Teaching Us to Love Modernism

by Thomas A. Droleskey

[Author’s Note: We live in almost unprecedented times in the history of the Church. It is tragic when a papal encyclical letter dealing with such a fundamental topic as God’s ineffable love for man has to parsed to sift out the influence of Modernist thinkers on its text. The two principal problems in Pope Benedict XVI’s first encyclical letter, Deus Caritas Est, are: (1) a refusal to define precisely what God’s love is and in what it consists: the willing of the salvation of each man as a formal, baptized member of the Catholic Church; and (2) a manifest rejection of the immutable teaching of the Catholic Church concerning the Social Reign of Christ the King. How can it be said that the new encyclical letter “reunites” love with truth, as though such a division had ever taken place at any point in the history of the Catholic Church, when the second part of the encyclical letter poses a false dichotomy between “charity” and the immutable truths about the necessity of the confessionally Catholic state that were spelled out in great deal by popes between Gregory XVI and Pius XI in response to the errors of Modernity in the world and Modernism in the Church? Pope Benedict has shown himself not to love a truth divinely revealed: that Christ is meant to reign as the King of all men and of their nations. This is a complete and total rejection of a teaching that is part of the Ordinary Magisterium of the Catholic Church and is thus protected by the charism of infallibility.

[This article appeared in two parts in Catholic Family News.]

As the synthesis of all heresies, Modernism masks itself very cleverly in order to beguile and to confuse the average Catholic into believing that truly revolutionary novelties are completely in accord with the Deposit of Faith. It is no exaggeration to state that Modernism is the most pernicious of all heresies as it is sometimes very difficult to cut through the morass of Catholic-sounding verbiage, replete with Scriptural quotations, in order to discover the insidious influence of erroneous and/or heretical notions.

Mr. John Vennari, the editor of Catholic Family News, has been one of the most astute at recognizing Modernism’s multifaceted influences in the official pronouncements of the Church. The talk that he gave at the Catholic Family News conference in Indianapolis, Indiana, on October 29, 2005, on the “New Theology” of Henri de Lubac, Maurice Blondell, and Hans Urs von Balthasar presented a cogent explanation of how Modernism has been repackaged in order to make an Hegelian world view (that God and His truths are subject to constant change) normative in the life of the Church in her human elements. Mr. Vennari’s talk is a wonderful synopsis of the panoply of errors that infect the minds of so many in the Church today, including the late Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI, both of whom eschewed traditional Thomism in favor of the so-called “New Theologians.”

A Catholic must not delude himself into thinking that these so-called “New Theologians,” who were really repackaged and re-labeled Modernists, do not exercise the preponderance of influence on the direction of the Church in the postconciliar era. Practically every aspect of the Faith is being re-defined at present in light of the belief that there is nothing immutable in the nature of God’s truths, no dogmatic declaration of the Church that is not capable of being revisited and hence “updated,” no aspect of the Church’s pastoral praxis which can be left untouched in order to continue a revolution that has devastated souls and given great offense to God Himself in the manner of the worship that is due Him in the offering of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

Although each of the Modernists mentioned above has exercised influence over the decades on the mind of Pope Benedict XVI, it is to the late Hans Urs von Balthasar that goes the distinction of Modernist-in-Chief, if you will. Von Balthasar, who died in 1988 before he could receive the cardinal’s red hat that the late Pope John Paul II wanted to bestow upon him, promoted the fundamental heresy of Universal Salvation, the belief that all people, baptized and unbaptized, go to Heaven. An article written by Father Regis Scanlon, O.F.M., Cap., and published in New Oxford Review in 1999, eviscerated Balthasar’s claim that all men, including Judas Iscariot, are saved:

“A second scriptural passage that abolishes the possibility of universal salvation, and with it Balthasar's hope that all men be saved, is Luke 13:23-24. Luke states: ‘But someone said to him, “Lord, are only a few to be saved?” But he said to them, “Strive to enter by the narrow gate; for many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able”' (Lk. 13:23-24). Now, ‘many ... will not be able ... to enter’ means that "many" will not be saved.

“Jesus' words in Luke 13:23-24 cannot be false. Pius X ‘condemned’ the statement that ‘Divine inspiration does not so extend to all Sacred Scripture, that it fortifies each and every part of it against all error.’ (Enchiridion Symbolorum [Denzinger] 30th edition, Nos. 2011, 2065 [a]. Texts from this standard work will be cited as Denz.) And the Second Vatican Council states that ‘the books of Scripture’ ‘teach’ the ‘truth’ of God ‘without error’ (Dei Verbum, No. 11). Thus, there is divine, infallible, or absolute certainty that many will not enter the Kingdom of God.

“Balthasar in Dare We Hope admitted that St. Augustine's belief that many go to Hell was clearly held by the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, such as ‘Gregory the Great... Anselm, Bonaventure, and Thomas [Aquinas],’ and by Church scholars such as the Venerable Cardinal Newman. Balthasar blamed St. Augustine for misleading the Church about the ‘numerous inhabitants’ of Hell. But in fact it was Jesus, not Augustine, who first said that ‘many’ would be lost (Lk. 13:23-24). Also, Jude 1:7 says that, ‘Sodom and Gomorrah ... have been made an example, undergoing the punishment of eternal fire.’ The Council of Quiersy in 853 stated that, ‘not all will be saved’ (Denz. No. 318); the Third Council of Valence in 855 referred to those ‘who from the beginning of the world even up to the passion of our Lord, have died in their wickedness and have been punished by eternal damnation’ (Denz. No. 323); and Pius II in 1459 even condemned the opinion ‘That all Christians are to be saved’ (Denz. No. 717[b]).

“Thus, even though the Magisterium has not yet condemned Judas by name or the mere ‘hope’ for universal salvation, the Church is not in doubt about this matter. Scripture, Tradition, and the Magisterium certify that Judas and others have perished. Consequently, Balthasar's ‘hope’ for universal salvation would necessarily be a ‘hope’ that contradicts Scriptures, Tradition, and Magisterium.

“A look at Hegelian philosophy will help us understand why Balthasar thought that he could contradict Jesus' statement that Judas is ‘lost’ by hoping that Judas is saved. Eighteenth-century philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel claimed that no religious statement or concept is absolutely true. All are false or relative in some way. Only God is absolute truth. Therefore, according to Hegel's understanding, religious statements, concepts, or dogmas can be contradictory and only find their resolution or synthesis in God who is Absolute Truth. Hegel said that every concept contained a ‘Negative, which it carries within itself.’ For Hegel this positive-negative opposition within the concept was called the dialectic and it was ‘a necessary procedure of reason.’ Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary defines ‘dialectic’ as ‘the Hegelian process of change in which a concept or its realization passes over into and is preserved and fulfilled by its opposite.’ Thus, Hegel maintained ‘the Necessity of Contradiction’ for all thought to develop toward the Absolute, which is God.

“Similarly, Balthasar believed that contradiction is a part of truth. As he explained in Word and Revelation, he believed that expressions of' ‘worldly truth,’ like ‘worldly Being,’ can be ‘contradictory’ and even expressions of scriptural truths can be opposites or ‘contrary.’ Balthasar agreed with Hegel that ‘”only God is 'the absolute truth'" and "'all truth is not, negation itself is in God' " (emphasis added). Thus, statements in the Bible are not absolutely true but each is relative and in some way negative or false, and these statements will find their synthesis only when we come to the Father who is absolute truth. But, for now, one cannot have complete confidence even in the words of Christ. Balthasar stated: ‘The word of Christ, who spoke as no other had spoken, who alone spoke as one having power, is nonetheless an insecure bridge between the wordlessness of the world and the superword of the father’ (emphasis added).

