelief has given to the world in our days, it will be able to put that world again on the True road, and bring back to order the States and peoples of modern times. But the return of Christianity will not be efficacious and complete if it does not restore the world to a sincere love of the one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.  In the Catholic Church Christianity is Incarnate.  It identifies Itself with that perfect, spiritual, and, in its own order, sovereign society, which is the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ and which has for Its visible head the Roman Pontiff, successor of the Prince of the Apostles.  It is the continuation of the mission of the Savior, the daughter and the heiress of His Redemption.  It has preached the Gospel, and has defended it at the price of Its blood, and strong in the Divine Assistance and of that immortality which has been promised It, It makes no terms with error but remains faithful to the Commands which It has received, to carry the Doctrine of Jesus Christ to the uttermost limits of the world and to the end of time, and to protect It in Its inviolable integrity.  Legitimate dispenser of the Teachings of the Gospel It does not reveal Itself only as the consoler and Redeemer of souls, but It is still more the internal source of Justice and Charity, and the Propagator as well as the Guardian of True Liberty, and of that equality which alone is possible here below.  In applying the Doctrine of Its Divine Founder, It maintains a wise equilibrium and marks the True Limits between the rights and privileges of society.  The equality which It proclaims does not destroy the distinction between the different social classes.  It keeps them intact, as nature itself demands, in order to oppose the anarchy of reason emancipated from Faith, and abandoned to its own devices.  The liberty which it gives in no wise conflicts with the rights of Truth, because those rights are superior to the demands of liberty.  Not does it infringe upon the rights of Justice, because those rights are superior to the claims of mere numbers or power. Nor does it assail the rights of God because they are Superior to the rights of humanity.

This statement of immutable Catholic truths is just another proof of the fact that conciliarism is indeed submerged in novelty. Indeed, Pope Leo XIII had noted in Tametsi Futura Prospicientibus, November 1, 1900, that it is not enough for men to believe in the Natural Law, that they must adhere to the totality of the Catholic Faith:

God alone is Life. All other beings partake of life, but are not life. Christ, from all eternity and by His very nature, is "the Life," just as He is the Truth, because He is God of God. From Him, as from its most sacred source, all life pervades and ever will pervade creation. Whatever is, is by Him; whatever lives, lives by Him. For by the Word "all things were made; and without Him was made nothing that was made." This is true of the natural life; but, as We have sufficiently indicated above, we have a much higher and better life, won for us by Christ's mercy, that is to say, "the life of grace," whose happy consummation is "the life of glory," to which all our thoughts and actions ought to be directed. The whole object of Christian doctrine and morality is that "we being dead to sin, should live to justice" (I Peter ii., 24)-that is, to virtue and holiness. In this consists the moral life, with the certain hope of a happy eternity. This justice, in order to be advantageous to salvation, is nourished by Christian faith. "The just man liveth by faith" (Galatians iii., II). "Without faith it is impossible to please God" (Hebrews xi., 6). Consequently Jesus Christ, the creator and preserver of faith, also preserves and nourishes our moral life. This He does chiefly by the ministry of His Church. To Her, in His wise and merciful counsel, He has entrusted certain agencies which engender the supernatural life, protect it, and revive it if it should fail. This generative and conservative power of the virtues that make for salvation is therefore lost, whenever morality is dissociated from divine faith. A system of morality based exclusively on human reason robs man of his highest dignity and lowers him from the supernatural to the merely natural life. Not but that man is able by the right use of reason to know and to obey certain principles of the natural law. But though he should know them all and keep them inviolate through life-and even this is impossible without the aid of the grace of our Redeemer-still it is vain for anyone without faith to promise himself eternal salvation. "If anyone abide not in Me, he shall be cast forth as a branch, and shall wither, and they shall gather him up and cast him into the fire, and he burneth" john xv., 6). "He that believeth not shall be condemned" (Mark xvi., 16). We have but too much evidence of the value and result of a morality divorced from divine faith. How is it that, in spite of all the zeal for the welfare of the masses, nations are in such straits and even distress, and that the evil is daily on the increase? We are told that society is quite able to help itself; that it can flourish without the assistance of Christianity, and attain its end by its own unaided efforts. Public administrators prefer a purely secular system of government. All traces of the religion of our forefathers are daily disappearing from political life and administration. What blindness! Once the idea of the authority of God as the Judge of right and wrong is forgotten, law must necessarily lose its primary authority and justice must perish: and these are the two most powerful and most necessary bonds of society. Similarly, once the hope and expectation of eternal happiness is taken away, temporal goods will be greedily sought after. Every man will strive to secure the largest share for himself. Hence arise envy, jealousy, hatred. The consequences are conspiracy, anarchy, nihilism. There is neither peace abroad nor security at home. Public life is stained with crime.

