Truth Or Consequences

by Thomas A. Droleskey

Truth, both supernatural and natural, exists independently of human acceptance of it. Supernatural truth has been revealed to us by God Himself and entrusted to Holy Mother Church for Its eternal safekeeping and infallible explication. We believe supernatural truth because it has been given to us by God, Who can neither deceive nor be deceived.

O my God, I firmly believe that Thou art one God, in three Divine Persons, Father, Son and Holy Ghost: I believe that Thy Divine Son became Man, and died for our sins, and that He will come to judge the living and the dead.  I believe these and all the truths which the Holy Catholic Church teaches, because Thou hast revealed them, Who can neither deceive nor be deceived.  Amen.

 

This in and of itself, putting aside all of the weighty and quite binding dogmatic declarations about the nature of Divine Truth issued by the authority of the Catholic Church, should be an end to all discussion whatsoever of the "need" for "understanding" the dogmas of the Faith in different ways at different times because the language used to express those dogmas in the past was necessarily "conditioned" by the historical circumstances in which they were pronounced. To assert that dogmatic expressions used in the past can be understood anew because the language that expressed them was "conditioned" by historical circumstances is to deny the nature of the Most Blessed Trinity, Who is immutable, and to blaspheme the Third Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, God the Holy Ghost, Whose coming at Pentecost we will celebrate in but three days from now, Who has directed our Popes and council fathers to express doctrine as they have been expressed consistently--and without even the shadow of ambiguity--prior to the "election" of Angelo Roncalli/John XIII on October 29, 1958.

One of the principal reasons I began to take the sedevacantist thesis seriously near the end of the year 2005 was that I saw how Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI was distorting the nature of dogmatic truth, especially as he did gave "papal" approval to his longstanding personal view that past dogmatic statements and papal pronouncements are only "provisional" applications of principles at a given time that are in need of further adjustment at a later date. See the complete consistency between these two statements, one made by Joseph "Cardinal" Ratzinger in 1990, the other made by "Pope" Benedict XVI in 2005:

Joseph "Cardinal" Ratzinger, 1990: The text [of the document Instruction on the Theologian's Ecclesial Vocation] also presents the various types of bonds that rise from the different degrees of magisterial teaching. It affirms - perhaps for the first time with this clarity - that there are decisions of the magisterium that cannot be the last word on the matter as such, but are, in a substantial fixation of the problem, above all an expression of pastoral prudence, a kind of provisional disposition. The nucleus remains valid, but the particulars, which the circumstances of the times influenced, may need further correction.

In this regard, one may think of the declarations of Popes in the last century [19th century] about religious liberty, as well as the anti-Modernist decisions at the beginning of this century, above all, the decisions of the Biblical Commission of the time [on evolutionism]. As a cry of alarm in the face of hasty and superficial adaptations, they will remain fully justified. A personage such as Johann Baptist Metz said, for example, that the Church's anti-Modernist decisions render the great service of preserving her from falling into the liberal-bourgeois world. But in the details of the determinations they contain, they became obsolete after having fulfilled their pastoral mission at their proper time. (Joseph Ratzinger, "Instruction on the Theologian's Ecclesial Vocation," published with the title "Rinnovato dialogo fra Magistero e Teologia," in L'Osservatore Romano, June 27, 1990, p. 6; Card. Ratzinger: The teachings of the Popes against Modernism are obsolete.)

"Pope" Benedict XVI:  "It is precisely in this combination of continuity and discontinuity at different levels that the very nature of true reform consists. In this process of innovation in continuity we must learn to understand more practically than before that the Church's decisions on contingent matters - for example, certain practical forms of liberalism or a free interpretation of the Bible - should necessarily be contingent themselves, precisely because they refer to a specific reality that is changeable in itself. It was necessary to learn to recognize that in these decisions it is only the principles that express the permanent aspect, since they remain as an undercurrent, motivating decisions from within.

"On the other hand, not so permanent are the practical forms that depend on the historical situation and are therefore subject to change. (Christmas greetings to the Members of the Roman Curia and Prelature, December 22, 2005.)

 

As I have written on other occasions, God the Holy Ghost would have had to "hide" this "knowledge" from Holy Mother Church for nearly two millennia for Ratzinger/Benedict  to be correct. A man who rejects the Scholasticism of Saint Thomas Aquinas, however, does not think clearly as a Catholic and is thus prone to asserting as true propositions that are one at the same time anathematized by the authority of the Catholic Church and are absurd on their face from a standpoint of natural reason. Ratzinger/Benedict, who plainly does not believe that it is a defiance of the First Commandment to esteem the symbols of false religions with his own priestly hands, actually believes that it was "necessary" to learn his absurd "hermeneutic of continuity and discontinuity," thereby demonstrating himself to be bereft of any real knowledge concerning the properties and attributes of the true God of Divine Revelation.