“Thus, Balthasar argued in Dare We Hope, beside the condemnatory scriptural statements that teach that there are people in Hell, there are also redemptive scriptural statements that ‘hold out the prospect of universal redemption.’ He used this example: ‘God wills that all men be saved’ (1 Tim. 2:4). Balthasar claimed that these redemptive scriptural statements are "seemingly opposed" to the condemnatory scriptural statements such as ‘many ... will not be able... to enter.’ He maintained that, ‘we neither can nor may bring [them] into synthesis.’ Since these ‘contradictory’ statements can only be resolved in eternal life, we don't know the outcome. So, for Balthasar, we can still hope that Judas is saved.

“But these statements appear contradictory only because Balthasar interpreted God's statements of desire, such as ‘God wills that all men be saved,’ as if they were statements of future realities, like ‘many ... will not be able ... to enter.’ But, we cannot treat God's statements of desire as if they were statements about future realities. Just as we know that God willed or desired Adam and Eve not to eat of the ‘fruit of the tree in the middle of the Garden’ (Gen. 3:3), so we know for certain that God desires that no one sin. But, Adam and Eve ate of the tree and sinned. Consequently, hoping that all will be saved -- when Scripture says that some are lost -- is like hoping that no one ever sins when we know that Adam and Eve have sinned. The hope is an absurdity.

“More importantly, however, Balthasar's philosophy of truth violates the first self-evident principle of the speculative reason (the natural law), which states that the same thing cannot be affirmed and denied at the same time (the principle of noncontradiction). One cannot say that Judas is ‘lost’ and that Judas is ‘not lost’ (saved) at the same time. And to ‘hope’ that Judas is saved when Scripture says that he is already lost is to hope for a contradiction in Scripture and in the Church's teachings. But, this violates the Church's defined teaching that ‘God cannot... ever contradict truth with truth’ (Denz. No. 1797), which guarantees that the meaning of Jesus' teachings in the New Testament and the Church's dogmas can never be different but always remain the same (Denz. No.1818).”

This important, devastating analysis of the principal influence upon the mind of Pope Benedict XVI is necessary to review in order to understand the Holy Father’s first encyclical letter, Deus Caritas Est. One need not rely upon the word of a traditional Catholic to believe that Pope’s first encyclical letter is part and parcel of the conciliarist revolution, part and parcel of the von Balthasar slogan that “only love is credible.” One simply needs to refer to the words of Father Jesus Vilagrasa in an article sent out by Zenit on February 5, 2006, “Benedict XVI’s Revolutionary Encyclical Letter:”

“I look at the theological-philosophical-religious structure present in the first part of the encyclical when the concept of love is worked out in the light of religions, first, and of philosophy and the Bible afterward.

“Philosophy has helped to purify the negative elements present in religions, but it is unable to give the ultimate answer to the human aspiration to love. Only the Incarnate Word illuminates the mystery of man and of human love.

“The great theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar organized his thought making use of this structure. In his book, ‘Epilogue,’ he wished to give a general view of his monumental work.

“He made use of the image of the cathedral and its three parts. The ‘atrium’ is occupied by the religions and cosmo-visions that express the search for the meaning of reality and of human existence. The "threshold," constituted by philosophy, leads to the ‘sanctuary’ of theology where the Christian mysteries of the Incarnation and the Trinity are contemplated.

“I think this structure is present in the first part of the encyclical.”

Writing in The Thomist, Father Bertrand DeMargerie, S.J., wrote the following by way of summary about von Balthasar’s view of the Blessed Trinity:

“Likewise, again despite Balthasar (Theo-drama, 4:223), the Father and Son do not owe their power of spiration to the acquiescence of the Spirit, any more than the Father owes his fatherhood to the consent of the Son. The relations between the Three involve no “total loss of divinity”—something unknown, not to say completely rejected, in the patristic tradition and in medieval theology. One could apply to these views the label their author gives to the sufferings of the Greek gods in their passions: mythology. The fundamental error here consists in fashioning the Trinity in the image of man, rather than retaining the via negativa and the via eminentiae of which analogy is composed.

“For Balthasar, everything that happens on the cross is the development of the drama proper to the inner-Trinitarian life: if the Father gives himself to the Son while giving him up, and if the Son responds with perfect obedience, if therefore there is a infinite dramatic movement of self-gift and response, this movement implies as well an infinite separation between Father and Son along with their infinite union, for their separation is both sustained and overcome by the Spirit.

“The influence of Hegelian dialectic on all such pneumatologies of the cross is evident.”

There is no doubt, therefore, that Deus Caritas Est and its discussion of God’s love is the product of the heretical views of Hans Urs von Balthasar that God’s love for man is such that no man will be damned for all eternity. Indeed, there is no formal definition of the exact nature of God’s love to be found in the new encyclical letter. The Holy Father seems to have gone to special lengths to avoid the simple truth that God’s love is an act of His Divine Will. It is not a feeling. It is not a sentiment. God wills to love Himself, Who is all Truth. His love for man, therefore, is an expression of His love for Himself in that He loves in man what He sees of Himself in man, that is, an immortal, rational soul with an intellect and a will. And the ultimate expression of God’s love for man is this: to will that he cooperate with the graces He won for him on the wood of the Holy Cross to persist until his dying breath in a state of sanctifying grace as a member of the Catholic Church. In other words, God’s will for each man is that he save immortal soul as a Catholic. It is up to each man to respond to God’s love, to cooperate with His ineffable graces. However, the influence of von Balthasar on Deus Caritas Est can be seen in what is not in its text, including this simple Catholic teaching that love, including God’s love,is an act of the will. Yes, the Holy Father discusses at one point that the “love-story between God and man” involves a “communion of the will,” but the Pope nowhere defines precisely what God’s will is for man: to live and die as a Catholic.

Although the Holy Father discusses the fact that love is not a mere sentiment and involves a “communion of the will” between God and man, he once again nowhere mentions how we must love God and how must love our neighbor for love of God. His response to various objections above the nature of love are ambiguous and lacking Catholic doctrinal clarity.

Our Lord taught us clearly the true nature of love of God and of love of neighbor:

“And thou shalt love the Lord thy God, with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind, and with thy whole strength. This is the first commandment. And the second is like to it: Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is no other commandment greater than these.” (Mk. 12:30-31)

No one loves anyone else authentically unless he wills for that person what God wills for all men: to save their souls as Catholics. This is not a feeling. This is a manifest embodiment of God’s matchless love for His rational creatures, a love that prompted Him to become one of us in all things but sin in order to pay back in His Sacred Humanity the blood debt of sin that was owed to Him in His Infinity as God. We must will to love God exactly and only as He has revealed Himself through His true Church and in no other way. To love God, therefore, means to love everything contained in the Deposit of Faith He has entrusted to the Catholic Church without one iota of dissent or even a shadow of change. In a few words, loving God means that we must choose, as an act of our wills, to love both the doctrines and the traditions, including the Mass, that He gave to the Apostles to hand down to us under the infallible protection of the Holy Ghost. Pope Benedict XVI mentions these truths nowhere in Deus Caritas Est.

Contrast the Modernist tones of Pope Benedict XVI with the clarity of Pope Pius XII’s encyclical letter concerning devotion to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, Haurietis Aquas, issued on May 15, 1956.

“Indeed it follows that it is only under the impulse of love that the minds of men obey fully and perfectly the rule of the Supreme Being, since the influence of our love draws us close to the divine Will that it becomes as it were completely one with it, according to the saying, ‘He who is joined to the Lord, is one spirit.’”