So great is this struggle of the passions and so serious the dangers involved, that we must either anticipate ultimate ruin or seek for an efficient remedy. It is of course both right and necessary to punish malefactors, to educate the masses, and by legislation to prevent crime in every possible way: but all this is by no means sufficient. The salvation of the nations must be looked for higher. A power greater than human must be called in to teach men's hearts, awaken in them the sense of duty, and make them better. This is the power which once before saved the world from destruction when groaning under much more terrible evils. Once remove all impediments and allow the Christian spirit to revive and grow strong in a nation, and that nation will be healed. The strife between the classes and the masses will die away; mutual rights will be respected. If Christ be listened to, both rich and poor will do their duty. The former will realise that they must observe justice and charity, the latter self-restraint and moderation, if both are to be saved. Domestic life will be firmly established ( by the salutary fear of God as the Lawgiver. In the same way the precepts of the natural law, which dictates respect for lawful authority and obedience to the laws, will exercise their influence over the people. Seditions and conspiracies will cease. Wherever Christianity rules over all without let or hindrance there the order established by Divine Providence is preserved, and both security and prosperity are the happy result. The common welfare, then, urgently demands a return to Him from whom we should never have gone astray; to Him who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life,-and this on the part not only of individuals but of society as a whole. We must restore Christ to this His own rightful possession. All elements of the national life must be made to drink in the Life which proceedeth from Him- legislation, political institutions, education, marriage and family life, capital and labour. Everyone must see that the very growth of civilisation which is so ardently desired depends greatly upon this, since it is fed and grows not so much by material wealth and prosperity, as by the spiritual qualities of morality and virtue.

Yes, conciliarism is a synthetic religion that is quite alien to Catholicism, although it apes it in many ways so as to confuse the faithful, which is, after all, the whole goal of Modernism: to mix certain portions of error with bits of truth. Those who attempt to fight conciliarism's more evident departures from Catholicism, both liturgically and doctrinally, will be forever consigned to the task of Sisyphus in attempting to roll that boulder up the hill as it keeps rolling down again and again. The genius of conciliarism's appeal rests in its preternatural foundations. No merely human mind could invent ways to deceive the faithful and then to keep the faithful deceived as those who see some of the problems are deluded into thinking that they can "fight" this or that problem, refusing to see that they are dealing with principalities and powers from the netherworld.

This is why it is important to attempt to sanctify one's soul entirely apart from the conciliar structures. Brave priests, such as the late Father Francis LeBlanc and Father Frederick Schell, both of whom died on the same day, September 28, four years apart from each other, were just two among many priests who have been willing to risk their reputations and their canonical safety in order to defend the integrity of the Catholic Faith. No, there has been and there never will be perfection anywhere, especially at a time when the chief shepherd on earth has been struck and the sheep have been scattered in different directions. We must recognize, however, that there are wonderful bishops and priests in the catacombs who are endeavoring to save souls by worshiping God in the manner He Himself instructed the Apostles to do before He Ascended to the Father's right hand in glory on Easter Sunday and who are teaching everything that the Church has taught through the centuries prior to the advent of the counterfeit religion of conciliarism. It is to these bishops and priests that we must turn for spiritual nourishment in this time of apostasy and betrayal.

