Thoroughly Modern Benny

by Thomas A. Droleskey

		12.	Thoroughly Modern Millie

(See lyrics at the end of the article.)

 

The desire to appeal that which is allegedly "modern" or "novel" or "innovative" is hardly a novelty. Indeed, there is real no need "novelty," nothing authentically "modern" in the way of ideas or beliefs following the devil's tempting of Eve--and through her to Adam--in the Garden of Eden:

Now the serpent was more subtle than any of the beasts of the earth which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman: Why hath God commanded you, that you should not eat of every tree of paradise? And the woman answered him, saying: Of the fruit of the trees that are in paradise we do eat: But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of paradise, God hath commanded us that we should not eat; and that we should not touch it, lest perhaps we die. And the serpent said to the woman: No, you shall not die the death. For God doth know that in what day soever you shall eat thereof, your eyes shall be opened: and you shall be as Gods, knowing good and evil.

And the woman saw that the tree was good to eat, and fair to the eyes, and delightful to behold: and she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave to her husband who did eat. And the eyes of them both were opened: and when they perceived themselves to be naked, they sewed together fig leaves, and made themselves aprons. And when they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in paradise at the afternoon air, Adam and his wife hid themselves from the face of the Lord God, amidst the trees of paradise. And the Lord God called Adam, and said to him: Where art thou? And he said: I heard thy voice in paradise; and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.

And he said to him: And who hath told thee that thou wast naked, but that thou hast eaten of the tree whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldst not eat? And Adam said: The woman, whom thou gavest me to be my companion, gave me of the tree, and I did eat. And the Lord God said to the woman: Why hast thou done this? And she answered: The serpent deceived me, and I did eat. And the Lord God said to the serpent: Because thou hast done this thing, thou art cursed among all cattle, and beasts of the earth: upon thy breast shalt thou go, and earth shalt thou eat all the days of thy life. I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed: she shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel.

To the woman also he said: I will multiply thy sorrows, and thy conceptions: in sorrow shalt thou bring forth children, and thou shalt be under thy husband's power, and he shall have dominion over thee. And to Adam he said: Because thou hast hearkened to the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldst not eat, cursed is the earth in thy work; with labour and toil shalt thou eat thereof all the days of thy life. Thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herbs of the earth. In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread till thou return to the earth, out of which thou wast taken: for dust thou art, and into dust thou shalt return. And Adam called the name of his wife Eve: because she was the mother of all the living.

And the Lord God made for Adam and his wife, garments of skins, and clothed them. And he said: Behold Adam is become as one of us, knowing good and evil: now, therefore, lest perhaps he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever. And the Lord God sent him out of the paradise of pleasure, to till the earth from which he was taken. And he cast out Adam; and placed before the paradise of pleasure Cherubims, and a flaming sword, turning every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.(Genesis 3: 1-23)

 

Every personal and national problem in the world is caused by Original Sin and our own Actual Sins. There is no "modern" way to deal with the any such problems. The state of nations depends upon the state of souls, created in the image and likeness of the Blessed Trinity and redeemed by the shedding of every single drop of the Most Precious Blood of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour on the wood of the Holy Cross. There is no "modern," naturalistic, "anti-Incarnational," semi-Pelagianist way to ameliorate or to resolve any personal or social problem. Everything we do in every aspect of our lives depends upon our effort to cooperate with the graces won for us by Our Lord on the wood of the Holy Cross and that are made present in Holy Mother Church by the working of the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity, God the Holy Ghost, in the Sacraments and that flow into our hearts and souls through the loving hands of Our Lady, the Mediatrix of All Graces. The one and only way for men to deal with any problem, whether personal or social, is to reform their own lives and to seek to subordinate every aspect of their personal and social lives to the pursuit of their Last End, the possession of the glory of the Beatific Vision of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost for all eternity in Heaven that has been made possible for us to behold by Our Lord's Easter victory over sin and death.

The Easter Exsultet, which was proclaimed on the morning or the evening of Holy Saturday during the Easter Vigil, explains to us that Adam's sin, which has caused all of the problems in the world, made possible our Redemption, wherein Our Lord showed forth his obedience to His Co-Equal Father and His matchless love for us erring creatures:

O happy fault,  O necessary sin of Adam, which gained for us so great a Redeemer!

O certe necessarium Adae peccatum, quod Christi morte deletum est! O felix culpa, quae talem ac tantum meruit habere Redemptorem!

 

The Redemptive Act wrought by Our Lord on the wood of the Holy Cross on Good Friday is one in which His Most Blessed Mother cooperated fully as our Co-Redemptrix, as Pope Leo XIII explained in Iucunda Semper Expectatione, September 8,1894:

The recourse we have to Mary in prayer follows upon the office she continuously fills by the side of the throne of God as Mediatrix of Divine grace; being by worthiness and by merit most acceptable to Him, and, therefore, surpassing in power all the angels and saints in Heaven. Now, this merciful office of hers, perhaps, appears in no other form of prayer so manifestly as it does in the Rosary. For in the Rosary all the part that Mary took as our co-Redemptress comes to us, as it were, set forth, and in such wise as though the facts were even then taking place; and this with much profit to our piety, whether in the contemplation of the succeeding sacred mysteries, or in the prayers which we speak and repeat with the lips. First come the Joyful Mysteries. The Eternal Son of God stoops to mankind, putting on its nature; but with the assent of Mary, who conceives Him by the Holy Ghost. Then St. John the Baptist, by a singular privilege, is sanctified in his mother's womb and favored with special graces that he might prepare the way of the Lord; and this comes to pass by the greeting of Mary who had been inspired to visit her cousin. At last the expected of nations comes to light, Christ the Savior. The Virgin bears Him. And when the Shepherds and the wise men, first-fruits of the Christian faith, come with longing to His cradle, they find there the young Child, with Mary, His Mother. Then, that He might before men offer Himself as a victim to His Heavenly Father, He desires to be taken to the Temple; and by the hands of Mary He is there presented to the Lord. It is Mary who, in the mysterious losing of her Son, seeks Him sorrowing, and finds Him again with joy. And the same truth is told again in the sorrowful mysteries.

In the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus is in an agony; in the judgment-hall, where He is scourged, crowned with thorns, condemned to death, not there do we find Mary. But she knew beforehand all these agonies; she knew and saw them. When she professed herself the handmaid of the Lord for the mother's office, and when, at the foot of the altar, she offered up her whole self with her Child Jesus -- then and thereafter she took her part in the laborious expiation made by her Son for the sins of the world. It is certain, therefore, that she suffered in the very depths of her soul with His most bitter sufferings and with His torments. Moreover, it was before the eyes of Mary that was to be finished the Divine Sacrifice for which she had borne and brought up the Victim. As we contemplate Him in the last and most piteous of those Mysteries, there stood by the Cross of Jesus His Mother, who, in a miracle of charity, so that she might receive us as her sons, offered generously to Divine Justice her own Son, and died in her heart with Him, stabbed with the sword of sorrow.

 

No one can ever plumb the depths of the mysteries of our Redemption, which we have called to mind in a most special way in the past few days during the Easter Triduum of Our Lord's Passion, Death and Resurrection. Not even great mystics, such as Saint Bridget of Sweden and Saint Gertrude the Great and Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque and Saint John of the Cross and Venerable Anne Katherine Emmerich have been given to plumb the totality of the depths of the mysteries of our Redemption, admitting that they were given special privileges and insights into them at various points during their lives. These mysteries are not some "past historical event." God lives outside of time and space. Everything is an instant "now" for Him in Heaven. 

So, too, you see, is the the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, which brings events of our Redemption to life in an unbloody manner every day transcends time and space. True, each Mass is offered in a particular place by a particular priest at a particular time in history. It is also nevertheless true that each Mass transcends time as it takes us back to Calvary itself, wherein assembled is the entirety of the Church Triumphant in Heaven, including all of saints, starting with the Queen of All Saints, Our Lady, and the choirs of the angels, and all of the members of the Church Suffering in Purgatory who profit so much from each offering of the Holy the Mass. The signification of the distinction between time and eternity is one of the reasons that the altar rail separates the sanctuary of a Catholic church from its nave. The sacerdos, that is, the one who is offering sacrifice, a Catholic priest, is acting in persona Christi as He makes Our Lord incarnate--Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity--under the appearance of bread and wine in the words of Consecration. Although acting in time the priest is taking the very place of the Chief Priest and Victim of every Mass, Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, as the One Sacrifice of the Cross is perpetuated in time in an unbloody manner. This is a mystery that no human mind can fathom completely or explain adequately. The very events of our salvation are brought forth before our very eyes each and every day save for Good Friday itself.