Conciliarism's attack on the nature of dogmatic truth has been the singular cornerstone to build an edifice of one falsehood after another (the new ecclesiology, episcopal collegiality, false ecumenism, inter-religious dialogue and prayer services, religious liberty, separation of Church an state) both in the official documents of the counterfeit church of conciliarism and in its daily pastoral praxis, reflected in "papal" allocutions and messages and actions, to say nothing, of course, of the words and actions of the conciliar "bishops" that go uncorrected by the conciliar "popes."

The fact that "Archbishop" Robert Zollitsch has not been corrected by "Pope" Benedict XVI in the four hundred five days since he denied in a televised interview that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ died in atonement for our sins speaks volumes to those in the laity (and to like-minded conciliar clergy) concerning the "freedom of belief" that they have as members of this false church. It is these sorts of uncorrected "unofficial" statements that burn themselves almost indelibly in the minds of those Catholics who are predisposed to disbelieve in the dogmas of Holy Mother Church.

One of the reasons, therefore, that so many people, Catholics and non-Catholics alike, are incapable of rational thought is that they do not understand Who God is in light of what He has revealed to us through His Catholic Church about His very nature. Even pagans of yore such as Cicero knew that God, Whose identity he did not know, had to be immutable and that His laws did not depend upon human acceptance or a vote of some assembly of the people or a senate composed of the people's representatives to be valid. As most people today, however, see, albeit erroneously, what they think is the Catholic Church "getting with the times," so to speak, they have less and less of a chance to know anything even the whole concept of truth even on a natural level, spending almost their entire lives in a maze of contradiction, ambiguity, confusion, emotionalism, sentimentality, naturalism and religious indifferentism.

Truth in the Order of Creation (the Order of Nature) can be defined as something that exists in the nature of things that does not depend upon human acceptance for its binding force or validity. It is, of course, possible for men to know the Natural Law (those moral laws that exist in the nature of things that are knowable by reason and bind all human beings in all circumstances at all times) by reason alone. As those who are baptized suffer from the vestigial after-effects of Original Sin and their own Actual Sins, however, and as those who are steeped in the ravages of Original Sin do not hae the direct help of Sanctifying Grace, God has given us His Catholic Church to be the repository and explicator of both the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law. She alone has the authority to pronounce the meaning of the Natural Law that imperfect creatures may not always be able to perceive with clarity and obey its precepts with consistency.

Pope Leo XIII noted this in Tametsi Futura Prospicientibus, November 1, 1900. Pope Pius XI did so in Divini Illius Magistri, December 31, 1929:

This generative and conservative power of the virtues that make for salvation is therefore lost, whenever morality is dissociated from divine faith. A system of morality based exclusively on human reason robs man of his highest dignity and lowers him from the supernatural to the merely natural life. Not but that man is able by the right use of reason to know and to obey certain principles of the natural law. But though he should know them all and keep them inviolate through life-and even this is impossible without the aid of the grace of our Redeemer-still it is vain for anyone without faith to promise himself eternal salvation. "If anyone abide not in Me, he shall be cast forth as a branch, and shall wither, and they shall gather him up and cast him into the fire, and he burneth" john xv., 6). "He that believeth not shall be condemned" (Mark xvi., 16). We have but too much evidence of the value and result of a morality divorced from divine faith. How is it that, in spite of all the zeal for the welfare of the masses, nations are in such straits and even distress, and that the evil is daily on the increase? We are told that society is quite able to help itself; that it can flourish without the assistance of Christianity, and attain its end by its own unaided efforts. Public administrators prefer a purely secular system of government. All traces of the religion of our forefathers are daily disappearing from political life and administration. What blindness! Once the idea of the authority of God as the Judge of right and wrong is forgotten, law must necessarily lose its primary authority and justice must perish: and these are the two most powerful and most necessary bonds of society. Similarly, once the hope and expectation of eternal happiness is taken away, temporal goods will be greedily sought after. Every man will strive to secure the largest share for himself. Hence arise envy, jealousy, hatred. The consequences are conspiracy, anarchy, nihilism. There is neither peace abroad nor security at home. Public life is stained with crime. (Pope Leo XIII, Tametsi Futura Prospicientibus, November 1, 1900.)