We are not alone. We have not been abandoned. Our Lady stands by the foot of her Divine Son's Holy Cross during each offering of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. She stands by us as we are calumniated by former friends and colleagues and family members for having recognized that the Catholic Church can never propose, whether formally by means of de fide pronouncements or in the actual praxis of her pastoral life, any errors whatsoever and that those who have fallen from the Catholic Faith for having committed the sin of heresy, which is to be distinguished from the canonical crime of heresy, cannot hold any ecclesiastical office, no less the papacy. Yes, Our Lady stands by us as we attempt to fulfill her Fatima Message in our own lives and seek her assistance by our fidelity to praying her Most Holy Rosary every day without exception.

We also have the assistance of Saint Michael the Archangel. Today, September 29, is the Feast of the Dedication of the Church of Saint Michael the Archangel, who cast Lucifer and the angels who rebelled against God with him down from Heaven into the fiery abyss of Hell. Pope Leo XIII had seen a vision while offering the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass on October 13, 1884, of the devil having his way with the Church for about a hundred years. "Oh, what I horrible picture I was permitted to see!" he said as he recovered from the fall he suffered when experiencing the vision. Pope Leo composed the shorter version of the Saint Michael the Archangel Prayer, which is prayed by priests after the offering of Low Mass, and, four years later, composed the longer version, which I append to each one of my articles.

We should pray both the short and the long version of the Saint Michael the Archangel Prayer every single day. It is no accident that John XXIII made the Prayers after Low Mass optional when issuing his revised version of the Mass of Tradition in 1961, the version that Benedict XVI is reported (once again, for the umpteenth time, perhaps correctly this time) to be "liberating" for a "wider" celebration. It is no accident that Paul VI abolished those prayers absolutely when he promulgated the Ordo Missae of 1965. It is no accident that there is no reference at all to Saint Michael the Archangel in the Confiteor in the Novus Ordo (which is only one option in what is called the "Penitential Rite") as opposed to being mandated in all of the Masses of Tradition. Those who are in league with Satan, whether wittingly or unwittingly, cannot permit public invocations to the Prince of the Heavenly Host. Oh, there might be a pious reference now and again to Saint Michael and the other named archangels (Raphael and Gabriel). Invocation of Saint Michael's assistance in the offering of Holy Mass to beg him to cast down in Hell Satan and all of his evil spirits who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls? Ah, "modern" man is too sophisticated for that, right?

We must invoke the protection of Saint Michael the Archangel for ourselves and for the restoration of authentic Catholicism in the lives of those Catholics who have been the victims of the conciliar church's submersion into one condemned novelty after another. Saint Michael will not fail us. Remember, he appeared under Our Lady's feet as she manifested herself to Juan Diego on Tepeyac Hill in 1531. He stands with Our Lady, who has crushed the head of Satan, in these days when the fallen angels appear to be extinguishing the light of the true Faith from the face of the earth. Saint Michael will assist us to conquer evil in our own lives and to thus be ever ready to offer our prayers and our sacrifices and our penances and our crosses and and physical pains and afflictions more purely and more lovingly and more promptly to the Blessed Trinity through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary as her totally consecrated slaves. Saint Michael the Archangel will help us to keep our heads above the flood waters of the novelties of conciliarism as we seek to plant a few seeds for the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, that glorious triumph that will restore the Mass of Tradition as normative in the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church and enthrone her Divine Son once again as the King of all men and of all nations.

Vivat Christus Rex Esto Perpetua!

Our Lady of Guadalupe, 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.

Saint Stephen of Hungary, pray for us.

Saint Henry, pray for us.

Saint Wenceslas, pray for us.

Saint Jerome, pray for us.

Saint John Mary Vianney, pray for us.

Saint Vincent de Paul, pray for us.

Saint Therese Lisieux, pray for us.

Saint Martin of Tours, pray for us.

Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque, pray for us.

Saint Isaac Jogues, pray for us.

Saint Rene Goupil, pray for us.

Saint John Lalonde, pray for us.

Saint Gregory Lalamont, pray for us.

Saint Noel Chabanel, pray for us.

Saint Charles Garnier, pray for us.

Saint Anthony Daniel, pray for us.