Consider also the clear words of the Angelic Doctor, Saint Thomas Aquinas, in the Summa Theologica, a work that has never been held in high esteem by the current occupant of the Throne of Saint Peter, about the nature of God’s love as an act of His Divine Will:

“I answer that, We must needs assert that in God there is love: because love is the first movement of the will and of every appetitive faculty. For since the acts of the will and of every appetitive faculty tend towards good and evil, as to their proper objects: and since good is essentially and especially the object of the will and the appetite, whereas evil is only the object secondarily and indirectly, as opposed to good; it follows that the acts of the will and appetite that regard good must naturally be prior to those that regard evil; thus, for instance, joy is prior to sorrow, love to hate: because what exists of itself is always prior to that which exists through another. Again, the more universal is naturally prior to what is less so. Hence the intellect is first directed to universal truth; and in the second place to particular and special truths. Now there are certain acts of the will and appetite that regard good under some special condition, as joy and delight regard good present and possessed; whereas desire and hope regard good not as yet possessed. Love, however, regards good universally, whether possessed or not. Hence love is naturally the first act of the will and appetite; for which reason all the other appetite movements presuppose love, as their root and origin. For nobody desires anything nor rejoices in anything, except as a good that is loved: nor is anything an object of hate except as opposed to the object of love. Similarly, it is clear that sorrow, and other things like to it, must be referred to love as to their first principle. Hence, in whomsoever there is will and appetite, there must also be love: since if the first is wanting, all that follows is also wanting. Now it has been shown that will is in God (19, 1), and hence we must attribute love to Him.”

There is no discussion in Deus Caritas Est of these important points.

Moreover, there is in Deus Caritas Est considerable mention made by Pope Benedict XVI of one particular pagan Greek notion of “love,” eros, which he applies to God Himself, something that is truly without precedent in the history of the Church. Pope Benedict goes to great lengths to claim that various Scriptural references are boldly “erotic,” thus demonstrating himself to be more in line with Sigmund Freud than with the Fathers and the Doctors of the Church. To apply terms that have their origin in pagan philosophy--and have been resuscitated with great glee by secular psychologists in the past 150 years--to the nature of God’s love for man–and of man’s love for God–is blasphemous. Apart from its blasphemy, such imagery will feed the sick minds of Modernist bishops and priests, who will use said imagery quite graphically in their writings and preaching, thereby subjecting all souls, including those of the young, whose innocence we must go to great strides to protect unless we want a millstone placed around our own necks and them dumped into the sea, to sounds and images that are utterly unacceptable in any Catholic venue. This is once again, however, the influence of von Balthasar’s attempt to project concepts alien to the Faith in the name of “God’s love.”

Although part two of this article will concentrate on the Holy Father’s use of Deus Caritas Est to justify conciliarism’s rejection of the Social Reign of Christ the King and thus the necessity of restoring the confessionally Catholic state, suffice it for the present moment to point out that there is no mention of the Spiritual Works of Mercy in the encyclical’s letter section dealing with the practical application of charity in the lives of Catholics. This, however, is consistent with the ethos of conciliarism and the heretical theology of von Balthasar. After all, there is no need to spell out, no less perform, the following Spiritual Works of Mercy: 1) to instruct the ignorant; 2) to counsel the doubtful; 3) to admonish sinners; 4) to bear wrongs patiently; 5) to forgive offences willingly; 6) to comfort the afflicted; 7) to pray for the living and the dead. Pope Benedict XVI did not spell out these Spiritual Works of Mercy because it is plain that he does not believe that any soul, whether in or out of the Catholic Church, is in imminent peril of eternal loss.

No, the Holy Father has not proclaimed this. Never once, however, has he ever disagreed with anything to be found in von Balthasar’s writings. Quite the contrary, Pope Benedict XVI praised him highly on the occasion of the centenary of his birth just four months ago. A Zenit report from October 7, 2005, included the following:

“Rome, Oct. 07, 2005 (CWNews.com) - Pope Benedict XVI (news) has paid tribute to his friend, the late theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar, in a statement released on October 7.

“The Pope's statement is addressed to participants in a seminar being held at the Pontifical Lateran University this weekend. The seminar, marking the 100th anniversary of the Swiss theologian's birth, is centered on a theme from von Balthasar's work: ‘Only love is credible.’
“In his message-- which was read to the seminar by Bishop Rino Fisichella, the rector of the Lateran University-- Pope Benedict writes of his treasured friendship with von Balthasar, and says that the Swiss theologian's work ‘still retains a profound relevance today.’

“Hans Urs von Balthasar, the Pope writes, ‘was a theologian who put his work at the service of the Church,’ because he was convinced that theology is useful only within the context of Catholic practice. ‘I can testify that his life was an authentic search for truth," the Pope adds. Pope Benedict says that he hopes the 100th-anniversary observance will stimulate a revival of interest in the work of von Balthasar, recalling Henri de Lubac's claim that the Swiss theologian was "the most cultured man of our century.’ The Lateran University seminar is co-sponsored by Communio, the international theological journal that was founded by von Balthasar in cooperation with theologians such as Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict) and Angelo Scola (now the Patriarch of Venice). Partipants in the weekend's discussions include Cardinal Scola, Cardinal James Stafford, and Cardinal Marc Ouellet.”

The Holy Father praised Father Hans Urs von Balthasar for a life that involved “an authentic search for truth.” Huh? There is no need to search for truth. It has been deposited by Truth Incarnate in the Catholic Church. All a man needs to do is to submit his will to this truth, which has been revealed by God and proclaimed doctrinally when necessary by popes and dogmatic councils, without attempting to redefine anything that has been handed down to us because “we do not like” certain formulations. Von Balthasar’s life, therefore, was spent in vain searching for a truth that was readily accessible in the Deposit of Faith.

It is interesting that Deus Caritas Est, which includes not one footnoted reference to any preconciliar papal encyclical letter (and only two gratuitous references to same in the body of its text), does not mention God’s Divine Justice. How can an encyclical letter dealing with God’s love not discuss His justice?

God wants us to cooperate with His graces to persist until our dying breaths in states of sanctifying grace. If any man, however, persists until his dying breath in a state of final impenitence, God expresses His love for man’s free will by refusing to impose Himself upon him in death when He had not chosen for Him in life. The invocation “My Jesus, Mercy!” might be good enough to win a sinner the reward of Saint Dismas, the Good Thief. Absent such a plea for God’s Mercy, an unrepentant sinner gives God no choice. The sinner is the one who has chosen Hell. God loves man so much that He permits Him to choose His absence for all eternity if he refuses to cooperate with the graces He makes available to him to save his soul through the Catholic Church. No discussion of God’s love is complete without a mention of the possibility of eternal loss, which is why the prayers of the Traditional Latin Mass, which include references to such a possibility throughout the course of the liturgical year, is so hated by the Modernists. And it is clear that Pope Benedict XVI cannot mention this reality in Deus Caritas Est and be untrue to his mentor, Hans Urs von Balthasar, or to the likes of Henri de Lubac.

Far from being a “clear” expression of “truth,” as some wishful papal apologists, including some priests in Ecclesia Dei communities, are saying, part one of Deus Caritas Est, whose text has been copyrighted to prevent its free distribution (itself another novelty in the history of the Church), is a masterpiece of Modernist obfuscation and fog. As mentioned before, part two of the encyclical letter clearly rejects the Social Reign of Christ the King and the necessity of restoring the confessionally Catholic state, a subject that will be addressed in part two of this commentary. A rejection of the Social Reign of Christ the King has nothing to do about loving God and His immutable truths. It has everything to do with teaching us to love Modernism in the Church and Modernity in the world.