Only a heart that has failed to see the depths to which the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus suffered to redeem us on the wood of the Holy Cross can fail to comprehend how the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is the greatest catechist that we have been given. Pope Pius XI noted in this in Quas Primas, December 11, 1925, explaining how it was necessary to institute liturgical feasts now and again so as to emphasize doctrinal points that most people would not learn from encyclical letters. Most Catholics, Pope Pius XI understood so very well, learn about the Faith from their contact, if any, with the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, which is why he instituted the annual Feast of Christ the King so as to help Catholics understand that everything in personal and social life must reflect Our Lord's absolute kingship over men and over their nations:

That these blessings may be abundant and lasting in Christian society, it is necessary that the kingship of our Savior should be as widely as possible recognized and understood, and to the end nothing would serve better than the institution of a special feast in honor of the Kingship of Christ. For people are instructed in the truths of faith, and brought to appreciate the inner joys of religion far more effectually by the annual celebration of our sacred mysteries than by any official pronouncement of the teaching of the Church. Such pronouncements usually reach only a few and the more learned among the faithful; feasts reach them all; the former speak but once, the latter speak every year -- in fact, forever. The church's teaching affects the mind primarily; her feasts affect both mind and heart, and have a salutary effect upon the whole of man's nature. Man is composed of body and soul, and he needs these external festivities so that the sacred rites, in all their beauty and variety, may stimulate him to drink more deeply of the fountain of God's teaching, that he may make it a part of himself, and use it with profit for his spiritual life.

History, in fact, tells us that in the course of ages these festivals have been instituted one after another according as the needs or the advantage of the people of Christ seemed to demand: as when they needed strength to face a common danger, when they were attacked by insidious heresies, when they needed to be urged to the pious consideration of some mystery of faith or of some divine blessing. Thus in the earliest days of the Christian era, when the people of Christ were suffering cruel persecution, the cult of the martyrs was begun in order, says St. Augustine, "that the feasts of the martyrs might incite men to martyrdom."[34] The liturgical honors paid to confessors, virgins and widows produced wonderful results in an increased zest for virtue, necessary even in times of peace. But more fruitful still were the feasts instituted in honor of the Blessed Virgin. As a result of these men grew not only in their devotion to the Mother of God as an ever-present advocate, but also in their love of her as a mother bequeathed to them by their Redeemer. Not least among the blessings which have resulted from the public and legitimate honor paid to the Blessed Virgin and the saints is the perfect and perpetual immunity of the Church from error and heresy. We may well admire in this the admirable wisdom of the Providence of God, who, ever bringing good out of evil, has from time to time suffered the faith and piety of men to grow weak, and allowed Catholic truth to be attacked by false doctrines, but always with the result that truth has afterwards shone out with greater splendor, and that men's faith, aroused from its lethargy, has shown itself more vigorous than before.

The festivals that have been introduced into the liturgy in more recent years have had a similar origin, and have been attended with similar results. When reverence and devotion to the Blessed Sacrament had grown cold, the feast of Corpus Christi was instituted, so that by means of solemn processions and prayer of eight days' duration, men might be brought once more to render public homage to Christ. So, too, the feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus was instituted at a time when men were oppressed by the sad and gloomy severity of Jansenism, which had made their hearts grow cold, and shut them out from the love of God and the hope of salvation.

If We ordain that the whole Catholic world shall revere Christ as King, We shall minister to the need of the present day, and at the same time provide an excellent remedy for the plague which now infects society. We refer to the plague of anti-clericalism, its errors and impious activities. This evil spirit, as you are well aware, Venerable Brethren, has not come into being in one day; it has long lurked beneath the surface. The empire of Christ over all nations was rejected. The right which the Church has from Christ himself, to teach mankind, to make laws, to govern peoples in all that pertains to their eternal salvation, that right was denied. Then gradually the religion of Christ came to be likened to false religions and to be placed ignominiously on the same level with them. It was then put under the power of the state and tolerated more or less at the whim of princes and rulers. Some men went even further, and wished to set up in the place of God's religion a natural religion consisting in some instinctive affection of the heart. There were even some nations who thought they could dispense with God, and that their religion should consist in impiety and the neglect of God. The rebellion of individuals and states against the authority of Christ has produced deplorable consequences. We lamented these in the Encyclical Ubi arcano; we lament them today: the seeds of discord sown far and wide; those bitter enmities and rivalries between nations, which still hinder so much the cause of peace; that insatiable greed which is so often hidden under a pretense of public spirit and patriotism, and gives rise to so many private quarrels; a blind and immoderate selfishness, making men seek nothing but their own comfort and advantage, and measure everything by these; no peace in the home, because men have forgotten or neglect their duty; the unity and stability of the family undermined; society in a word, shaken to its foundations and on the way to ruin. We firmly hope, however, that the feast of the Kingship of Christ, which in future will be yearly observed, may hasten the return of society to our loving Savior. It would be the duty of Catholics to do all they can to bring about this happy result. Many of these, however, have neither the station in society nor the authority which should belong to those who bear the torch of truth. This state of things may perhaps be attributed to a certain slowness and timidity in good people, who are reluctant to engage in conflict or oppose but a weak resistance; thus the enemies of the Church become bolder in their attacks. But if the faithful were generally to understand that it behooves them ever to fight courageously under the banner of Christ their King, then, fired with apostolic zeal, they would strive to win over to their Lord those hearts that are bitter and estranged from him, and would valiantly defend his rights.

Moreover, the annual and universal celebration of the feast of the Kingship of Christ will draw attention to the evils which anticlericalism has brought upon society in drawing men away from Christ, and will also do much to remedy them. 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.

 

The Immemorial Mass of Tradition, which is the normative Mass of the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church (as distinguished from the counterfeit church of conciliarism), communicates the truths of the Sacred Mysteries of our Redemption clearly and magnificently while calling us to behold with true awe the "mysterium tremendum" of God's love for us as He endured the pain of our sins in His Sacred Humanity. The Mass of the ages is timeless. It is not bound to one culture or to one period of history. It is not an invention of some liturgical commitment headed by a Freemason (who said in 1965 that "We must strip from our Catholic prayers and from the Catholic liturgy everything which can be the shadow of a stumbling block for our separated brethren that is for the Protestants") and on which served six liberal Protestant "observers" (who made their "observations" during coffee breaks and then saw their "observations" being read into the record by Catholic bishops during the formal proceedings of the Consilium). The Immemorial Mass of Tradition produced saints without distinction during the Middle Ages, saints who grew up as illiterate peasants and saints who were inspired to give up their lives for the Faith and saints who ruled civil kingdoms for the eternal good of souls according to the mind of the Divine Redeemer as He has discharged It exclusively in the Catholic Church.

The Mass of Tradition was passed down from generation to generation, admitting that there were some regional variations and customs that had grown up prior to the issuance of the Missale Romanum by Pope Saint Pius V in Quo Primum, July 14, 1570. Someone from England, however, could recognize the offering of the Mass in Germany. Someone from Spain could recognize the offering of the Mass in Hungary. Someone from France could recognize the offering of the Mass in Denmark. The Immemorial Mass of Tradition, which in all of its essential elements comes from Saint Peter himself, communicates the universality and immutability of God and of His Holy Truths. The Mass of the ages communicates clearly that it, being the unbloody re-presentation or perpetuation of the Sacrifice of the Cross, is a propitiatory offering for human sins. And, of course, it is a foretaste of eternal glories in addition to being the unbloody re-presentation or perpetuation of the Sacrifice of the Cross.

