The First Commandment is very clear: Catholics are forbidden to invoke the names of non-existent (and thus false) gods in any circumstance of life, whether privately or publicly. We are to love God: Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, as He has revealed Himself solely through the Church He founded upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope. No other religion has any claim to being the authoritative repository of the Deposit of Faith. No other contemporary religion has been founded by God. (The Old Covenant God had made with Moses was ended when the curtain in the Temple was torn from top to bottom at the moment of of Our Lord's death on the wood of the Holy Cross on Good Friday. Contemporary Judaism, which is founded on the Talmud, has the power to save no one. It is a false religion.) Catholics must work to make known the Gospel of the Divine Redeemer, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, as He has entrusted it to the Catholic Church, trying to do their very best to invite everyone they meet into the One Sheepfold of Christ, outside of which there is no salvation.
Catholics in the United States have lived in a cultural milieu that is nothing other than Satanic. That is, one of the goals of Talmudic Judaism and Freemasonry is to convince Catholics that it is an inopportune thing in the pursuit of the common good to do anything that is "divisive," that is, to mention the Holy Name of Our Lord Jesus Christ in public, especially in public gatherings where those who reject Our Lord's Sacred Divinity and who hate His Holy Name (Jews, Mohammedans, Hindus, Buddhists, animists) are present. Most Catholic politicians eschew any mention of the Holy Name in "mixed company." And it has become the practice in the past forty years of the novelty of "ecumenism," which derives a good deal of its driving force from the prevailing ethos of religious indifferentism that is the foundation of social order here in the United States of America, for prelates of the true Church to refuse to mention the Holy Name of Jesus Christ in public gatherings with Jews and Mohammedans.
For example, Edward Cardinal Egan, the Archbishop of New York, did not once mention the Holy Name of Jesus Christ in an "ecumenical" prayer service at Yankee Stadium on Sunday, September 16, 2001, in the immediate aftermath of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in the City of New York. A Mohammedan imam invoked the name of the non-existent "god" (Allah). Cardinal Egan did not have the sensus Catholicus to mention Our Lord once. What is even worse is that His Eminence did not once mention the Holy Name of Jesus Christ from the pulpit of Saint Patrick's Cathedral during a Mass on September 11, 2002, evidently "sensitive" to the presence of Jewish politicians, some of he praised lavishly (including the pro-abortion Attorney General of the State of New York, Elliot Spitzer). [See my commentary on this offense to Our Lord, No Room for Christ at Saint Patrick's Cathedral.]
There are many other examples of this. Indeed, as I wrote in an article that is in the September. 2005, issue of Catholic Family News, it has now become fashionable for Catholic cardinals and bishops to bestow awards on Jewish rabbis who adhere to the Talmudic sect known as "Reform Judaism," which has been in the vanguard of promoting "abortion rights" and an acceptance of unnatural vice in violation of the binding precepts of the Sixth and Ninth Commandments.
The latest accolade to be offered to a pro-abortion rabbi of Reform Judaism was accorded by Dr. Eugene Fisher of the United States Catholic Conference upon the death of Rabbi Balfour Brickner on August 29, 2005. This is the text of the press release issued by the Office of Media Relations of the United States Catholic Conference:
Dr. Eugene Fisher stated that Rabbi Brickner "was one of the greatest American religious leaders of the second half of the twentieth century." Thus, a man who denied the Sacred Divinity of Jesus Christ as necessary for personal salvation and hence all social order is praised by a man paid by the coffers of the Catholic Church in the United States as "one of the greatest American religious leaders" in recent memory. This is quite a stretch given the late rabbi's support of baby-killing under cover of law.
Consider the information about him provided by Mrs. Randi Engel of the United States Coalition for Life:
Dr. Fisher's unqualified praise of Rabbi Brickner as "a great friend" of
Catholics and the Church, carefully omits any reference to the seedier
aspects of Rabbi Brickner's well known, long-time crusade for "abortion
rights" and "homosexual rights."
Rabbi Brickner served on the boards of the Planned Parenthood Federation
of America (PPFA), the PPFA Board of Advocates and the PPFA Clergy
Advisory Board, Planned Parenthood of New York City.
Rabbi Brickner was a founder of Religious Leaders for a Free Choice, a
New York-based pro-abortion organization.
Rabbi Brickner was a founding member and board member of the National
Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League (NARAL), renamed NARAL -
Pro-Choice America.