Saint John DeBrebeuf, pray for us.

Saint Athanasius, pray for us.

Saint Alphonsus de Liguori, pray for us.

Saint Dominic, pray for us.

Saint Basil, pray for us.

Saint Augustine, pray for us.

Saint Thomas Aquinas, pray for us.

Saint Vincent Ferrer, pray for us.

Saint Sebastian, pray for us.

Saint Tarcisius, pray for us.

Saint Lucy, pray for us.

Saint Agnes, pray for us.

Saint Agatha, pray for us.

Saint Bridget of Sweden, pray for us.

Saint Philomena, pray for us.

Saint John of the Cross, pray for us.

Saint John Bosco, pray for us.

Saint Teresa of Avila, pray for us.

Saint Bernadette Soubirous, pray for us.

Pope Saint Pius X, pray for us

Pope Saint Pius V, pray for us.

Saint Lawrence Justinian, pray for us.

Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich, pray for us.

Blessed Pauline Jaricot, pray for us.

Blessed Miguel Augustin Pro, pray for us.

Blessed Francisco, pray for us.

Blessed Jacinta, pray for us.

Sister Lucia, pray for us.

 

The Longer Version of the Saint Michael the Archangel Prayer, composed by Pope Leo XIII, 1888

O glorious Archangel Saint Michael, Prince of the heavenly host, be our defense in the terrible warfare which we carry on against principalities and powers, against the rulers of this world of darkness, spirits of evil.  Come to the aid of man, whom God created immortal, made in His own image and likeness, and redeemed at a great price from the tyranny of the devil.  Fight this day the battle of our Lord, together with  the holy angels, as already thou hast fought the leader of the proud angels, Lucifer, and his apostate host, who were powerless to resist thee, nor was there place for them any longer in heaven.  That cruel, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil or Satan who seduces the whole world, was cast into the abyss with his angels.  Behold this primeval enemy and slayer of men has taken courage.  Transformed into an angel of light, he wanders about with all the multitude of wicked spirits, invading the earth in order to blot out the Name of God and of His Christ, to seize upon, slay, and cast into eternal perdition, souls destined for the crown of eternal glory.  That wicked dragon pours out. as a most impure flood, the venom of his malice on men of depraved mind and corrupt heart, the spirit of lying, of impiety, of blasphemy, and the pestilent breath of impurity, and of every vice and iniquity.  These most crafty enemies have filled and inebriated with gall and bitterness the Church, the spouse of the Immaculate Lamb, and have laid impious hands on Her most sacred possessions. In the Holy Place itself, where has been set up the See of the most holy Peter and the Chair of Truth for the light of the world, they have raised the throne of their abominable impiety with the iniquitous design that when the Pastor has been struck the sheep may be scattered.  Arise then, O invincible Prince, bring help against the attacks of the lost spirits to the people of God, and give them the victory.  They venerate thee as their protector and patron; in thee holy Church glories as her defense against the malicious powers of hell; to thee has God entrusted the souls of men to be established in heavenly beatitude.  Oh, pray to the God of peace that He may put Satan under our feet, so far conquered that he may no longer be able to hold men in captivity and harm the Church.  Offer our prayers in the sight of the Most High, so that they may quickly conciliate the mercies of the Lord; and beating down the dragon, the ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan, do thou again make him captive in the abyss, that he may no longer seduce the nations.  Amen.

Verse: Behold the Cross of the Lord; be scattered ye hostile powers.

Response: The Lion of the Tribe of Juda has conquered the root of David.

Verse: Let Thy mercies be upon us, O Lord.

Response: As we have hoped in Thee.

Verse: O Lord hear my prayer.

Response: And let my cry come unto Thee.

Verse: Let us pray.  O God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, we call upon Thy holy Name, and as suppliants, we implore Thy clemency, that by the intercession of Mary, ever Virgin, immaculate and our Mother, and of the glorious Archangel Saint Michael, Thou wouldst deign to help us against Satan and all other unclean spirits, who wander about the world for the injury of the human race and the ruin of our souls. 

Response:  Amen.