Pope Saint Pius V knew that efforts had been made by some Catholic priests in the years following Martin Luther's revolt from the Divine Plan that God has instituted to effect man's return to Him through the Catholic Church to "accommodate" Catholic worship to the spirit of Protestantism in order to "win back" the heretics and schismatics to the Barque of Peter. This is why he forbade the use of any other missal in the Roman Rite, making an exception for those that could prove "local usage" dating back more than 200 years, placing it before the time of "modernizers" such as John Hus and Martin Luther and John Calvin and Thomas Cranmer. It was necessary to preserve the Faith from any and all influences of the heretics, who sought to "restore" allegedly "simpler" liturgies of an earlier era at the same time they sought to "adapt" the religious spirit to the "needs" of modern man.

The needs of each man in every age are the same: to save his soul as a member of the Catholic Church. Although there are various technological and cultural changes that take places over the centuries, the essential needs of man do not change. There is no "need" to adapt worship or doctrine (or the expression of of worship and doctrine) to any one time or place or culture. Men who live apart from the Faith live under the delusion that his era of history is the most "advanced that history has ever seen, that there is no longer any need to hold on to the "superstitions" and "traditions" of the past, that "science" and "technology" have made present in the world "new" realities that made the "approaches" of the past "outdated," too much bound up as they were with a particular time and a bygone culture whose relevance has been eclipsed by the "new" "realities" of the present moment.

This bias in favor of the special nature of "Modernity" is what produced the heresy of Modernism in the Catholic Church in the Nineteenth Century. A way had to be found to "adapt" the Catholic Faith to the "discoveries" of "historical" and "scientific" research. It is no longer "possible" for "modern man" to "accept" or to find as "relevant" ways of expressing the worship of God and His doctrines, which themselves must be subjected to re-examination in light of the "progress of peoples." This is all seen very clearly in Paragraph 15 of the General Instruction to the Roman Missal, the document that "governs" the offering of the Protestant and Masonic service known as the Novus Ordo Missae (the text and the commentary that follows it comes from my own G.I.R.M. Warfare):

Thus the Church remains faithful in its responsibility as a teacher of truth to guard 'things old,' that is, the deposit of tradition; at the same time it fulfills another duty, that of examining and prudently bringing forth 'things new.'

"Accordingly, a part of the new Roman Missal directs the prayer of the Church expressly to the needs of our times. This is above all true of the ritual Masses and the Masses for various needs and occasions, which happily combine the traditional and the contemporary. Thus many expressions, drawn from the Church's most ancient tradition and familiar through the many editions of the Roman Missal, have remained unchanged. Other expressions, however, have been adapted to today's needs and circumstances and still others-for example, the prayers for the Church, the laity, the sanctification of human work, the community of all peoples, certain needs proper to our era-are completely new compositions, drawing on the thoughts and even the very language of the recent conciliar documents.

"The same awareness of the present state of the world also influenced the use of texts from very ancient tradition. It seemed that this cherished treasure would not be harmed if some phrases were changed so that the style of language would be more in accord with the language of modern theology and would faithfully reflect the actual state of the Church's discipline. Thus there have been changes of some expressions bearing on the evaluation and use of the good things of the earth and of allusions to a particular form of outward penance belonging to another age in the history of the Church.

"In short, the liturgical norms of the Council of Trent have been completed and improved in many respects by those of the Second Vatican Council. The Council has brought to realization the efforts of the last four hundred years to move the faithful closer to the sacred liturgy, especially the efforts of recent times and above all the zeal for the liturgy promoted by Saint Pius X and his successors."

Comment and Analysis:

Holy Mass is supposed to be suited to the needs of all times, not just our times. Herein, therefore, lies the real nub of the problem with the General Instruction to the Roman Missal and thus the Novus Ordo itself: a reliance upon the spirit of one particular time in history results in the glorification of the human spirit and not that of the Blessed Trinity. It is really that simple. God exists outside of time and space. The worship of God must convey, as noted earlier, the timelessness of God and the immortality of our own souls, which will live forever either in Heaven or in Hell once the Last Judgment has taken place. Again, as noted earlier, the Mass is supposed to be a refuge from the world, not a glorification of it.

"It seemed that this cherished treasure [ancient tradition] would not be harmed if some phrases were changed so that the style of language would be more in accord with the language of modern theology and would faithfully reflect the actual state of the Church's discipline."

Well, our ancient tradition is not the only casualty wrought by the changing of phrases of the Mass texts (Introits, Collects, Secrets, Prayer after Communion, the very Offertory Prayers themselves, the addition of first three and then five more new "Eucharistic prayers"). The very faith life of many Catholics has been harmed.

One of the reasons that the Sacrament of Penance fell into disuse is that the faithful are no longer reminded of their sinfulness in the prayers of the Mass. The faithful thus believe there is no need to reconcile themselves to the Father through the Son in Spirit in and in Truth in the hospital of Divine Mercy which is the confessional. No, one cannot sin as long as one's "fundamental option" is for God.

Indeed, as is noted in the rest of this book, a priest has many legitimate options by which to invite the people to express themselves in what is now called the Penitential Rite. A growing number of priests believe that "modern theology" requires them not to stress the sinfulness of the period and their need for God's forgiveness but to celebrate human goodness and to give thanks to God for all that He has given us. However, man's need to recognize himself as a sinner and to do penance for his sins is unchanging. The harm done to souls by the changing of the "style of language" in the new Mass is incalculable.

The concluding part of Paragraph 15 is a little bit akin to the old phrase, "The lady doth protest too much." All of the repeated attempts to state that the new Mass is a continuation of our liturgical tradition (which GIRM itself contradicts in the body of Paragraph 15, as noted in my discussion about the changes in the texts of the prayers of the Mass) are efforts to try to convince readers that the new Mass really, really, really, really, really is what GIRM says it is.

The trouble with gratuitous statements is that they are made without foundation, sinking into the quicksand upon which they are made. They are efforts to justify a revolution which has undermined the faith and profaned the honor and glory due God in the Sacrifice of the Mass. GIRM is revisionist history writ large.

 

Modernism's belief that "modern man" cannot "relate" to "past" expressions of worship and doctrine impels Modernists to attempt to change everything about the Faith. Everything. Condemned doctrines and propositions receive their approval. The Mass must be "reformed" to make it possible for the people to engage in a "active and conscious participation" in the liturgy, which implies that they inactive and unconscious in the past, heaping scorn upon the true participation we are called to engage in quite actively during Mass, interior participation, as Pope Pius XII explained in Mediator Dei, November 20, 1947. "New" "mysteries" must be "added" to the Rosary, whose set of 150 Hail Marys is the same number of Psalms composed by King David under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost. And, obviously, "new," "Scripturally-based" Stations of the Cross must be composed so as to make a "past event" become "relevant" to "modern" man.

The following story, which was carried by the Telegraph of the United Kingdom, relates the latest effort to "revise" the Stations of the Cross as they are offered by a conciliar pontiff, in this case Benedict XVI/Joseph Ratzinger, who is simply carrying on the conciliar "tradition," begun by his immediate predecessor, John Paul II, of changing the titles of the fourteen stations:

by Malcolm Moore in Rome
April 7, 2007

Link to original

Pope Speaks of Nazi Atrocities in Easter Ritual

The Pope shocked many Catholics last night with a dramatically revised version of the Stations of the Cross, one of the central rituals of the Easter ceremony.

The ceremony, also known as the Via Crucis, recreates Jesus's path on the day of his death from the Antonia fortress to Golgotha, where he was crucified.

The Pope carried the cross for the first and last of the 14 stops on a candle-lit procession around the Coliseum in Rome. However, this year the Pope chose to change both the route and the content of the ceremony. The Vatican said the changes were designed to reflect the gospels more truly and to link Jesus's suffering with the suffering of mankind today.

One of the boldest changes came on the third stop, where Jesus is given up to Pontius Pilate by the Sanhedrin, a council of Jews.

The Pope recalled the sentence that was passed over the Jews by the Nazis, and their suffering in concentration camps. He quoted Etty Hilesum, a Dutch Jew, who was executed in Auschwitz in 1943, saying: "We must oppose every new horror and crime with a new piece of the truth and goodness. We may suffer, but we must not succumb."