Rabbi Brickner served on the board of the New York affiliate of the
Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (RCAR). In the mid-1970s,
Rabbi Brickner, testified on RCAR's behalf before the U.S. Senate in
favor of abortion rights. He stated that in Judaism the fetus in the
womb is not considered a person and has "no juridical personality of its
own." In fact, he stated, "a fetus did not acquire legal standing until
thirty days after its birth."
Rabbi Brickner frequently expressed his pro-abortion opinions in PPFA's
publication "Clergy Voices." In "Bush Administration Alchemy Would Turn
a Fetus into a Child," Brickner charged that by making the fetus
eligible for health care, the Bush Administration was turning "a fetus
into a child and a woman into a vessel." He stated that the unborn fetus
"is not a child" and "it is not a living soul."
Rabbi Brickner is quoted by WOMENSENEWS as stating "The media has played
and pandered to the Roman Catholic Community and their position as
though it is in some ways definitive toward reproductive choice."
Rabbi Brickner helped draft the 2000 SEICUS (Sex Education and
Information Council of the United States) "Religious Declaration on
Sexual Morality, Justice, and Healing," which upholds contraception,
abortion and homosexual rights including the right to "the blessing of
same sex unions," cradle-to-grave sex instruction and population
control.
Dr. Fisher's claim, made on behalf of the USCCB, the official arm of the
American Bishops , that Rabbi Brickner was a great religious leader
whose name may "forever be a blessing," needs to be refuted; Dr. Fisher
and his superior, Rev. Arthur Kennedy, Executive Director of the
Secretariat, need to be sent packing; and the members of the hierarchy
who permitted this scandalous statement to be issued need to issue an
apology to the Pro-Life Community. In addition the Vatican should remove
Dr. Fisher from any advisory position to the Holy See on Jewish
ecumenical relations.
One can see that support of baby-killing and for those steeped in perversity does not disqualify one for praise from Dr. Fisher. Indeed, close association with those who support for baby-killing under cover of law does not disqualify one from being in the employ of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Mrs. Teresa Kettelkamp, who is the Executive Director of the Office of Child and Youth Protection for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, has just authored a horrendous document concerning the "protection" of children in the presence of the clergy, something that would have to be the subject of another article at another time (the best way to keep our children safe from the local diocese is to avoid all contact with the local diocese, embracing Tradition without compromise). That she is any position to write such horrendous documents as she has is itself a scandal. For, you see, Mrs. Kettelkamp serves on the advisory board of the Center for Women and Policing, an arm of Eleanor Smeal's Feminist Majority Foundation.
According to September 15 posting on Catholic World News.com's "Off the Record:"
A few days ago I mentioned the no-nonsense edit handed down by Teresa Kettelkamp, the executive director of the USCCB Office of Child and Youth Protection, who tells all American bishops what they must do-- and do it now!
Teresa Kettelkamp, who came to the USCCB from the Illinois State Police, is also a member of the advisory board for the Center for Women and Policing.
Would you like to know more about the Center for Women and Policing? It's a division of the Feminist Majority Foundation.
But when you hear about the Feminist Majority Foundation in the news, the topic usually isn't police work. Usually it's abortion.
Led by Eleanor Smeal, the Feminist Majority Foundation is at the forefront in the political battle for legalized abortion on demand.
And Teresa Kettelkamp, who works with this group, is now telling the American Catholic bishops how to behave.
Now notice, there is no evidence that Teresa Kettelkamp has been personally involved in promoting legal abortion; all we know is that she lends her name-- and presumably her advice-- to an organization involved in abortion lobbying. But do you suppose the USCCB would ever hire someone who was affiliated, however loosely, with, say, the Ku Klux Klan?