Part Two of "Teaching Us to Love Modernism"

Pope Benedict XVI’s crusade to reshape the Church in the image of his late mentor, Father Hans Urs von Balthasar, is such that he used his first encyclical letter to put a formal papal imprimatur on his long-held view that the confessionally Catholic state is a thing of the past that the Church does not believe it to be advisable or necessary to recapture it for the good of souls and for the welfare of states. He believes that the only duty of the Church is to provide “charity,” leaving the direction of the state up to what is referred to as “politics.”

One cannot read the words of Pope Benedict XVI in a vacuum. He has a proven track record of stating that the "anti-Modernist" declarations of the Nineteenth Century have served their purpose but have now lost their relevancy, going to so far as to call the Second Vatican Council a "counter-Syllabus of Errors." Once again, it is important to consider the second part of Deus Caritas Est in light of the following quotes of the former prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger:

If it is desirable to offer a diagnosis of the text [of Gaudium et Spes] as a whole, we might say that (in conjunction with the texts on religious liberty and world religions) it is a revision of the Syllabus of Pius IX, a kind of counter syllabus. . . . The one-sidedness of the position adopted by the Church under Pius IX and Pius in response to the situation created by the new phase of history inaugurated by the French Revolution was, to a large extent, corrected via facti, especially in Central Europe, but there was still no basic statement of the relationship that should exist between the Church and the world that had come into existence after 1789."

“Let us be content to say here that the text [of the Second Vatican Council] serves as a counter syllabus and, as such, represents, on the part of the Church, an attempt at an official reconciliation with the new era inaugurated in 1789."

Cardinal Ratzinger continued this theme in a 1990 interview in L’Osservatore Romano:

“The text [of the Second Vatican Council] also presents the various forms of bonds that rise from the different degrees of magisterial teaching. It affirms -- perhaps for the first time with this clarity -- that there are decisions of the Magisterium that cannot be a last word on the matter as such, but are, in a substantial fixation of the problem, above all an expression of pastoral prudence, a kind of provisional disposition. Its nucleus remains valid, but the particulars, which the circumstances of the times have influenced, may need further ramifications.

“In this regard, one may think of the declarations of Popes in the last century about religious liberty, as well as the anti-Modernist decisions at the beginning of this century, above all, the decisions of the Biblical Commission of the time. As a cry of alarm in the face of hasty and superficial adaptations, they will remain fully justified. A personage such as Johann Baptist Metz said, for example, that the Church's anti-Modernist decisions render the great service of preserving her from immersion in the liberal-bourgeois world. But in the details of the determinations they contain, they become obsolete after having fulfilled their pastoral mission at the proper moment.”

The second part of Deus Caritas Est is thus premised upon the acceptance of the secular state as a natural evolution of forces in the world that the Church must not seek to reversed, thus defying utterly and completely the following decree of the First Vatican Council:

“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.”

These are the Holy Father's exact words from Deus Caritas Est:

“The church cannot and must not take upon herself the political battle to bring about the most just society possible. She cannot and must not replace the state.”

Yes, the Church and State have respective functions. The Church in no way has ever taught that she can or must replace the state. What she has taught from time immemorial, however, is something that Pope Benedict XVI completely rejects: that the civil state must be subordinated to the Church's exercise of the Social Reign of Christ the King, principally through her Indirect Power of Teaching and Preaching, for the good of souls and thus for the common good of society. The Catholic Church is not merely "one actor among many" in the pluralist society. She is the Mystical Bride of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. She has been entrusted with the welfare of souls and with the direction of nations, which rendered public worship to Our Lord at the moment the Three Kings from the East rendered him homage and praise at the Epiphany.

Consider the Offertory Prayer from the Feast of the Epiphany in the Traditional Latin Mass:

“The kings of Tharsis and the Isles shall offer gifts; the kings of Arabia and Saba shall bring tribute. All kings shall pay Him homage, all nations shall serve Him.”

Writing in Quas Primas in 1925, Pope Pius XI reiterated the simple fact that it is the duty of all nations to render Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ public honor and obedience:

“Nations will be reminded by the annual celebration of this feast that not only private individuals but also rulers and princes are bound to give public honor and obedience to Christ. It will call to their minds the thought of the last judgment, wherein Christ, who has been cast out of public life, despised, neglected and ignored, will most severely avenge these insults; for his kingly dignity demands that the State should take account of the commandments of God and of Christian principles, both in making laws and in administering justice, and also in providing for the young a sound moral education.”

Pope Pius XI was merely reiterating the consistent teaching of the Church that is, sadly, held in contempt by Pope Benedict XVI, who believes that the era of Christendom has passed and that the Church must make an accommodation with the “realities of the modern state without looking back to a past that is best forgotten.

Pope Benedict XVI noted in his December 22, 2005, address to the Roman Curia, that such an accommodation with the modern world is the equivalent of the Church's reconciling the thought of Saint Augustine with Plato or that of Saint Thomas Aquinas with Aristotle. As Bishop Richard Williamson of the Society of Saint Pius X has noted in an interview with Mr. John Vennari of Catholic Family News (www.cfnews.org/cfn.htm), the Church used what was true from the pagan philosophers of antiquity. Modernity is based on falsehoods and errors of the most manifest order.

The pagan philosophers of antiquity lived before the Incarnation. The philosophers of Modernity and the theologians of Modernism within the Church reject the Incarnation as absolutely essential in the lives of men and of their societies, believing that there is some "scientific" way to organize social life without recognizing the Social Reign of Christ the King and without subordinating everything in popular culture to the Deposit of Faith that Our Lord has entrusted to His true Church, keeping in mind always the greater honor and glory of God and thus the good of the souls for whom He shed every single drop of His Most Precious Blood.

The Popes of Tradition Against Pope Benedict XVI

The Popes of Tradition consistently opposed the anti-Incarnational errors of Modernity in the world and Modernism in the Church. The following quotations are being provided by way of demonstrating that Deus Caritas Est rests on an acceptance of the Protestant-Masonic view of the state as compatible with the Catholic Faith, which it is not.

Pope Gregory XVI, Mirari Vos, 1832:

“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.”

Insanity, That Liberty of Conscience

Pope Pius IX, Quanta Cura, 1864:

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

“And, since where religion has been removed from civil society, and the doctrine and authority of divine revelation repudiated, the genuine notion itself of justice and human right is darkened and lost, and the place of true justice and legitimate right is supplied by material force, thence it appears why it is that some, utterly neglecting and disregarding the surest principles of sound reason, dare to proclaim that ‘the people's will, manifested by what is called public opinion or in some other way, constitutes a supreme law, free from all divine and human control; and that in the political order accomplished facts, from the very circumstance that they are accomplished, have the force of right.’ But who, does not see and clearly perceive that human society, when set loose from the bonds of religion and true justice, can have, in truth, no other end than the purpose of obtaining and amassing wealth, and that (society under such circumstances) follows no other law in its actions, except the unchastened desire of ministering to its own pleasure and interests?”

This passage from Quanta Cura is a particular rejoinder to the babbling of Pope Benedict XVI in Deus Caritas Est about justice being pursued absent the direction of the Church. Pope Gregory XVI called the views of the Second Vatican Council and of the current pontiff to be “insanity.” Something cannot be insanity at one time and sanity at some later time. Truth is immutable, unless, of course, one is a Hegelian who believes that truth can contradict itself.