Monsignor Gianfranco Ravasi, the prefect of the Ambrosian Library in Milan and a member of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, was asked by the Pope to update the ceremony. He said: "I did not want the ceremony just to be a simple recollection of a past event. I wanted worshippers to feel and live through the raw and bitter reality like a neighbour."

The new changes also included cutting the stop where Jesus drops the Cross, as well as a reference to St Veronica, who mopped Jesus's brow. St Veronica is merely apocryphal and not mentioned in the gospels.

However, a reference to Judas Iscariot was inserted for the first time because, in the words of Mgr Ravasi, "dawn follows night, out of darkness comes light, and after betrayal comes penitence."

Later, on the ninth stop, where Jesus met a group of women, the Pope spoke out against the suffering of "violated" women.

He recalled the women "who have been subjected to tribal practices", the mothers in crisis and alone, "the Jewish or Palestinian mothers and those in all lands ravaged by war, the widows and old ladies forgotten by their children".

The ceremony ended with St Matthew's Passion by Bach

 

Actually, this is no shock at all. The shock in Rome back in the 1990s was when John Paul II actually used traditional meditations and the traditional stations for the Way of the Cross on Good Friday in the Coliseum. There was one year, perhaps 1995 when I spent Holy Week in Rome (all right, I've got much to make reparation for, I know!), when Karol Wojtyla used "meditations" composed by a Moravian nun. (The Moravians, also known as the Bohemian Brethern, carry on the "traditions" of the heretics John Wyclif and Hus. Their beliefs are described on the New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia website, at Bohemian Brethren)

What is simply interesting to point out for the umpteenth time is that Joseph Ratzinger is a true Modernist. He believes that the truths of the Redemption must be "made" "alive." How can any Catholic consider the Stations of the Cross a "past event" when he reflects on how his own sins caused Our Lord and Our Lady to suffer so unspeakably? Removing the encounter between Our Lord and His Most Blessed Mother as they met on the Via Dolorosa? Removing Saint Veronica's wiping of Our Lord's Holy Face with her veil? Referring to Saint Veronica as apocryphal (see, for example, the description given by Venerable Anne Katherine Emmerich of Saint Veronica in The Dolorous Passion of the Christ?)? Well, why not? The conciliarists have suppressed the cult of Saint Philomena and taken her and Saint Christopher and others off of their egregious "liturgical" calendar. Including Judas Iscariot in the Stations of the Cross? Comparing Nazi atrocities to the one and only Holocaust offered up by the true Victim of the Cross to His Father in Spirit and in Truth to effect our Redemption? This is really nothing new at all. This is simply the application of the same Modernist (Judeo-Masonic) principles that concocted the Novus Ordo Missae and embraced condemned heresies and errors (religious liberty, ecumenism, the new ecclesiology, episcopal collegiality, the separation of Church and State) and thus removed most mention of miracles from the saints left on the "new" calendar, meaning that the Catholic Church was wrong for hundreds of years about matters or worship and doctrine!

No, Modernists can leave nothing alone. They must reform everything in their prideful belief that this age is a "special" one and that they, the gnostic holders of a secret path of knowledge to "reach" "modern" men in this "special age, have an obligation to do so lest the "church" lose "all her credibility," as Paul VI told the late Dr. Dietrich von Hildebrand would happen if the Mass was not changed. Credibility with whom? The devil? "Modern" man has responded with absolute boredom and diffidence in the face of the counterfeit church of conciliarism's efforts to appeal to him. Undaunted, however, old revolutionaries such as Joseph Ratzinger believe that "not enough" accommodations have been made to effect some kind of rapprochement with the delusional paradigm of "modern" man that exists in his own Modernist mind. Ratzinger is thus the personification of these telling paragraphs from Pope Saint Pius X's Pascendi Dominci Gregis, September 8, 1907:

But while they endeavor by this line of reasoning to prove and plead for the Catholic religion, these new apologists are more than willing to grant and to recognize that there are in it many things which are repulsive. Nay, they admit openly, and with ill-concealed satisfaction, that they have found that even its dogma is not exempt from errors and contradictions. They add also that this is not only excusable but -- curiously enough -- that it is even right and proper. In the Sacred Books there are many passages referring to science or history where, according to them, manifest errors are to he found. But, they say, the subject of these books is not science or history, but only religion and morals. In them history and science serve only as a species of covering to enable the religious and moral experiences wrapped Up in them to penetrate more readily among the masses. The masses understood science and history as they are expressed in these books, and it is clear that the expression of science and history in a more perfect form would have proved not so much a help as a hindrance. Moreover, they add, the Sacred Books, being essentially religious, are necessarily quick with life. Now life has its own truths and its own logic -- quite different from rational truth and rational logic, belonging as they do to a different order, viz., truth of adaptation and of proportion both with what they call the medium in which it lives and with the end for which it lives. Finally, the Modernists, losing all sense of control, go so far as to proclaim as true and legitimate whatever is explained by life.

We, Venerable Brethren, for whom there is but one and only one truth, and who hold that the Sacred Books, "written under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, have God for their author'' declare that this is equivalent to attributing to God Himself the lie of utility or officious lie, and We say with St. Augustine: "In an authority so high, admit but one officious lie, and there will not remain a single passage of those apparently difficult to practice or to believe, which on the same most pernicious rule may not be explained as a lie uttered by the author willfully and to serve a purpose." And thus it will come about, the holy Doctor continues, that "everybody will believe and refuse to believe what he likes or dislikes in them," namely, the Scriptures. But the Modernists pursue their way eagerly. They grant also that certain arguments adduced in the Sacred Books in proof of a given doctrine, like those, for example, which are based on the prophecies, have no rational foundation to rest on. But they defend even these as artifices of preaching, which are justified by life. More than that. They are ready to admit, nay, to proclaim that Christ Himself manifestly erred in determining the time when the coming of the Kingdom of God was to take place; and they tell us that we must not be surprised at this since even He Himself was subject to the laws of life! After this what is to become of the dogmas of the Church? The dogmas bristle with flagrant contradictions, but what does it matter since, apart from the fact that vital logic accepts them, they are not repugnant to symbolical truth. Are we not dealing with the infinite, and has not the infinite an infinite variety of aspects? In short, to maintain and defend these theories they do not hesitate to declare that the noblest homage that can be paid to the Infinite is to make it the object of contradictory statements! But when they justify even contradictions, what is it that they will refuse to justify?

But it is not solely by objective arguments that the non-believer may be disposed to faith. There are also those that are subjective, and for this purpose the modernist apologists return to the doctrine of immanence. They endeavor, in fact, to persuade their non-believer that down in the very depths of his nature and his life lie hidden the need and the desire for some religion, and this not a religion of any kind, but the specific religion known as Catholicism, which, they say, is absolutely postulated by the perfect development of life. And here again We have grave reason to complain that there are Catholics who, while rejecting immanence as a doctrine, employ it as a method of apologetics, and who do this so imprudently that they seem to admit, not merely a capacity and a suitability for the supernatural, such as has at all times been emphasized, within due limits, by Catholic apologists, but that there is in human nature a true and rigorous need for the supernatural order. Truth to tell, it is only the moderate Modernists who make this appeal to an exigency for the Catholic religion. As for the others, who might he called integralists, they would show to the non-believer, as hidden in his being, the very germ which Christ Himself had in His consciousness, and which He transmitted to mankind. Such, Venerable Brethren, is a summary description of the apologetic method of the Modernists, in perfect harmony with their doctrines -- methods and doctrines replete with errors, made not for edification but for destruction, not for the making of Catholics but for the seduction of those who are Catholics into heresy; and tending to the utter subversion of all religion.