Yes, working for those who support abortion is no impediment to paid employment at the United States Catholic Conference. Spending a life promoting abortion and perversion, as did Rabbi Brickner, is no impediment to being praised by the likes of Dr. Eugene Fisher, an employee of the United States Catholic Conference. One would hope, say, that the Cardinal Archbishop of Washington, D.C., Theodore Cardinal McCarrick, might step in to restore order, eh? Then again, Cardinal McCarrick has said that the Eucharist should not be used as a "weapon" against pro-abortion Catholic politicians. He permitted a non-Catholic, William Rehnquist, to have a Lutheran burial service at Saint Matthew's Cathedral in Washington, D.C. He personally hosted a prayer vigil in honor of the re-inauguration of pro-abortion New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman at Sacred Heart Cathedral in Newark, New Jersey, in January of 1998, when he was the Archbishop of Newark. [See No Big Deal.] He said in 2002 that men oriented towards perversity should not be excluded from the priesthood. His immediate predecessor as Archbishop of Washington, the late James Cardinal Hickey, accorded a funeral Mass for William Brennan, a Catholic who voted to endorse contraception and abortion, among other evils, in a thirty-four year tenure of utter destruction and death as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. No, Cardinal McCarrick will not step in to demand the removal of the likes of Eugene Fisher and/or Teresa Kettelkamp. He is of like minds with them.
Sadly, the situation with Theodore Cardinal McCarrick is even worse than we knew.
Cardinal McCarrick has just publicly invoked the name of a non-existent "god," Allah, in public. You won't be hearing him denounce accolades bestowed upon pro-abortion Jewish rabbis and you won't be hearing him call for the dismissal of employees over at the cement palace that houses the United States Catholic Conference across from the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., who serve on advisory boards of organizations run by pro-aborts. Cardinal McCarrick is much too busy committing sins against the First Commandment, praying to false gods and invoking their names publicly.
This is what he said when addressing King Abdullah of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan at the Catholic University of America on September 13, 2005:
Your Majesty,
A few months ago, when I was privileged to pray for you on another occasion in this capital city, I asked Allah, the compassionate and merciful Lord of all the world, to bless you and to help you make your country a bridge across which all nations might walk in unity, fellowship and love. As I listened to your words today, I believe my prayer is being answered.
Indeed, the Amman Message of November of last year is a blueprint and a challenge not only to the great world of Islam, but to the whole human race. Your thoughtful leadership is a stirring invitation to all of us, especially to the people of the Book, the family of Abraham, who share so much and who are called to be brothers and sisters in God’s one human family.
You have taken to heart the words of Pope Benedict XVI when he addressed the Muslim leaders gathered with him in Germany last month and invited them all to join him in eliminating from all hearts any trace of rancor, in resisting every form of intolerance and in opposing every manifestation of violence. As you quoted in your splendid talk to us today, Pope Benedict called his listeners, in this way, to turn back the way of cruel fanaticism that endangers the lives of so many people and hinders progress for world peace.
Your Majesty’s call and that of the Holy Father are in so many ways the same. May Allah, the merciful and compassionate, continue to guide your steps along this noble path. May He guide and protect you, your family and your beloved country and may peace and justice come to all lands and all peoples through your efforts, your vision and your courage.
In the name of Allah, the merciful and compassionate God, we pray. Amen.
"Allah, the compassionate and merciful Lord of all the world"? This is apostasy. This is, objectively speaking, a mortal sin against the First Commandment. To offend the true and only God as He has revealed Himself solely through His true Church by invoking the name of a false, nonexistent god demands immediate acts of reparation. This is not merely a matter of a theological debate about the nature of Mohammedism as a "monotheistic" religion. Cardinal McCarrick invoked the name of a false god and said publicly that he has prayed to "Allah" privately. What bishop is going to publicly correct Cardinal McCarrick in order to remind Catholics that we cannot pray to false gods? Do bishops fear offending King Abdullah? How about the fear we should have of offending Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. The martyrs of the first centuries of Church abjectly refused to worship false gods, no less even invoke their names (see Lift High the Cross for one such story). Are there any martyrs among the American hierarchy? How are the faithful who are so uninformed about the Faith as a result of Vatican II and ecumenism going to recognize Cardinal McCarrick's invocation of a false "god" as apostasy if some bishop doesn't stand up and denounce this as the evil act that it is? Why should I, a mere layman (and one considered to be "schismatic" at that), have to write articles about simple truths concerning the First Commandment? When is any bishop going to defend the Holy Name of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ from this kind of apostasy?