Embodying the Spirit of Freemasonry

Pope Leo XIII wrote at great length about the evils of the modern state and its Masonic origins. Writing in Humanum Genus, 1884, Pope Leo noted:

“Then come their doctrines of politics, in which the naturalists lay down that all men have the same right, and are in every respect of equal and like condition; that each one is naturally free; that no one has the right to command another; that it is an act of violence to require men to obey any authority other than that which is obtained from themselves. According to this, therefore, all things belong to the free people; power is held by the command or permission of the people, so that, when the popular will changes, rulers may lawfully be deposed and the source of all rights and civil duties is either in the multitude or in the governing authority when this is constituted according to the latest doctrines. It is held also that the State should be without God; that in the various forms of religion there is no reason why one should have precedence of another; and that they are all to occupy the same place.

“That these doctrines are equally acceptable to the Freemasons, and that they would wish to constitute States according to this example and model, is too well known to require proof. For some time past they have openly endeavored to bring this about with all their strength and resources; and in this they prepare the way for not a few bolder men who are hurrying on even to worse things, in their endeavor to obtain equality and community of all goods by the destruction of every distinction of rank and property.”

The State Cannot be Without the True Religion

Pope Leo XIII went on to write in Immortale Dei, 1885:

“As a consequence, the State, constituted as it is, is clearly bound to act up to the manifold and weighty duties linking it to God, by the public profession of religion. Nature and reason, which command every individual devoutly to worship God in holiness, because we belong to Him and must return to Him, since from Him we came, bind also the civil community by a like law. For, men living together in society are under the power of God no less than individuals are, and society, no less than individuals, owes gratitude to God who gave it being and maintains it and whose everbounteous goodness enriches it with countless blessings. Since, then, no one is allowed to be remiss in the service due to God, and since the chief duty of all men is to cling to religion in both its teaching and practice-not such religion as they may have a preference for, but the religion which God enjoins, and which certain and most clear marks show to be the only one true religion -- it is a public crime to act as though there were no God. So, too, is it a sin for the State not to have care for religion as a something beyond its scope, or as of no practical benefit; or out of many forms of religion to adopt that one which chimes in with the fancy; for we are bound absolutely to worship God in that way which He has shown to be His will. All who rule, therefore, would hold in honor the holy name of God, and one of their chief duties must be to favor religion, to protect it, to shield it under the credit and sanction of the laws, and neither to organize nor enact any measure that may compromise its safety. This is the bounden duty of rulers to the people over whom they rule. For one and all are we destined by our birth and adoption to enjoy, when this frail and fleeting life is ended, a supreme and final good in heaven, and to the attainment of this every endeavor should be directed. Since, then, upon this depends the full and perfect happiness of mankind, the securing of this end should be of all imaginable interests the most urgent. Hence, civil society, established for the common welfare, should not only safeguard the well being of the community, but have also at heart the interests of its individual members, in such mode as not in any way to hinder, but in every manner to render as easy as may be, the possession of that highest and unchangeable good for which all should seek. Wherefore, for this purpose, care must especially be taken to preserve unharmed and unimpeded the religion whereof the practice is the link connecting man with God.

“Now, it cannot be difficult to find out which is the true religion, if only it be sought with an earnest and unbiased mind; for proofs are abundant and striking. We have, for example, the fulfillment of prophecies, miracles in great numbers, the rapid spread of the faith in the midst of enemies and in face of overwhelming obstacles, the witness of the martyrs, and the like. From all these it is evident that the only true religion is the one established by Jesus Christ Himself, and which He committed to His Church to protect and to propagate.

“For the only-begotten Son of God established on earth a society which is called the Church, and to it He handed over the exalted and divine office which He had received from His Father, to be continued through the ages to come. ‘As the Father hath sent Me, I also send you.’ ‘Behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world.’ Consequently, as Jesus Christ came into the world that men ‘might have life and have it more abundantly,’ so also has the Church for its aim and end the eternal salvation of souls, and hence it is so constituted as to open wide its arms to all mankind, unhampered by any limit of either time or place. "Preach ye the Gospel to every creature. . . .’

“To hold, therefore, that there is no difference in matters of religion between forms that are unlike each other, and even contrary to each other, most clearly leads in the end to the rejection of all religion in both theory and practice. And this is the same thing as atheism, however it may differ from it in name. Men who really believe in the existence of God must, in order to be consistent with themselves and to avoid absurd conclusions, understand that differing modes of divine worship involving dissimilarity and conflict even on most important points cannot all be equally probable, equally good, and equally acceptable to God.

“So, too, the liberty of thinking, and of publishing, whatsoever each one likes, without any hindrance, is not in itself an advantage over which society can wisely rejoice. On the contrary, it is the fountain-head and origin of many evils. Liberty is a power perfecting man, and hence should have truth and goodness for its object. But the character of goodness and truth cannot be changed at option. These remain ever one and the same, and are no less unchangeable than nature itself. If the mind assents to false opinions, and the will chooses and follows after what is wrong, neither can attain its native fullness, but both must fall from their native dignity into an abyss of corruption. Whatever, therefore, is opposed to virtue and truth may not rightly be brought temptingly before the eye of man, much less sanctioned by the favor and protection of the law. A well-spent life is the only way to heaven, whither all are bound, and on this account the State is acting against the laws and dictates of nature whenever it permits the license of opinion and of action to lead minds astray from truth and souls away from the practice of virtue. To exclude the Church, founded by God Himself, from life, from laws, from the education of youth, from domestic society is a grave and fatal error. A State from which religion is banished can never be well regulated; and already perhaps more than is desirable is known of the nature and tendency of the so-called civil philosophy of life and morals. The Church of Christ is the true and sole teacher of virtue and guardian of morals. She it is who preserves in their purity the principles from which duties flow, and, by setting forth most urgent reasons for virtuous life, bids us not only to turn away from wicked deeds, but even to curb all movements of the mind that are opposed to reason, even though they be not carried out in action."

The Natural Law Alone is Insufficient: The State Needs to Recognize the Catholic Church as the True Church

Pope Benedict XVI wrote the following in Deus Caritas Est:

The Church's social teaching argues on the basis of reason and natural law, namely, on the basis of what is in accord with the nature of every human being. It recognizes that it is not the Church's responsibility to make this teaching prevail in political life. Rather, the Church wishes to help form consciences in political life and to stimulate greater insight into the authentic requirements of justice as well as greater readiness to act accordingly, even when this might involve conflict with situations of personal interest. Building a just social and civil order, wherein each person receives what is his or her due, is an essential task which every generation must take up anew. As a political task, this cannot be the Church's immediate responsibility. Yet, since it is also a most important human responsibility, the Church is duty-bound to offer, through the purification of reason and through ethical formation, her own specific contribution towards understanding the requirements of justice and achieving them politically.

The Church cannot and must not take upon herself the political battle to bring about the most just society possible. She cannot and must not replace the State. Yet at the same time she cannot and must not remain on the sidelines in the fight for justice. She has to play her part through rational argument and she has to reawaken the spiritual energy without which justice, which always demands sacrifice, cannot prevail and prosper. A just society must be the achievement of politics, not of the Church. Yet the promotion of justice through efforts to bring about openness of mind and will to the demands of the common good is something which concerns the Church deeply.

While there are elements of truth here, one must remember that Modernism is an admixture of truth and error. Pope Leo XIII stated in Tametsi Futura Prospicientibus, November 1, 1900, that the natural law is insufficient to provide order in the civil state. The State must recognize Our Lord Himself and the authority of His true Church. Pope Leo XIII put it this way in Tametsi:

As with individuals, so with nations. These, too, must necessarily tend to ruin if they go astray from "The Way." The Son of God, the Creator and Redeemer of mankind, is King and Lord of the earth, and holds supreme dominion over men, both individually and collectively. "And He gave Him power, and glory, and a kingdom: and all peoples, tribes, and tongues shall serve Him" (Daniel vii., 14). "I am appointed King by Him . . . I will give Thee the Gentiles for Thy inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for Thy possession" (Psalm ii., 6, 8). Therefore the law of Christ ought to prevail in human society and be the guide and teacher of public as well as of private life. Since this is so by divine decree, and no man may with impunity contravene it, it is an evil thing for the common weal wherever Christianity does not hold the place that belongs to it. When Jesus Christ is absent, human reason fails, being bereft of its chief protection and light, and the very end is lost sight of, for which, under God's providence, human society has been built up. This end is the obtaining by the members of society of natural good through the aid of civil unity, though always in harmony with the perfect and eternal good which is above nature. But when men's minds are clouded, both rulers and ruled go astray, for they have no safe line to follow nor end to aim at.