It remains for Us now to say a few words about the Modernist as reformer. From all that has preceded, it is abundantly clear how great and how eager is the passion of such men for innovation. In all Catholicism there is absolutely nothing on which it does not fasten. They wish philosophy to be reformed, especially in the ecclesiastical seminaries. They wish the scholastic philosophy to be relegated to the history of philosophy and to be classed among absolute systems, and the young men to be taught modern philosophy which alone is true and suited to the times in which we live. They desire the reform of theology: rational theology is to have modern philosophy for its foundation, and positive theology is to be founded on the history of dogma. As for history, it must be written and taught only according to their methods and modern principles. Dogmas and their evolution, they affirm, are to be harmonized with science and history. In the Catechism no dogmas are to be inserted except those that have been reformed and are within the capacity of the people. Regarding worship, they say, the number of external devotions is to he reduced, and steps must be taken to prevent their further increase, though, indeed, some of the admirers of symbolism are disposed to be more indulgent on this head. They cry out that ecclesiastical government requires to be reformed in all its branches, but especially in its disciplinary and dogmatic departments They insist that both outwardly and inwardly it must be brought into harmony with the modern conscience which now wholly tends towards democracy; a share in ecclesiastical government should therefore be given to the lower ranks of the clergy and even to the laity and authority which is too much concentrated should be decentralized The Roman Congregations and especially the index and the Holy Office, must be likewise modified The ecclesiastical authority must alter its line of conduct in the social and political world; while keeping outside political organizations it must adapt itself to them in order to penetrate them with its spirit. With regard to morals, they adopt the principle of the Americanists, that the active virtues are more important than the passive, and are to be more encouraged in practice. They ask that the clergy should return to their primitive humility and poverty, and that in their ideas and action they should admit the principles of Modernism; and there are some who, gladly listening to the teaching of their Protestant masters, would desire the suppression of the celibacy of the clergy. What is there left in the Church which is not to be reformed by them and according to their principles?

It may, perhaps, seem to some, Venerable Brethren, that We have dealt at too great length on this exposition of the doctrines of the Modernists. But it was necessary that We should do so, both in order to meet their customary charge that We do not understand their ideas, and to show that their system does not consist in scattered and unconnected theories, but, as it were, in a closely connected whole, so that it is not possible to admit one without admitting all. For this reason, too, We have had to give to this exposition a somewhat didactic form, and not to shrink from employing certain unwonted terms which the Modernists have brought into use. And now with Our eyes fixed upon the whole system, no one will be surprised that We should define it to be the synthesis of all heresies. Undoubtedly, were anyone to attempt the task of collecting together all the errors that have been broached against the faith and to concentrate into one the sap and substance of them all, he could not succeed in doing so better than the Modernists have done. Nay, they have gone farther than this, for, as We have already intimated, their system means the destruction not of the Catholic religion alone, but of all religion. Hence the rationalists are not wanting in their applause, and the most frank and sincere among them congratulate themselves on having found in the Modernists the most valuable of all allies.

 

Essential to Joseph Ratzinger's Modernist appeals to the mythical entity he calls "modern" man is to reject Scholastic or Thomistic Philosophy in favor of the "new theologians" (Hans urs Von Balthasar, Henri de Lubac, Maurice Blondel, et al.). Pope Pius XII  used Humani Generis, August 12, 1950, to condemn such a proud, Modernist-based rejection of Scholasticism:

These new opinions, whether they originate from a reprehensible desire of novelty or from a laudable motive, are not always advanced in the same degree, with equal clarity nor in the same terms, nor always with unanimous agreement of their authors. Theories that today are put forward rather covertly by some, not without cautions and distinctions, tomorrow are openly and without moderation proclaimed by others more audacious, causing scandal to many, especially among the young clergy and to the detriment of ecclesiastical authority. Though they are usually more cautious in their published works, they express themselves more openly in their writings intended for private circulation and in conferences and lectures. Moreover, these opinions are disseminated not only among members of the clergy and in seminaries and religious institutions, but also among the laity, and especially among those who are engaged in teaching youth.

In theology some want to reduce to a minimum the meaning of dogmas; and to free dogma itself from terminology long established in the Church and from philosophical concepts held by Catholic teachers, to bring about a return in the explanation of Catholic doctrine to the way of speaking used in Holy Scripture and by the Fathers of the Church. They cherish the hope that when dogma is stripped of the elements which they hold to be extrinsic to divine revelation, it will compare advantageously with the dogmatic opinions of those who are separated from the unity of the Church and that in this way they will gradually arrive at a mutual assimilation of Catholic dogma with the tenets of the dissidents.

Moreover they assert that when Catholic doctrine has been reduced to this condition, a way will be found to satisfy modern needs, that will permit of dogma being expressed also by the concepts of modern philosophy, whether of immanentism or idealism or existentialism or any other system. Some more audacious affirm that this can and must be done, because they hold that the mysteries of faith are never expressed by truly adequate concepts but only by approximate and ever changeable notions, in which the truth is to some extent expressed, but is necessarily distorted. Wherefore they do not consider it absurd, but altogether necessary, that theology should substitute new concepts in place of the old ones in keeping with the various philosophies which in the course of time it uses as its instruments, so that it should give human expression to divine truths in various ways which are even somewhat opposed, but still equivalent, as they say. They add that the history of dogmas consists in the reporting of the various forms in which revealed truth has been clothed, forms that have succeeded one another in accordance with the different teachings and opinions that have arisen over the course of the centuries.

It is evident from what We have already said, that such tentatives not only lead to what they call dogmatic relativism, but that they actually contain it. The contempt of doctrine commonly taught and of the terms in which it is expressed strongly favor it. Everyone is aware that the terminology employed in the schools and even that used by the Teaching Authority of the Church itself is capable of being perfected and polished; and we know also that the Church itself has not always used the same terms in the same way. It is also manifest that the Church cannot be bound to every system of philosophy that has existed for a short space of time. Nevertheless, the things that have been composed through common effort by Catholic teachers over the course of the centuries to bring about some understanding of dogma are certainly not based on any such weak foundation. These things are based on principles and notions deduced from a true knowledge of created things. In the process of deducing, this knowledge, like a star, gave enlightenment to the human mind through the Church. Hence it is not astonishing that some of these notions have not only been used by the Oecumenical Councils, but even sanctioned by them, so that it is wrong to depart from them.

Hence to neglect, or to reject, or to devalue so many and such great resources which have been conceived, expressed and perfected so often by the age-old work of men endowed with no common talent and holiness, working under the vigilant supervision of the holy magisterium and with the light and leadership of the Holy Ghost in order to state the truths of the faith ever more accurately, to do this so that these things may be replaced by conjectural notions and by some formless and unstable tenets of a new philosophy, tenets which, like the flowers of the field, are in existence today and die tomorrow; this is supreme imprudence and something that would make dogma itself a reed shaken by the wind. The contempt for terms and notions habitually used by scholastic theologians leads of itself to the weakening of what they call speculative theology, a discipline which these men consider devoid of true certitude because it is based on theological reasoning.

Unfortunately these advocates of novelty easily pass from despising scholastic theology to the neglect of and even contempt for the Teaching Authority of the Church itself, which gives such authoritative approval to scholastic theology. This Teaching Authority is represented by them as a hindrance to progress and an obstacle in the way of science. Some non Catholics consider it as an unjust restraint preventing some more qualified theologians from reforming their subject. And although this sacred Office of Teacher in matters of faith and morals must be the proximate and universal criterion of truth for all theologians, since to it has been entrusted by Christ Our Lord the whole deposit of faith -- Sacred Scripture and divine Tradition -- to be preserved, guarded and interpreted, still the duty that is incumbent on the faithful to flee also those errors which more or less approach heresy, and accordingly "to keep also the constitutions and decrees by which such evil opinions are proscribed and forbidden by the Holy See," is sometimes as little known as if it did not exist. What is expounded in the Encyclical Letters of the Roman Pontiffs concerning the nature and constitution of the Church, is deliberately and habitually neglected by some with the idea of giving force to a certain vague notion which they profess to have found in the ancient Fathers, especially the Greeks. The Popes, they assert, do not wish to pass judgment on what is a matter of dispute among theologians, so recourse must be had to the early sources, and the recent constitutions and decrees of the Teaching Church must be explained from the writings of the ancients.

Although these things seem well said, still they are not free from error. It is true that Popes generally leave theologians free in those matters which are disputed in various ways by men of very high authority in this field; but history teaches that many matters that formerly were open to discussion, no longer now admit of discussion.