Mohammed, the father of the false religion that bears his ignominious name, invented a god to worship precisely because he could not accept the doctrine of the Trinity. Mohammedism rejects the Sacred Divinity of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, denigrating Him to be but a "prophet" to be "honored." It has nothing in common with the true Faith other than a claim to worship but one god. There is a little problem, however. The god of Mohammedism is false and thus from the devil himself. To invoke the name of a false god and to call him the "Lord of all the world" is make Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ a liar when He said, "I and the Father are one." (John 10:30) Two mutually contradictory statements cannot both be simultaneously true. Catholicism and Mohammedism cannot both be true. The Blessed Trinity and Allah cannot both be true. What is Cardinal McCarrick going to do if three missing mice infected with the Bubonic plague at a laboratory in New Jersey turn out to have been stolen by Mohammedans, who are quite populous in and around Jersey City, New Jersey, so as to start a plague (or at least to propagate one in certain places)? Pray to "Allah" for an end to the plague?
When you think about it, however, Cardinal McCarrick's blasphemous words of infidelity to Our Lord and the truths He has entrusted solely to the Catholic Church are but the logical result of the whole ethos of religious indifferentism, a particularly American contribution to the world and thus to the Second Vatican Council, that have been enshrined in the words and actions of the conciliar and postconciliar popes. Pope John Paul II sat as an equal with a Jewish rabbi and a Mohammedan imam in Jerusalem in March of 2000, prompting a relatively uninformed young woman to tell her mother-in-law, "The Pope's destroying the papacy." The late Holy Father ordered the removal of a Crucifix from the Pope Paul VI Audience Hall in Rome in 1994 when he hosted a group of Jewish dignitaries on the occasion of a concert in commemoration of the victims of the "shoah." He gave innumerable signals that it is permissible to suppress the mention of the Holy Name so as to avoid "offending" those who are the enemies of the Cross of Christ and so as to avoid inviting them to convert to the true Church. Whatever happened to the courage of the Apostles, who rejoiced that they were deemed worthy of ill-treatment for the sake of the Name?
It will thus be in vain to appeal to Pope Benedict XVI, who recently said we must build a "world of justice, solidarity and peace," without once mentioning the Social Kingship of the Divine Redeemer, to remove Cardinal McCarrick for this fundamental act of apostasy. No, you see, His Holiness has told His Eminence Cardinal McCarrick that he can stay on as Archbishop of Washington despite having reached the mandatory retirement age of seventy-five. Thus, the Vicar of Christ, who has the solemn obligation to defend the integrity of the Catholic Faith, will stand by as a Prince of the Catholic Church invokes the name of the false god responsible for the slaughter of so many millions of Catholics over the course of the past 1400 years.
Once again, we are face to face with the very un-saintly legacy of Pope John Paul II. He appointed Theodore McCarrick to be first Bishop of Metuchen, New Jersey, in 1981. He promoted him five years later to be the Archbishop of Newark. He promoted him yet again in 2000 to be the Archbishop of Washington, D.C., elevating him to the College of Cardinals. One of the sainted Pope John Paul II's favorite bishops has committed the sin of formal apostasy by invoking the name of a false god in public and admitting that he has done so in private prayer as well. What further proof do people need of the utter corruption wrought by the ethos of the Second Vatican Council and of the Novus Ordo Missae?
Cardinal McCarrick's apostasy came a short time after Archbishop Joseph Fiorezna of the Diocese of Galveston-Houston, who wrote to Father Stephen P. Zigrang in 2003 that "Old Covenant God made with the people of Israel" has enduring validity, told the media that the refugees from Hurricane Katrina taking refuge in Houston had "every right to be angry with God" for making them suffer as they were. This, too, is a mortal sin against the First Commandment by violating the Supernatural Virtue of Faith that we are to place in God and His Providence. It is also a sin against the Supernatural Virtue of Hope in that Archbishop Fiorenza is denying the sufficiency of God's graces to handle whatever difficulties we are asked to bear in this vale of tears, which difficulties are never the equal of what one of our least venial sins cause Our Lord to suffer in His Sacred Humanity on the wood of the Holy Cross.