Just as it is the height of misfortune to go astray from the "Way," so is it to abandon the "Truth." Christ Himself is the first, absolute and essential "Truth," inasmuch as He is the Word of God, consubstantial and co-eternal with the Father, He and the Father being One. "I am the Way and the Truth." Wherefore if the Truth be sought by the human intellect, it must first of all submit it to Jesus Christ, and securely rest upon His teaching, since therein Truth itself speaketh. There are innumerable and extensive fields of thought, properly belonging to the human mind, in which it may have free scope for its investigations and speculations, and that not only agreeably to its nature, but even by a necessity of its nature. But what is unlawful and unnatural is that the human mind should refuse to be restricted within its proper limits, and, throwing aside its becoming modesty, should refuse to acknowledge Christ's teaching. This teaching, upon which our salvation depends, is almost entirely about God and the things of God. No human wisdom has invented it, but the Son of God hath received and drunk it in entirely from His Father: "The words which thou gavest me, I have given to them" john xvii., 8). Hence this teaching necessarily embraces many subjects which are not indeed contrary to reasonfor that would be an impossibility-but so exalted that we can no more attain them by our own reasoning than we can comprehend God as He is in Himself. If there be so many things hidden and veiled by nature, which no human ingenuity can explain, and yet which no man in his senses can doubt, it would be an abuse of liberty to refuse to accept those which are entirely above nature, because their essence cannot be discovered. To reject dogma is simply to deny Christianity. Our intellect must bow humbly and reverently "unto the obedience of Christ," so that it be held captive by His divinity and authority: "bringing into captivity every understanding unto the obedience of Christ" (2 Corinthians x., 5). Such obedience Christ requires, and justly so. For He is God, and as such holds supreme dominion over man's intellect as well as over his will. By obeying Christ with his intellect man by no means acts in a servile manner, but in complete accordance with his reason and his natural dignity. For by his will he yields, not to the authority of any man, but to that of God, the author of his being, and the first principle to Whom he is subject by the very law of his nature. He does not suffer himself to be forced by the theories of any human teacher, but by the eternal and unchangeable truth. Hence he attains at one and the same time the natural good of the intellect and his own liberty. For the truth which proceeds from the teaching of Christ clearly demonstrates the real nature and value of every being; and man, being endowed with this knowledge, if he but obey the truth as perceived, will make all things subject to himself, not himself to them; his appetites to his reason, not his reason to his appetites. Thus the slavery of sin and falsehood will be shaken off, and the most perfect liberty attained: "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free" john viii., 32). It is, then, evident that those whose intellect rejects the yoke of Christ are obstinately striving against God. Having shaken off God's authority, they are by no means freer, for they will fall beneath some human sway. They are sure to choose someone whom they will listen to, obey, and follow as their guide. Moreover, they withdraw their intellect from the communication of divine truths, and thus limit it within a narrower circle of knowledge, so that they are less fitted to succeed in the pursuit even of natural science. For there are in nature very many things whose apprehension or explanation is greatly aided by the light of divine truth. Not unfrequently, too, God, in order to chastise their pride, does not permit men to see the truth, and thus they are punished in the things wherein they sin. This is why we often see men of great intellectual power and erudition making the grossest blunders even in natural science.

It must therefore be clearly admitted that, in the life of a Christian, the intellect must be entirely subject to God's authority. And if, in this submission of reason to authority, our self-love, which is so strong, is restrained and made to suffer, this only proves the necessity to a Christian of long-suffering not only in will but also in intellect. We would remind those persons of this truth who desire a kind of Christianity such as they themselves have devised, whose precepts should be very mild, much more indulgent towards human nature, and requiring little if any hardships to be borne. They do not properly under stand the meaning of faith and Christian precepts. They do not see that the Cross meets us everywhere, the model of our life, the eternal standard of all who wish to follow Christ in reality and not merely in name.

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.

Pope Benedict XVI, whose entire theology is based upon a "return to the ancients" before dogmatic pronouncements were made on various subjects, believes in the sufficiency of the natural law alone in preserving social order. He is wrong. His view stands contrary to the defined teaching of the Catholic Church. I defy anyone to assert with a straight face that the text of Deus Caritas Est--or anything else in the writing of the former Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger--indicates that he believes in one word of the encyclical letters quoted herein? Deus Caritas Est rejects as obsolete and actually harmful the following injunction of Pope Pius XI in Quas Primas, December 11, 1925:

When once men recognize, both in private and in public life, that Christ is King, society will at last receive the great blessings of real liberty, well-ordered discipline, peace and harmony. Our Lord's regal office invests the human authority of princes and rulers with a religious significance; it ennobles the citizen's duty of obedience. It is for this reason that St. Paul, while bidding wives revere Christ in their husbands, and slaves respect Christ in their masters, warns them to give obedience to them not as men, but as the vicegerents of Christ; for it is not meet that men redeemed by Christ should serve their fellow-men. "You are bought with a price; be not made the bond-slaves of men." If princes and magistrates duly elected are filled with the persuasion that they rule, not by their own right, but by the mandate and in the place of the Divine King, they will exercise their authority piously and wisely, and they will make laws and administer them, having in view the common good and also the human dignity of their subjects. The result will be a stable peace and tranquillity, for there will be no longer any cause of discontent. Men will see in their king or in their rulers men like themselves, perhaps unworthy or open to criticism, but they will not on that account refuse obedience if they see reflected in them the authority of Christ God and Man. Peace and harmony, too, will result; for with the spread and the universal extent of the kingdom of Christ men will become more and more conscious of the link that binds them together, and thus many conflicts will be either prevented entirely or at least their bitterness will be diminished. . . . While nations insult the beloved name of our Redeemer by suppressing all mention of it in their conferences and parliaments, we must all the more loudly proclaim his kingly dignity and power, all the more universally affirm his rights.

No, it is not the natural law alone that the Church exalts. It is not the secular state that the Church accepts uncritically. It is the rights of Christ the King that Holy Mother Church as defended until the ethos of Protestantism and Freemasonry influenced the minds of "sophisticates" such as the former Father Joseph Ratzinger, men who believed it was necessary to reconcile the Church with the "principles of 1789," that is, the principles of the French Revolution.

There are many other papal quotes that could be cited. Many of those have been cited in numerous articles on my Christ or Chaos website (and in Volumes I and II of Restoring Christ as the King of All Nations). However, for present purposes, I want to point out that the plain words of Pope Leo XIII, which merely reiterate the consistent, immutable magisterial teaching of the Catholic Church, contradict in no uncertain terms the Modernism of Pope Benedict XVI's embrace of Martin Luther's specific and categorical endorsement of the separation of Church and State. Pope Leo XIII said: "To exclude the Church, founded by God Himself, from life, from laws, from the education of youth, from domestic society is a grave and fatal error."

Of  One Mind: Martin Luther and Benedict XVI

Benedict XVI dissents from this immutable teaching, agreeing with Luther, who wrote:

“Assuredly, a prince can be a Christian, but it is not as a Christian that he ought to govern. As a ruler, he is not called a Christian, but a prince. The man is Christian, but his function does not concern his religion.”