Nor must it be thought that what is expounded in Encyclical Letters does not of itself demand consent, since in writing such Letters the Popes do not exercise the supreme power of their Teaching Authority. For these matters are taught with the ordinary teaching authority, of which it is true to say: "He who heareth you, heareth me"; and generally what is expounded and inculcated in Encyclical Letters already for other reasons appertains to Catholic doctrine. But if the Supreme Pontiffs in their official documents purposely pass judgment on a matter up to that time under dispute, it is obvious that that matter, according to the mind and will of the same Pontiffs, cannot be any longer considered a question open to discussion among theologians.

It is also true that theologians must always return to the sources of divine revelation: for it belongs to them to point out how the doctrine of the living Teaching Authority is to be found either explicitly or implicitly in the Scriptures and in Tradition. Besides, each source of divinely revealed doctrine contains so many rich treasures of truth, that they can really never be exhausted. Hence it is that theology through the study of its sacred sources remains ever fresh; on the other hand, speculation which neglects a deeper search into the deposit of faith, proves sterile, as we know from experience. But for this reason even positive theology cannot be on a par with merely historical science. For, together with the sources of positive theology God has given to His Church a living Teaching Authority to elucidate and explain what is contained in the deposit of faith only obscurely and implicitly. This deposit of faith our Divine Redeemer has given for authentic interpretation not to each of the faithful, not even to theologians, but only to the Teaching Authority of the Church. But if the Church does exercise this function of teaching, as she often has through the centuries, either in the ordinary or extraordinary way, it is clear how false is a procedure which would attempt to explain what is clear by means of what is obscure. Indeed the very opposite procedure must be used. Hence Our Predecessor of immortal memory, Pius IX, teaching that the most noble office of theology is to show how a doctrine defined by the Church is contained in the sources of revelation, added these words, and with very good reason: "in that sense in which it has been defined by the Church."

 

Joseph Ratzinger sees the entirety of the Catholic Faith through the prism of his Modernism. He is an Hegelian who believes that truth, including dogmatic truth, contains within itself the seeds of its own internal contradiction, which is why he has no problem endorsing things condemned by true Catholic popes (religious liberty, separation of Church and State, ecumenism) as such pronouncements had a "relevance" at one time but lose their "relevance" in light of subsequent developments.

This is quite a double-edged sword for Ratzinger and his fellow conciliarists. Believing that "past" papal pronouncements and even dogmatic pronouncements (no one can say, for example, that Joseph Ratzinger believes Pope Eugene IV's Cantate Domino, issued during the Council of Florence in 1442, and in the Council of Trent's Decree of Justification, see Bishop Donald Sanborn's Critical Analysis of the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification) lose their binding force over time, Ratzinger does not realize that his own "papal" pronouncements thus lose all binding force. Why can't some subsequent "pope" decide to "reinterpret" them in light of the "needs" of "modern" man in the Twenty-eighth Century, for example?

As noted by Pope Saint Pius X in Pascendi Dominci Gregis, contradictions mean nothing to Modernists. Joseph Ratzinger believes in a form of the Catholic Church, one of "concentric circles" with " members" who believe in different articles of Faith, that has been condemned by Pope Leo XIII in Satis Cognitum, June 29, 1896, and by Pope Pius XII, Mystici Corporis, June 29, 1943. (See Bishop Sanborn's Communion: Ratzingers's Ecumenical One-World Church). He can thus believe that an Orthodox "patriarch is a fellow "pastor" in the "Church of Christ" even though the "patriarch" does not believe in papal primary, papal infallibility, the Filioque, Purgatory, Our Lady's Immaculate Conception and her bodily Assumption into Heaven, and the indissolubility of the Sacrament of Matrimony (and believes in contraception).This defies Pope Pius XI's clear explanation in Mortalium Animos of how a "federation of pan-Christians" is impossible:

These pan-Christians who turn their minds to uniting the churches seem, indeed, to pursue the noblest of ideas in promoting charity among all Christians: nevertheless how does it happen that this charity tends to injure faith? Everyone knows that John himself, the Apostle of love, who seems to reveal in his Gospel the secrets of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and who never ceased to impress on the memories of his followers the new commandment "Love one another," altogether forbade any intercourse with those who professed a mutilated and corrupt version of Christ's teaching: "If any man come to you and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into the house nor say to him: God speed you." For which reason, since charity is based on a complete and sincere faith, the disciples of Christ must be united principally by the bond of one faith. Who then can conceive a Christian Federation, the members of which retain each his own opinions and private judgment, even in matters which concern the object of faith, even though they be repugnant to the opinions of the rest? And in what manner, We ask, can men who follow contrary opinions, belong to one and the same Federation of the faithful? For example, those who affirm, and those who deny that sacred Tradition is a true fount of divine Revelation; those who hold that an ecclesiastical hierarchy, made up of bishops, priests and ministers, has been divinely constituted, and those who assert that it has been brought in little by little in accordance with the conditions of the time; those who adore Christ really present in the Most Holy Eucharist through that marvelous conversion of the bread and wine, which is called transubstantiation, and those who affirm that Christ is present only by faith or by the signification and virtue of the Sacrament; those who in the Eucharist recognize the nature both of a sacrament and of a sacrifice, and those who say that it is nothing more than the memorial or commemoration of the Lord's Supper; those who believe it to be good and useful to invoke by prayer the Saints reigning with Christ, especially Mary the Mother of God, and to venerate their images, and those who urge that such a veneration is not to be made use of, for it is contrary to the honor due to Jesus Christ, "the one mediator of God and men." How so great a variety of opinions can make the way clear to effect the unity of the Church We know not; that unity can only arise from one teaching authority, one law of belief and one faith of Christians. But We do know that from this it is an easy step to the neglect of religion or indifferentism and to modernism, as they call it. Those, who are unhappily infected with these errors, hold that dogmatic truth is not absolute but relative, that is, it agrees with the varying necessities of time and place and with the varying tendencies of the mind, since it is not contained in immutable revelation, but is capable of being accommodated to human life. Besides this, in connection with things which must be believed, it is nowise licit to use that distinction which some have seen fit to introduce between those articles of faith which are fundamental and those which are not fundamental, as they say, as if the former are to be accepted by all, while the latter may be left to the free assent of the faithful: for the supernatural virtue of faith has a formal cause, namely the authority of God revealing, and this is patient of no such distinction. For this reason it is that all who are truly Christ's believe, for example, the Conception of the Mother of God without stain of original sin with the same faith as they believe the mystery of the August Trinity, and the Incarnation of our Lord just as they do the infallible teaching authority of the Roman Pontiff, according to the sense in which it was defined by the Ecumenical Council of the Vatican. Are these truths not equally certain, or not equally to be believed, because the Church has solemnly sanctioned and defined them, some in one age and some in another, even in those times immediately before our own? Has not God revealed them all? For the teaching authority of the Church, which in the divine wisdom was constituted on earth in order that revealed doctrines might remain intact for ever, and that they might be brought with ease and security to the knowledge of men, and which is daily exercised through the Roman Pontiff and the Bishops who are in communion with him, has also the office of defining, when it sees fit, any truth with solemn rites and decrees, whenever this is necessary either to oppose the errors or the attacks of heretics, or more clearly and in greater detail to stamp the minds of the faithful with the articles of sacred doctrine which have been explained. But in the use of this extraordinary teaching authority no newly invented matter is brought in, nor is anything new added to the number of those truths which are at least implicitly contained in the deposit of Revelation, divinely handed down to the Church: only those which are made clear which perhaps may still seem obscure to some, or that which some have previously called into question is declared to be of faith.

 

Joseph Ratzinger went so far as to state in the "offering" of the "Chrism Mass" in the Basilica of Saint Peter on Maundy Thursday that

"Christ wore our clothing: the pain and joy of being a man, thirst, hunger, tiredness, the hopes and delusions, the fear of death, all our anguishes until death."