Archbishop Fiorenza shows his complete ignorance of the Holy Faith rather frequently. It is evidently the case that he is unfamiliar with--or is dismissive of--this passage from Saint Alphonsus de Liguori's Preparation for Death:
He who is united with the divine will, enjoys, even in this life, a perpetual peace. Whatsoever shall befall the just man, it shall not make him sad. Yes, for a man cannot enjoy greater happiness than that which arises from the accomplishment of all his wishes. He who wills only what God wills, possesses all he desires; for whatever happens to him, happens by the will of God. If, says Salvian, the soul that is resigned to be humbled, it desires humiliations; if it is poor, it delights in poverty; in a word, it wishes whatever happens, and thus leads a happy life. Let cold, heat, wind, or rain come, and he that is united with the will of God says: I wish for this cold, this heat, this wind, and this rain, because God wills them. If loss of property, persecution, or sickness befall him, he says: I wish to be miserable, to be persecuted, to be sick, because such is the will of God. He who reposes in the divine will, and is resigned to whatever the Lord does, is like a man who stands above the tempest raging below. This is the peace which, according to the Apostle, surpasseth all understanding, which exceeds all the delights of the world; a perpetual peace, subject to no vicissitudes. A fool is changed like the moon. . . . A holy man continueth in wisdom like the sun. . . . . When the will is united with the will of God, crosses may produce some pain in the inferior part, but in the superior part peace shall always reign.
The list of Cardinal McCarrick's and Archbishop Fiorenza's fellow travelers in American hierarchy, with only three or four exceptions (Howard Hubbard in Albany being the most prominent episcopal appointee of Pope Paul VI still in the same see to which he was appointed in 1977), is too long to recite here. Suffice it to say that Cardinal McCarrick exemplifies the rotten fruit of the pontificate of Pope John Paul II and the errors of the novelty of ecumenism that he he promoted with such vigor and force, both rhetorically and symbolically. Most of the men appointed by Pope John Paul II to episcopal sees and to serve as auxiliary bishops do not know the Catholic Faith and thus make war against it in every way imaginable. They believe that their stupid and ignorant statements are in concert with the Faith simply because they hold ecclesiastical authority and/or because they believe that the Second Vatican Council has "changed everything." This misleads countless numbers of souls into states of error and worse. Please tell me that those of us who have embraced Tradition without compromise by withdrawing ourselves and our children from the clutches of evil bishops who hate the Faith and who have put the souls and bodies of children at jeopardy in the past forty years are the schismatic ones here. As Father Lawrence C. Smith has noted, "Disobedience to the disobedient is truly obedience."
No amount of our protests will turn this around. We are face to face with a diabolical infection of members of the hierarchy, as opposed to the Church herself, which is indefectible. The only solution is for us in the laity to keep fast to Our Lady's Fatima Message as we seek to root out sin from our own lives. Oh, there are those who will say that Fatima is not "necessary" for salvation. This is true. There is nothing in the Fatima message that adds to the Deposit of Faith. The age of Revelation ended with the death of the last Apostle, Saint John the Evangelist, in the Second Century.
However, I will only repeat what I have mentioned before on numerous occasions: it is a foolish, prideful act for one to ignore Our Lady's Fatima Message and to believe that he knows better than the Mother of God as to how the problems of Modernity in the world and Modernism in the Church will be ameliorated for a time before the devil's final battle at the end of time. Our loving Blessed Mother has shown us the way to the Triumph of her Immaculate Heart. It is bad enough that popes won't listen to her and follow her faithfully. It is tragic that even some traditional Catholics are prideful enough to believe that they can ignore the Mother of God with impunity and that even public prayers offered to her after Low Mass somehow denigrate from the infinite perfection that is the perfect prayer of the Mass itself.
Our Lord has sent His Most Blessed Mother to explain to us what needs to be done to usher in the restoration of Christendom. Yesterday was the Feast of the Impression of the Stigmata on Saint Francis of Assisi. May we have Saint Francis's humility to follow Our Lady faithfully so as to know the joy that can be ours in an unending Easter Sunday of glory in Paradise. Our Lady stood at the foot of the Cross, whose image was impressed on the hands and the feet of Saint Francis. May she help us to be faithful to her Fatima Message in our own lives so that our own prayers and sacrifices may inspire some pope to consecrate Russia at last to her Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart. The failure to do this thus far has already had devastating consequences for the world and and for the Church. Before formal apostasies such as Cardinal McCarrick's become the rule rather than the exception it is well past time for the current Holy Father to abandon his embrace of the Hegelian ethos of Henri de Lubac and Hans Urs von Balthasar and embrace without delay the Immaculate Heart of Mary as the path to a world that knows the peace that flows only from the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus.
Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us.
Saint Francis of Assisi, pray for us.
Saint Joseph Cupertino, pray for us.
Some Scriptural Food for Thought for Cardinal McCarrick and His Fellow Apostates (From the Catholic Bible, not the Koran, that is)
And a great sign appeared in heaven: A woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars: and being with child, she cried travailing in birth, and was in pain to be delivered.