The Church does not say that morality belongs purely, in the sense of exclusively, to her; but that it belongs wholly to her. She has never maintained that outside her fold and apart from her teaching, man cannot arrive at any moral truth; she has on the contrary more than once condemned this opinion because it has appeared under more forms than one. She does however say, has said, and will ever say, that because of her institution by Jesus Christ, because of the Holy Ghost sent her in His name by the Father, she alone possesses what she has had immediately from God and can never lose, the whole of moral truth, omnem veritatem, in which all individual moral truths are included, as well those which man may learn by the help of reason, as those which form part of revelation or which may be deduced from it  (Pope Pius XI, Divini Illius Magistri, December 31, 1929.)

 

This is simply by way of saying that men will be lost, both in the conduct of their own lives and collectively as they act together with others in the institutions of civil governance, when they do not submit themselves to the sure guidance of the Catholic Church in all that pertains to Faith and Morals. And it is to the shame of the conciliarists that they refuse to remind men that the Catholic Faith is the one and only foundation of personal and social order, that it is not by means of "harmony" or "coexistence" that men are mean to please God and to pursue the common temporal good in light of their Last End, the possession of the glory of the Beatific Vision of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost for all eternity in Heaven. Indeed, the conciliarists make it appear as though every religion is a perfectly valid form of serving God in some way or another and of working as "brothers" with those of "different" beliefs or even of no beliefs at all into building the "better, more peaceful, "greener" world. This is nothing other than pure, unadulterated Judeo-Masonry. Nothing else.

We adhere to Catholic truth by means of the graces won for us by Our Lord on the wood of the Holy Cross and that flow into our souls through the loving hands of Our Lady, she who is the Mediatrix of All Graces, my good and few readers, or we will suffer the consequences of a world wherein violence, social upheavals, financial crises, divorce, family instability, and statism--and all manner of other evils--become accepted norms. Efforts are made by those in civil government to address symptoms of problems without ever understanding their root cause or pausing to consider that we must subordinate everything we do in this passing, mortal vale of tears to the Deposit of Faith that Our Lord has entrusted exclusively to His Catholic Church. Naturalists wind up arguing with other naturalists about how to "improve" the world according to various naturalistic formulae, heedless of Christ the King and of Mary our Immaculate Queen.

It is no wonder, therefore, that the devil exploits all of this confusion to raise upon minions, many of whom are unwitting but minions of his nevertheless, in public life who think that "their" service is "indispensable" to the welfare of their village or town or county or city or state or nation. Look at how United States Senator Arlen Specter (D-R-D, Pennsylvania) sought to save his precious career last year when he switched political parties for a second time in his public life. His plan did not work. A man who has been an unreconstructed supporter of baby-killing under cover of the civil law as a "right" of women founded in the United States Constitution believed that he, at the age of eighty, just had to continue seeking re-election, being willing to pander to his recent political allies in order to do so. Men who live only for this world, however, only have this world. That is, men who live only for the allurements and trappings of power of this earth wind up destroying themselves over the course of time, if not now then certainly at the moment of their own Particular Judgments.

Arlen Specter has never known or accepted the truth of Divine Revelation. His entire life has been spent in the anti-Incarnational fog of Modernity as an adherent of the Talmud. The man who defeated him in the Democratic Party primary two days ago, United States Representative Joseph Sestak, who was born on (get this) December 12, 1951, should have had such exposure as he, a Catholic, was taught the Faith for at least six years prior to the start of the "Second" Vatican Council on October 11, 1962. What does that matter to him now? Nothing. Believe it or not, Sestak is an even more rabid supporter of baby-killing than Specter, who did vote in favor of the conditional, partial ban on partial-birth abortions in 2003. Yet it is that Sestak has maintained his "good standing" in the counterfeit church of conciliarism, conveying the impression on the level of pastoral praxis that what appears to be the Catholic Church is, despite warnings given by conciliar officials at some times to some people in public life, is broadly tolerant of a "divergence of beliefs," preferring "dialogue" to discipline.

This is all the logical consequence not only of Modernity's warfare upon the Deposit of Faith and its relevance to social order. This is, at least in very large measure, also the consequences of conciliarism's refusal to hold the nature of the truths contained in the Deposit of Faith, two of which include the condemnation of religious liberty and of separation of Church and State. Behold a world shaped by Modernity's rejection of these truths. Behold a world reinforced and undergirded by conciliarism's rejection of them.