 

Delusions? Delusions? Our Lord has a perfect human nature, one unstained by Original or Actual Sin, that was hypostatically united to His Sacred Divinity by power of the Holy Ghost at the moment of His Incarnation in His Most Blessed Mother's Virginal and Immaculate Womb. He never had any delusions in His life here on this earth. Not one. He no sooner had any "delusions" than Our Lady had "temper tantrums" as was portrayed in the motion picture that was premiered in the Vatican's Paul VI Audience Hall on Sunday, November 26, 2006, with the personal approval of Joseph Ratzinger, who evidently feels free to deny dogmatic principles when he refers to the One Whose vicar he thinks he is and when approving a blasphemous portrayal of Our Lady as worthy of commendation for Catholics worldwide to witness with their own eyes. No, Our Lord had no delusions.

It is Joseph Ratzinger who is deluded by his Modernism, by his embrace of condemned heresies, by his saying nothing when the preacher of his household says that the Catholic Church must not seek to convert Jews, meaning that Saint Peter was "time bound" on Pentecost Sunday and that what he did in seeking the conversion of the Jews no longer applies in our own day in light of "historical" developments and the "needs" of "modern" man.( "If Jews one day come (as Paul hopes) to a more positive judgment of Jesus, this must occur through an inner process, as the end of a search of their own (something that in part is occurring). We Christians cannot be the ones who seek to convert them. We have lost the right to do so by the way in which this was done in the past. First the wounds must be healed through dialogue and reconciliation," Father Raniero Cantalamessa, Zenit, September 30, 2005). It is Joseph Ratzinger who is deluded when he believes that false religions have the right to propagate themselves in civil society and that their false ideas can "contribute" to a betterment of society.

Joseph Ratzinger lives in a world of delusion and contradiction. He can talk about belief in the Resurrection (whatever that means to him; it seems to mean different things at different times) on Easter Sunday while he places into doubt its meaning in his writing and as he personally championed the "consecration" of a conciliar priest, Bruno Forte, who had written that the Resurrection was a "myth" invented by the Apostles (see:Ratzinger and the Resurrection, Bishop Sanborn's Easter Sunday sermon at Saint Gertrude the Great Church). This is no problem for Ratzinger or for his Hegelian supporters. We just have to understand the profound depth of nuance that exists in so brilliant a mind. Ratzinger is really trying to develop a "synthesis of faith" for "modern" man. Those poor creatures who do not appreciate the nuance of a brilliant mind are simply looking for problems to point out rather than accepting the fact that the Holy Ghost is speaking through His chosen vessel, Ratzinger.

There is a little problem with this kind of delusion: the Holy Ghost does not contradict Himself. He is God, Who is immutable. As Bishop Sanborn noted in a brief conversation with us on Spy Wednesday, April 4, 2007, the Church spoke with "one voice" before 1958. You could go through Denziger (the famous compilation of the sources of dogma), His Excellency said, and read words of pronouncements and decrees that were published centuries apart. They read as though they had been written but by one author. Not so conciliarism, which speaks in the novel language of an ambiguity and uncertainty and contradiction and innovation that has devastated the Faith in the lives of so many millions of ordinary Catholics and have left those outside of the Catholic Church to believe that their salvation is more or less assured, that the Catholic Church has no mission from her Divine Bridegroom to seek with urgency their conversion to the true Church lest their perish in perdition for all eternity.

The "world" of Modernity in which we live believes in the same old lie that the devil told to Eve, which she passed on to Adam. The Modernists of the counterfeit church of conciliarism believe in that same lie, mixing some Catholic truth with lots of error on some occasions and some error with lots of Catholic truth on others. This is why we must never forget these words of Pope Leo XIII, contained in Satis Cognitum, as they remind us that the standard of what constitutes being a Catholic (and thus being able to hold ecclesiastical office) is not how little of the Faith one holds but whether one holds to the Faith in its entirety:

The Church, founded on these principles and mindful of her office, has done nothing with greater zeal and endeavour than she has displayed in guarding the integrity of the faith. Hence she regarded as rebels and expelled from the ranks of her children all who held beliefs on any point of doctrine different from her own. The Arians, the Montanists, the Novatians, the Quartodecimans, the Eutychians, did not certainly reject all Catholic doctrine: they abandoned only a certain portion of it. Still who does not know that they were declared heretics and banished from the bosom of the Church? In like manner were condemned all authors of heretical tenets who followed them in subsequent ages. "There can be nothing more dangerous than those heretics who admit nearly the whole cycle of doctrine, and yet by one word, as with a drop of poison, infect the real and simple faith taught by our Lord and handed down by Apostolic tradition" (Auctor Tract. de Fide Orthodoxa contra Arianos).

The practice of the Church has always been the same, as is shown by the unanimous teaching of the Fathers, who were wont to hold as outside Catholic communion, and alien to the Church, whoever would recede in the least degree from any point of doctrine proposed by her authoritative Magisterium. Epiphanius, Augustine, Theodore :, drew up a long list of the heresies of their times. St. Augustine notes that other heresies may spring up, to a single one of which, should any one give his assent, he is by the very fact cut off from Catholic unity. "No one who merely disbelieves in all (these heresies) can for that reason regard himself as a Catholic or call himself one. For there may be or may arise some other heresies, which are not set out in this work of ours, and, if any one holds to one single one of these he is not a Catholic" (S. Augustinus, De Haeresibus, n. 88).

The need of this divinely instituted means for the preservation of unity, about which we speak is urged by St. Paul in his epistle to the Ephesians. In this he first admonishes them to preserve with every care concord of minds: "Solicitous to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace" (Eph. iv., 3, et seq.). And as souls cannot be perfectly united in charity unless minds agree in faith, he wishes all to hold the same faith: "One Lord, one faith," and this so perfectly one as to prevent all danger of error: "that henceforth we be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine by the wickedness of men, by cunning craftiness, by which they lie in wait to deceive" (Eph. iv., 14): and this he teaches is to be observed, not for a time only - "but until we all meet in the unity of faith...unto the measure of the age of the fullness of Christ". But, in what has Christ placed the primary principle, and the means of preserving this unity? In that - "He gave some Apostles - and other some pastors and doctors, for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ."

 

Joseph Ratzinger may be a thoroughly modern "Millie" who is "up to date" in his conciliar theology. Unfortunately for him, however, his conciliar theology is not of God. What is of God affirms people in the truths of the Faith with clarity, giving no quarter to any "insights" made by heretics or schismatics. The Catholic Church cannot be the author of error or of novelty, which is why it is very important for those who see the heresies and errors and novelties and abominations and sacrileges of the past fort years to recognize that it is not the Catholic Church that has done these things and that those who appear to hold ecclesiastical offices are but spiritual robber barons who can be given no quarter at all as we seek shelter in the catacombs where good bishops such as Bishop Daniel Dolan and Bishop Donald Sanborn and Bishop Mark Pivarunas and Bishop Robert McKenna, to mention those whom we have met personally in the past year, continue to defend the Faith and to serve souls without any concessions to conciliarism or to the legitimacy of the conciliarist hierarchy.

It is indeed a sad thing to have to write about this on Easter Monday. The conciliarists do not take any vacation when it comes to attacking the Faith. We must not take any vacation in defending the Faith, keeping in mind these words of the late Father Frederick Faber:

If we hated sin as we ought to hate it, purely, keenly, manfully, we should do more penance, we should inflict more self-punishment, we should sorrow for our sins more abidingly. Then, again, the crowning disloyalty to God is heresy. It is the sin of sins, the very loathsomest of things which God looks down upon in this malignant world. Yet how little do we understand of its excessive hatefulness! It is the polluting of God’s truth, which is the worst of all impurities.

Yet how light we make of it! We look at it, and are calm. We touch it and do not shudder. We mix with it, and have no fear. We see it touch holy things, and we have no sense of sacrilege. We breathe its odor, and show no signs of detestation or disgust. Some of us affect its friendship; and some even extenuate its guilt. We do not love God enough to be angry for His glory. We do not love men enough to be charitably truthful for their souls.

Having lost the touch, the taste, the sight, and all the senses of heavenly-mindedness, we can dwell amidst this odious plague, in imperturbable tranquility, reconciled to its foulness, not without some boastful professions of liberal admiration, perhaps even with a solicitous show of tolerant sympathies.

Why are we so far below the old saints, and even the modern apostles of these latter times, in the abundance of our conversations? Because we have not the antique sternness? We want the old Church-spirit, the old ecclesiastical genius. Our charity is untruthful, because it is not severe; and it is unpersuasive, because it is untruthful.