And quite contrary to Pope Benedict XVI's assertion in Deus Caritas Est that the Church is not to direct the building of the just society, Pope Leo XIII pointed out in Immortale Dei and Libertas (1888) that it was precisely the Catholic Church that built the just, although imperfect, society, of Christendom. Father Denis Fahey points this out in great detail in The Mystical Body of Christ in the Modern World.

The Glories of Christendom: Built by the Church

Writing in Immortale Dei, Pope Leo XIII explained the glories of Christendom and how they were rent asunder by the novelties of Protestantism that are so in favor in the Vatican these days:

“There was once a time when States were governed by the philosophy of the Gospel. Then it was that the power and divine virtue of Christian wisdom had diffused itself throughout the laws, institutions, and morals of the people, permeating all ranks and relations of civil society. Then, too, the religion instituted by Jesus Christ, established firmly in befitting dignity, flourished everywhere, by the favor of princes and the legitimate protection of magistrates; and Church and State were happily united in concord and friendly interchange of good offices. The State, constituted in this wise, bore fruits important beyond all expectation, whose remembrance is still, and always will be, in renown, witnessed to as they are by countless proofs which can never be blotted out or ever obscured by any craft of any enemies. Christian Europe has subdued barbarous nations, and changed them from a savage to a civilized condition, from superstition to true worship. It victoriously rolled back the tide of Mohammedan conquest; retained the headship of civilization; stood forth in the front rank as the leader and teacher of all, in every branch of national culture; bestowed on the world the gift of true and many-sided liberty; and most wisely founded very numerous institutions for the solace of human suffering. And if we inquire how it was able to bring about so altered a condition of things, the answer is -- beyond all question, in large measure, through religion, under whose auspices so many great undertakings were set on foot, through whose aid they were brought to completion.

“A similar state of things would certainly have continued had the agreement of the two powers been lasting. More important results even might have been justly looked for, had obedience waited upon the authority, teaching, and counsels of the Church, and had this submission been specially marked by greater and more unswerving loyalty. For that should be regarded in the light of an ever-changeless law which Ivo of Chartres wrote to Pope Paschal II: ‘When kingdom and priesthood are at one, in complete accord, the world is well ruled, and the Church flourishes, and brings forth abundant fruit. But when they are at variance, not only smaller interests prosper not, but even things of greatest moment fall into deplorable decay.’

“But that harmful and deplorable passion for innovation which was aroused in the sixteenth century threw first of all into confusion the Christian religion, and next, by natural sequence, invaded the precincts of philosophy, whence it spread amongst all classes of society. From this source, as from a fountain-head, burst forth all those later tenets of unbridled license which, in the midst of the terrible upheavals of the last century, were wildly conceived and boldly proclaimed as the principles and foundation of that new conception of law which was not merely previously unknown, but was at variance on many points with not only the Christian, but even the natural law.”

The same pope said that it is the Catholic Church alone that is the true guardian and guarantor of justice and authentic liberty in Christ, as he noted in Libertas:

“These precepts of the truest and highest teaching, made known to us by the light of reason itself, the Church, instructed by the example and doctrine of her divine Author, has ever propagated and asserted; for she has made them the measure of her office and of her teaching to the Christian nations. As to morals, the laws of the Gospel not only immeasurably surpass the wisdom of the heathen, but are an invitation and an introduction to a state of holiness unknown to the ancients; and bringing man nearer to God, they make him at once the possessor of a more perfect liberty. Thus, the powerful influence of the Church has ever been manifested in the custody and protection of the civil and political liberty of the people. The enumeration of its merits in this respect does not belong to our present purpose. It is sufficient to recall the fact that slavery, that old reproach of the heathen nations, was mainly abolished by the beneficent efforts of the Church. The impartiality of the law and the true brotherhood of man were first asserted by Jesus Christ; and His apostles re-echoed His voice when they declared that in future there was to be neither Jew or Gentile, nor barbarian, nor Scythian, but all were brothers in Christ. So powerful, so conspicuous, in this respect is the influence of the Church that experience abundantly testifies how savage customs are longer possible in any land where she has once set her foot; but that gentleness speedily takes the place of cruelty, and the light of truth quickly dispels the darkness of barbarism. Nor has the Church been less lavish in the benefits she has conferred on civilized nations in every age, either by resisting the tyranny of the wicked, or by protecting the innocent and helpless from injury, or, finally, by using her influence in the support of any form of government which commended itself to the citizens at home, because of its justice, or was feared by their enemies without, because of its power.”

Pope Pius XI put the matter bluntly his first encyclical letter, Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, 1922:

“Because the Church is by divine institution the sole depository and interpreter of the ideals and teachings of Christ, she alone possesses in any complete and true sense the power effectively to combat that materialistic philosophy which has already done and, still threatens, such tremendous harm to the home and to the state. The Church alone can introduce into society and maintain therein the prestige of a true, sound spiritualism, the spiritualism of Christianity which both from the point of view of truth and of its practical value is quite superior to any exclusively philosophical theory. The Church is the teacher and an example of world good-will, for she is able to inculcate and develop in mankind the ‘true spirit of brotherly love’ (St. Augustine, De Moribus Ecclesiae Catholicae, i, 30) and by raising the public estimation of the value and dignity of the individual's soul help thereby to lift us even unto God.

“Finally, the Church is able to set both public and private life on the road to righteousness by demanding that everything and all men become obedient to God ‘Who beholdeth the heart,’ to His commands, to His laws, to His sanctions. If the teachings of the Church could only penetrate in some such manner as We have described the inner recesses of the consciences of mankind, be they rulers or be they subjects, all eventually would be so apprised of their personal and civic duties and their mutual responsibilities that in a short time ‘Christ would be all, and in all.’ (Colossians iii, 11)

“Since the Church is the safe and sure guide to conscience, for to her safe-keeping alone there has been confided the doctrines and the promise of the assistance of Christ, she is able not only to bring about at the present hour a peace that is truly the peace of Christ, but can, better than any other agency which We know of, contribute greatly to the securing of the same peace for the future, to the making impossible of war in the future. For the Church teaches (she alone has been given by God the mandate and the right to teach with authority) that not only our acts as individuals but also as groups and as nations must conform to the eternal law of God. In fact, it is much more important that the acts of a nation follow God's law, since on the nation rests a much greater responsibility for the consequences of its acts than on the individual.

“When, therefore, governments and nations follow in all their activities, whether they be national or international, the dictates of conscience grounded in the teachings, precepts, and example of Jesus Christ, and which are binding on each and every individual, then only can we have faith in one another's word and trust in the peaceful solution of the difficulties and controversies which may grow out of differences in point of view or from clash of interests. An attempt in this direction has already and is now being made; its results, however, are almost negligible and, especially so, as far as they can be said to affect those major questions which divide seriously and serve to arouse nations one against the other. No merely human institution of today can be as successful in devising a set of international laws which will be in harmony with world conditions as the Middle Ages were in the possession of that true League of Nations, Christianity. It cannot be denied that in the Middle Ages this law was often violated; still it always existed as an ideal, according to which one might judge the acts of nations, and a beacon light calling those who had lost their way back to the safe road.

“There exists an institution able to safeguard the sanctity of the law of nations. This institution is a part of every nation; at the same time it is above all nations. She enjoys, too, the highest authority, the fullness of the teaching power of the Apostles. Such an institution is the Church of Christ. She alone is adapted to do this great work, for she is not only divinely commissioned to lead mankind, but moreover, because of her very make-up and the constitution which she possesses, by reason of her age-old traditions and her great prestige, which has not been lessened but has been greatly increased since the close of the War, cannot but succeed in such a venture where others assuredly will fail.”