Pope Gregory XVI explained in Mirari Vos, August 15, 1832, that true popes adhere to Catholic teaching without any novelties. So must we:

These and many other serious things, which at present would take too long to list, but which you know well, cause Our intense grief. It is not enough for Us to deplore these innumerable evils unless We strive to uproot them. We take refuge in your faith and call upon your concern for the salvation of the Catholic flock. Your singular prudence and diligent spirit give Us courage and console Us, afflicted as We are with so many trials. We must raise Our voice and attempt all things lest a wild boar from the woods should destroy the vineyard or wolves kill the flock. It is Our duty to lead the flock only to the food which is healthful. In these evil and dangerous times, the shepherds must never neglect their duty; they must never be so overcome by fear that they abandon the sheep. Let them never neglect the flock and become sluggish from idleness and apathy. Therefore, united in spirit, let us promote our common cause, or more truly the cause of God; let our vigilance be one and our effort united against the common enemies.

Indeed you will accomplish this perfectly if, as the duty of your office demands, you attend to yourselves and to doctrine and meditate on these words: "the universal Church is affected by any and every novelty" and the admonition of Pope Agatho: "nothing of the things appointed ought to be diminished; nothing changed; nothing added; but they must be preserved both as regards expression and meaning." Therefore may the unity which is built upon the See of Peter as on a sure foundation stand firm. May it be for all a wall and a security, a safe port, and a treasury of countless blessings. To check the audacity of those who attempt to infringe upon the rights of this Holy See or to sever the union of the churches with the See of Peter, instill in your people a zealous confidence in the papacy and sincere veneration for it. As St. Cyprian wrote: "He who abandons the See of Peter on which the Church was founded, falsely believes himself to be a part of the Church."

 

When was the last time you heard those who have severed their relationship with the true Church by means of their embrace of one condemned notion after another as they regard with public esteem and respect false religions quote from Pope Saint Agatho on the simple fact that "nothing of the things appointed ought to be diminished, nothing changed, nothing added; but they must be preserved both as regards expression and meaning"? Not lately, I can assure you. Not lately. It is the conciliar "pontiffs" who have abandoned the See of Peter by changing and adding and diminishing the things appointed by Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ to His true Church, which is why the forces of Modernity in the world have been able to do their nefarious work with the help of so many Catholics, such as Joseph Sestak, who are attached to the structures of the counterfeit church

Today is the feast of Saint Bernardine of Siena, the great apostle of the Holy Name of Jesus. It is, of course, the Holy Name of Jesus that we proclaim one hundred fifty-three times every day when we pray all fifteen mysteries of Our Lady's Most Holy Rosary.

One of the saddest aspects of Modernity is that most people believe that they have the civil "right" to blaspheme the Holy Name of Our Divine Redeemer, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ or to refuse to bow their heads at the mention of the only Name given to men on earth and in Heaven by which we are to be saved. This sadness is compounded by the willingness of formerly Catholic institutions of higher education, such as Georgetown University, to cover up Saint Ignatius of Loyola's monogram for the Holy Name of Jesus, IHS, to placate the pro-abort statist, Caesar Obamus, when he spoke at Gaston Hall there on Wednesday, April 15, 2009 (see Ashamed of the NAME Above All Names).

The willingness, however, to subordinate the Holy Name of Jesus and the Catholic Faith is not limited to hard-core conciliar revolutionaries, such as Ratzinger/Benedict, who has refused to proclaim the Holy Name of Jesus in front of Mohammedans and Jews when speaking before them in their places of false worship, save for one or two gratuitous references, and who has treated mosques and and Talmudic places of "prayer" as "sacred' to God, or to those specializing in historical revisionism or who propagate libertarianism and its utter disregard for the binding nature of Catholic Social Teaching. We must proclaim the Holy Name of Jesus no matter what it might cost us in this passing world as the devil hates this Name, which is why he has used the forces of Modernity and Modernism to stamp it out from public view in the name of "toleration" and "harmony" and "coexistence."

We are praying for Pentecost Sunday in this month of May, the month of Our Lady, Who was present when God the Holy Ghost descended in tongues of flame upon her and the Apostles and the others gathered in the same Upper Room in Jerusalem where her Divine Son had instituted the priesthood and the Eucharist for our sanctification and salvation fifty-three days earlier. May it be our privilege to plant a few seeds for the day when the enemies of Divine Truth in the world and the counterfeit church of conciliarism are defeated by the Triumph of her Immaculate Heart, thereby manifesting for all to see the glories of Christ the King restored once again.

May we continue to pray as many Rosaries each day as our state-in-life permits.

 

Immaculate Heart of Mary, triumph soon!

 

Viva Cristo Rey! Vivat Christus Rex!

Saint Joseph, Patron of Departing Souls, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

Saint Bernardine of Siena, pray for us.

See also: A Litany of Saints

Isn't it time to pray a Rosary now?