We lack devotion to truth as truth, as God’s truth. Our zeal for souls is puny, because we have no zeal for God’s honor. We act as if God were complimented by conversions, instead of trembling souls rescued by a stretch of mercy.

We tell men half the truth, the half that best suits our own pusillanimity and their conceit; and then we wonder that so few are converted, and that of those few so many apostatize.

We are so weak as to be surprised that our half-truth has not succeeded so well as God’s whole truth.

Where there is no hatred of heresy, there is no holiness.

A man, who might be an apostle, becomes a fester in the Church for the want of this righteous indignation. (The Precious Blood, 1860)

 

 

Saint Gertrude the Great had a mystical experience with Our Lord on a Palm Sunday in the Thirteenth Century:

On the Feast of Palms, as Gertrude was filled with the delights of the Divine consolation, she said to Our Lord: "Teach me, I beseech Thee O Beloved, how I can go forth to meet Thee today, Who art approaching Thy Passion for my salvation." Our Lord replied: "Give Me an ass" to ride,  a troop of people to precede Me with acclamations, another troop to follow Me with praises and another to minister to Me.

"You will give Me an ass to ride, if yo acknowledge with a contrite heart that you have failed to be guided by reason, and have had no more understanding than a beast of all that I have done for your salvation. This negligence has caused you to hear My sweet tranquility, so that when I thought to find some consolation in you, it was necessary for Me to purify you by some exterior or interior suffering. And thus I was obliged to suffer in you; for My love, which could not restrain itself, obliged My goodness to compassionate you in all your adversities. But when you give Me the conveyance which I desire, I shall be satisfied.

"You will give me a troop of people who will make acclamations before Me, when you receive Me with full affection in the name of all men, in union with the love which made Me, your Lord and Creator, enter Jerusalem for the salvation of the world, and in satisfaction for all those who have failed to thank Me worthily, and with perfect affection, for this great grace.

"You will give me another troop to follow Me with praises when you avow sincerely that you have never imitated the example of My perfect life as you should; and if you should offer Me such a fervent will, that if you could you would urge all men to imitate what is most perfect in My life and Passion, and this for My honor and glory; and pray that you may obtain the grace to imitate Me in true humility, patience and charity (the virtues which I exercised during My Passion), desiring with the utmost ardor to follow My example.

"You will give me those who will attend Me, if you confess that you have never defended My truth and just as you ought, resolving firmly to defend them for the future, both by words and actions." He added: "Whoever presents himself to Me in these four ways will not fail to obtain eternal life as the reward of his piety." (The Life and Revelations of Saint Gertrude the Great, republished by TAN Books and Publishers, pp. 359-360.)

 

We must defend the truths of the Faith as the consecrated slaves of Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart, praying as many Rosaries each day as our states-in-life permit. The way out of the mess that has been fostered and cultivated by the lies of "thoroughly modern Benny" and his conciliarist cohorts (and by the enablers in the conciliar priesthood, including those in the indult communities, who refuse to leave the conciliar structures and thus refuse to defend the Faith as they permit themselves to be coopted by career blandishments and material security in the face of apostasy and the loss of souls) is through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary. Our Lady embraced the sufferings that our sins imposed upon her Divine Son's Most Sacred Heart and upon her own Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart. She embraces the suffering of the Church Militant of the Mystical Body of Christ today. We must keep close to her, knowing that her Divine Son has promised to us through her Fatima Message that her Immaculate Heart will triumph in the end, a time when the "modernizers" and "Judaizing" naturalists and "ecumaniacs" and "conciliarists" will be converted and the pestilences they visited upon souls wiped off of the face of the earth.

May we continue to celebrate the Easter Octave with joy and with full confidence that Our Lady is here at our rescue at the present time and that she will manifest her glorious victory at the time appointed by her Divine Son. May we do our own parts as her consecrated slaves to defend the Faith, seeking always to convert ourselves from our own lives of spiritual sloth to scale the heights of sanctity as members of the Church that never needs to "modernized," the true Church, the Catholic Church, founded by Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope.

A continued blessed Easter to you all.

 

Viva Cristo Rey!

 

Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Jude, pray for us.

Saint John the Beloved, pray for us.

Saint Francis Solano, pray for us.

Saint Francis of Paola, pray for us.

Saint Isidore of Seville, pray for us.

Saint John Bosco, pray for us.

Saint Dominic Savio, pray for us.

Saint John of God, pray for us.

Saint  Scholastica, pray for us.

Saint Benedict, pray for us.

Saint Anthony of Padua, pray for us.

Saint Francis of Assisi, pray for us.

Saint Thomas Aquinas, pray for us.

Saint Bonaventure, pray for us.

Saint Augustine, pray for us.

Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, pray for us.

Saint Francis Xavier, pray for us.

Saint Peter Damian, pray for us.

Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini, pray for us.

Saint Lucy, pray for us.

Saint Monica, pray for us.

Saint Agatha, pray for us.

Saint Philomena, pray for us.

Saint Cecilia, pray for us.

Saint John Mary Vianney, pray for us.

Saint Vincent de Paul, pray for us.

Saint Vincent Ferrer, pray for us.

Saint Athanasius, 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 Gabriel Lalemont, 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 Alphonsus de Liguori, pray for us.

Saint Dominic, pray for us.

Saint Hyacinth, pray for us.

Saint Basil, pray for us.

Saint Vincent Ferrer, pray for us.

Saint Sebastian, pray for us.

Saint Tarcisius, pray for us.

Saint Bridget of Sweden, pray for us.

Saint Gerard Majella, pray for us.

Saint John of the Cross, pray for us.

Saint Teresa of Avila, pray for us.

Saint Bernadette Soubirous, pray for us.

Saint Genevieve, pray for us.

Saint Vincent de Paul, pray for us.

Pope Saint Pius X, pray for us

Pope Saint Pius V, pray for us.

Saint Rita of Cascia, pray for us.

Venerable Anne Catherine Emmerich, pray for us.

Venerable Pauline Jaricot, pray for us.

Father Miguel Augustin Pro, pray for us.

Francisco Marto, pray for us.

Jacinta Marto, pray for us.

Juan Diego, 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.  

Song: Thoroughly Modern Millie Lyrics

		12.	Thoroughly Modern Millie

ENSEMBLE MEN:
There are those, I suppose
Think we're mad, heaven knows
The world has gone to rack and to ruin

WOMAN #1:
What we think is chic

WOMAN #2:
Unique

WOMEN #3 & #4:
And quite adorable

ENSEMBLE WOMEN:
They think is odd and "Sodom and Gomorrah"-ble!

MILLIE:
But the fact is,
Everything today is thoroughly modern

ENSEMBLE:
Check your personality

MILLIE:
Everything today makes yesterday slow

ENSEMBLE:
Better face reality

MILLIE:
It's not insanity
Says Vanity Fair
In fact, it's stylish to

MILLIE AND ENSEMBLE WOMEN:
Raise your skirts and bob your hair

MILLIE:
Have you seen the way they kiss in the movies

ENSEMBLE MEN:
Isn't it delectable?

MILLIE AND ENSEMBLE WOMEN:
Painting lips and pencil lining your brow
Now is quite respectable

MILLIE:
Good-bye, good goody girl
I'm changing and how

ENSEMBLE:
So beat the drums 'cause here comes
Thoroughly Modern Millie now
What we think is chic, unique and quite adorable
They think is odd and "Sodom and Gomorrah"-ble!
But the fact is
Everything today is thoroughly modern

ENSEMBLE MEN:
Bands are getting jazzier

ENSEMBLE:
Everything today is starting to go

ENSEMBLE WOMEN:
Cars are getting snazzier

ENSEMBLE:
Men say it's criminal what women'll do
What they're forgetting is

MILLIE:
This is 1922!

MILLIE AND ENSEMBLE:
Good-bye, good goody girl
I'm changing and how

MILLIE: I'm changing and how!

ALL:
So beat the drums 'cause here comes thoroughly
Hot off the press! One step ahead! Jazz age!
Whoopee baby! We're so thoroughly modern

MILLIE:
Millie!

ALL:
Now!