And there was seen another sign in heaven: and behold a great red dragon, having seven heads, and ten horns: and on his heads seven diadems: and his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and cast them to the earth: and the dragon stood before the woman who was ready to be delivered; that, when she should be delivered, he might devour her son.
And she brought forth a man child, who was to rule all nations with an iron rod: and her son was taken up to God, and to his throne.
And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she had a place prepared by God, that there they should feed her a thousand two hundred sixty days.
And there was a great battle in heaven, Michael and his angels fought with the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels: and they prevailed not, neither was their place found any more in heaven. And that great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, who is called the devil, and Satan, who seduceth the whole world: and he was cast unto the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.
And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying: Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: because the accuser of our brethren is cast forth, who accused them before our God day and night.
And they overcome him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of the testimony, and they loved not their lives unto death.
Therefore, rejoice, O heavens, and you that dwell therein. Woe to the earth, and to sea, because the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, knowing that he hath but a short time. And when the dragon saw that he was cast unto the earth, he persecuted that woman, who brought forth the man child:
And there were given to the woman two wings of a giant eagle, that she might fly into the desert unto her place, where she is nourished for a time, and times and half a time, from the face of the serpent. And the serpent cast out of his mouth after the woman, water as a river; that he might cause her to be carried away by the river.
And the earth helped the woman, and the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed up the river, which the dragon cast out of his mouth.
And the dragon was angry against the woman: and went to make war with the rest of her seed, who keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.
And he stooped upon the sand of the sea. (Apocalypse 12:1-18)
From the New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia: Religious Indifferentism (which includes the public praise of false religions)
II. RESTRICTED INDIFFERENTISM
In distinction from this absolute Indifferentism, a restricted form of the error admits the necessity of religion on account, chiefly, of its salutary influence on human life. But it holds that all religions are equally worthy and profitable to man, and equally pleasing to God. The classic advocate of this theory is Rousseau, who maintains, in his "Emile", that God looks only to the sincerity of intention, and that everybody can serve Him by remaining in the religion in which he has been brought up, or by changing it at will for any other that pleases him more (Emile, III). This doctrine is widely advocated today on the grounds that, beyond the truth of God's existence, we can attain to no certain religious knowledge; and that, since God has left us thus in uncertainty, He will be pleased with whatever form of worship we sincerely offer Him. The full reply to this error consists in the proof that God has vouchsafed to man a supernatural revelation, embodying a definite religion, which He desires that all should embrace and practice. Without appealing to this fact, however, a little consideration suffices to lay bare the inherent absurdity of this doctrine. All religions, indeed, may be said to contain some measure of truth; and God may accept the imperfect worship of ignorant sincerity. But it is injurious to God, Who is truth itself, to assert that truth and falsehood are indifferent in His sight. Since various religions are in disagreement, it follows that, wherever they conflict, if one possesses the truth the others are in error. The constituent elements of a religion are beliefs to be held by the intellect, precepts to be observed, and a form of worship to be practiced. Now -- to confine ourselves to the great religions of the world -- Judaism, Mohammedanism, Christianity, and the religions of India and the Orient are in direct antagonism by their respective creeds, moral codes, and cults. To say that all these irreconcilable beliefs and cults are equally pleasing to God is to say that the Divine Being has no predilection for truth over error; that the true and the false are alike congenial to His nature. Again, to hold that truth and falsehood equally satisfy and perfect the human intellect is to deny that reason has a native bent towards, and affinity for, truth. If we deny this we deny that any trust is to be placed in our reason. Turn to the ethical side of the question. Here again there is conflict over almost all the great moral issues. Let an illustration or two suffice. Mohammedanism approves polygamy, Christianity uncompromisingly condemns it as immoral. If these two teachers are equally trustworthy guides of life, then there is no such thing as fixed moral values at all. If the [unmentionable acts of obscene worship] are as pure in the sight of God as the austere worship that was conducted in the temple of Jerusalem, then we must hold the Deity to be destitute of all moral attributes, in which case there would be no grounds for religion at all. The fact is that this type of Indifferentism, though verbally acknowledging the excellence and utility of religion, nevertheless, when pressed by logic, recoils into absolute Indifferentism. "All religions are equally good" comes to mean, at bottom, that religion is good for nothing.