These clear, unambiguously Catholic words cannot be reconciled with the novelties of the ethos of conciliarism that has been championed for so long by Pope Benedict XVI, who refuses to believe that the graces won for us on Calvary by the shedding of every single drop of Our Lord's Most Precious Blood are as powerful now to effect a new Christendom as they were during the Church's first millennium. As an Hegelian, the Holy Father believes that "history just moves on" to its next stage. Christendom is over. That's that. Well, Pope Benedict's Hegelianism, itself a product of Modernity's Revolution against the immutability of Catholic truth, is indeed at odds with the entire patrimony of the Church, especially as evidence by the stalwart defense of Christendom by popes from Gregory XVI through Pius XI.

Modernism’s Continued Influence

Pope Benedict XVI is clearly influenced by Modernist ideas that would have been condemned as such if he had proffered his errors during the pontificate of Pope Saint Pius X, who wrote willing telling clarity about the errors of the Modernists concerning the State in Pascendi Dominici Gregis, September 8, 1907:

“But it is not only within her own household that the Church must come to terms. Besides her relations with those within, she has others with those who are outside. The Church does not occupy the world all by herself; there are other societies in the world., with which she must necessarily have dealings and contact. The rights and duties of the Church towards civil societies must, therefore, be determined, and determined, of course, by her own nature, that, to wit, which the Modernists have already described to us. The rules to be applied in this matter are clearly those which have been laid down for science and faith, though in the latter case the question turned upon the object, while in the present case we have one of ends. In the same way, then, as faith and science are alien to each other by reason of the diversity of their objects, Church and State are strangers by reason of the diversity of their ends, that of the Church being spiritual while that of the State is temporal. Formerly it was possible to subordinate the temporal to the spiritual and to speak of some questions as mixed, conceding to the Church the position of queen and mistress in all such, because the Church was then regarded as having been instituted immediately by God as the author of the supernatural order. But this doctrine is today repudiated alike by philosophers and historians. The state must, therefore, be separated from the Church, and the Catholic from the citizen. Every Catholic, from the fact that he is also a citizen, has the right and the duty to work for the common good in the way he thinks best, without troubling himself about the authority of the Church, without paying any heed to its wishes, its counsels, its orders -- nay, even in spite of its rebukes. For the Church to trace out and prescribe for the citizen any line of action, on any pretext whatsoever, is to be guilty of an abuse of authority, against which one is bound to protest with all one's might. Venerable Brethren, the principles from which these doctrines spring have been solemnly condemned by Our predecessor, Pius VI, in his Apostolic Constitution Auctorem fidei.”

Once again, a preconciliar pope’s words reveal Pope Benedict to be a man influenced very much by Modernist ideas, a man who refuses to believe that it is necessary to seek to restore the Social Reign of Christ the King and of Mary our Immaculate Queen.

Indeed, Deus Caritas Est is a specific rejection of the Social Reign of Christ the King as much by what it omits as well as what is included in its text, which is bad enough on its own face. Pope Benedict XVI, who has called for the strengthening of "international organizations" to build "peace" in the world, does not agree with the following statement of Pope Leo XIII, contained in A Review of His Pontificate, 1901:

Hence in proportion as society separates itself from the Church, which is an important element of its strength, by so much does it decline, or its woes are multiplied for the reason that they are separated whom God wished to join together.

Pope Benedict XVI does not believe that the following words of Saint Louis IX, King of France, to his son Philip about the requisites of the right ordering of civil rule apply in these our days:

Be devout and obedient to our mother the Church of Rome and the Supreme Pontiff as your spiritual father. Work to remove all sin from your land, particularly blasphemies and heresies.

Finally, as noted above, a mere reliance on the natural law is not sufficient, either for the State or for Catholic citizens, to provide the foundation for and the means to renew on a constant basis the common temporal good of society. It is Catholic doctrine alone that can do this, as Pope Leo XIII pointed out in Sapientiae Christianae, 1890:

The chief elements of this duty consist in professing openly and unflinchingly the Catholic doctrine, and in propagating it to the utmost of our power. For, as is often said, with the greatest truth, there is nothing so hurtful to Christian wisdom as that it should not be known, since it possesses, when loyally received, inherent power to drive away error.

Case closed.

To Build the City of Mary Immaculate

In the midst of this unprecedented attempt to Protestantize the Catholic Faith, we must cling as never before to Our Lady, to whose Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart we must be totally consecrated. Each of our own sins wounded Our Lord in His Sacred Humanity on the wood of the Holy Cross and they wound His Mystical Body, the Church, today. We must make every effort on a daily basis to scale the heights of sanctity with joy as the totally consecrated slaves of Our Lady, trusting that she will see us through these unprecedented times so that we might be able to plant a few seeds by the graces that flow forth from her hands, won for us by her Divine Son, for and end to this madness by the proper consecration of Russia to her Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart by a pope with all of the world's bishops. Planting a few seeds in this regard might help us avoid the "smoking" section, shall we say, when we breathe our last.

Remember, we never give into despair. We must never grow embittered. We must denounce error and resist falsehood while praying very fervently for those who are in error and who propagate falsehood. What we are experiencing at present is all part of the Diabolical Disorientation that Sister Lucia referred to decades ago. We know that Our Lady's Immaculate Heart will triumph in the end. Tradition will be restored in the Church. Christendom will be restored in the world. Thus, we cling to her, beseeching her through her Most Holy Rosary to do penance for our sins, to live penitentially in Holy Poverty, and to spend time on our knees before her Divine Son's Real Presence, trusting that she means to use us in some small way to help effect a world where every priest in the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church will offer only the Mass of Tradition and where all hearts will exclaim proudly and with true love, "Viva Cristo Rey!"

In the meantime, I implore the Holy Father to “Stop! In the Name of Love Incarnate” from continuing the babbling of the insanity of conciliarism!

Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint Helena, pray for us.

Pope Saint Pius V, pray for us.

Pope Saint Pius X, pray for us.

Saint Catherine of Siena, pray for us.

Saint Peter Verona (the Martyr), pray for us.

Saint Athanasius, pray for us.

Saint Philomena, pray for us.

Blessed Pauline Jaricot, pray for us.

Blessed Francisco, pray for us.

Blessed Jacinta, pray for us.

Sister Lucia, pray for us.

An Afterword: Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre Reflecting on his "Suspension," 1976:

 

“What could be clearer.  We are suspended a divinis by the conciliar church, for the conciliar church to which we have no wish to belong.  

The conciliar church is a schismatic church because it breaks with the Catholic Church that has always been.  It has its new dogmas, its new priesthood, its new institutions, its new worship; all already condemned by the church in many a document – official and definitive.

This is why the founders of the conciliar church insist so much on obedience to today’s church, prescinding from yesterday’s church as though it no longer existed.

This conciliar church is schismatic because it has taken as a basis for its updating, principals opposed to those of the Catholic Church.  This conciliar church is therefore not Catholic!

To whatever extent pope, bishops, priests, or faithful adhere to this new church, they separate themselves from the Catholic Church. 

Today’s Church is the true Church only to whatever extent it is a continuation of and one body with the Church of yesterday and of always.  The norm of Catholic faith is tradition.  The demand of His Eminence Msgr Benelli is then illuminating:  submission to the conciliar church, to the Vatican II church,  to the schismatic church!

For our part we persevere in the Catholic church by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary."

Whatever our conclusions currently, can we all agree that Archbishop Lefebvre was exactly correct thirty years ago?

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.