It Is Never Advisable to Die as the Former Leader of a False Religion, part two

I. To "Pacify Spirits," Not to Reject the 'Second" Vatican Council 

One of the refrains that many of those who kept their mouths shut about the many ways that Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI offended Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ during his seven years, ten months, nine days in the conciliar seat of apostasy are repeating at this time is that he “restored the Latin Mass.” The purpose of this commentary is to point out that the deceased antipope emeritus, Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, knew full well that his “restoration” of the modernized version of the Immemorial Mass of Tradition would keep the mouths of his theretofore traditionalist critics shut about the “Second” Vatican Council and his own support of its even though he did not require them to show any fidelity to the council or its decrees when he issued Summorum Pontificum, July 7, 2007 (and abrogated by Jorge Mario Bergoglio on July 16, 2021.)

This silence continued for a short time during the first few months of the antipapal presidency of Jorge Mario Bergoglio until it became apparent to most in the resist-while-recognize crowd what was apparent to many of us within a few hours of the Argentine Apostate’s appearance on the balcony on the Basilica of Saint Peter on Wednesday, March 13, 2013, namely, that the lay Jesuit revolutionary was an enemy of the Catholic Faith. The Gallican “resisters” of Bergoglio began criticizing him as they had done with Karol Josef Wojtyla/John Paul II, heedless of the fact that, for the most part while noting few exceptions here and there, Senor Jorge has said and done as “Pope Francis” many of the same things that Vater Ratzinger said and did as “Pope Benedict XVI,” especially as it relates to the new ecclesiology, false ecumenism, relations with Jews and Mohammedans, and religious liberty.

It is very important to emphasize at this juncture that Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI used Summorum Pontificum, July 7, 2007, to extend a gesture of “fraternity” to traditional Catholics in the conciliar structuers only because they believed that an “attachment” to “some previous liturgical and disciplinary forms of the Latin tradition” was a matter of emotion, of sentimentality and had no relationship whatsoever to the integrity of the Holy Faith. Ratzinger/Benedict XVI said the following in Summorum Pontificum and in his accompanying Explanatory Letter:

In some regions, however, not a few of the faithful continued to be attached with such love and affection to the earlier liturgical forms which had deeply shaped their culture and spirit, that in 1984 Pope John Paul II, concerned for their pastoral care, through the special Indult Quattuor Abhinc Annos issued by the Congregation for Divine Worship, granted the faculty of using the Roman Missal published in 1962 by Blessed John XXIII.  Again in 1988, John Paul II, with the Motu Proprio Ecclesia Dei, exhorted bishops to make broad and generous use of this faculty on behalf of all the faithful who sought it. (Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, Summorum Pontificum, July 7, 2007.)

It is true that there have been exaggerations and at times social aspects unduly linked to the attitude of the faithful attached to the ancient Latin liturgical tradition. Your charity and pastoral prudence will be an incentive and guide for improving these. For that matter, the two Forms of the usage of the Roman Rite can be mutually enriching: new Saints and some of the new Prefaces can and should be inserted in the old Missal. The 'Ecclesia Dei' Commission, in contact with various bodies devoted to the 'usus antiquior,' will study the practical possibilities in this regard. The celebration of the Mass according to the Missal of Paul VI will be able to demonstrate, more powerfully than has been the case hitherto, the sacrality which attracts many people to the former usage. The most sure guarantee that the Missal of Paul VI can unite parish communities and be loved by them consists in its being celebrated with great reverence in harmony with the liturgical directives. This will bring out the spiritual richness and the theological depth of this Missal. (Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, Explanatory Letter on Summorum Pontificum, July 7, 2007.)

Ratzinger/Benedict was, in essence, saying that an attachment to the Immemorial Mass of Tradition was a matter of aesthetics having nothing to do with the integrity of the Holy Faith and that more reverent stagings of the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic Novus Ordo  service would obviate the need for people to seek out reverence in “Tridentine Masses,” which ignored the simple fact that the Novus Ordo service is offensive to God and sacramentally invalid no matter how well it is staged.

Ratzinger/Benedict repeated this theme, thereafter, explaining in his letter to the conciliar “bishops” after the lifting of the “excommunications” of the four bishops consecrated by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre and Bishop Antonio de Castro Mayer on June 30, 1988, that his goal was to “pacify the spirits” of traditionally minded Catholics, a “pacification” he stressed over and over again in subsequent years:

Leading men and women to God, to the God Who speaks in the Bible: this is the supreme and fundamental priority of the Church and of the Successor of Peter at the present time. A logical consequence of this is that we must have at heart the unity of all believers. Their disunity, their disagreement among themselves, calls into question the credibility of their talk of God. Hence the effort to promote a common witness by Christians to their faith - ecumenism - is part of the supreme priority. Added to this is the need for all those who believe in God to join in seeking peace, to attempt to draw closer to one another, and to journey together, even with their differing images of God, towards the source of Light - this is inter-religious dialogue. Whoever proclaims that God is Love 'to the end' has to bear witness to love: in loving devotion to the suffering, in the rejection of hatred and enmity - this is the social dimension of the Christian faith, of which I spoke in the Encyclical 'Deus caritas est'.

"So if the arduous task of working for faith, hope and love in the world is presently (and, in various ways, always) the Church's real priority, then part of this is also made up of acts of reconciliation, small and not so small. That the quiet gesture of extending a hand gave rise to a huge uproar, and thus became exactly the opposite of a gesture of reconciliation, is a fact which we must accept. But I ask now: Was it, and is it, truly wrong in this case to meet half-way the brother who 'has something against you' and to seek reconciliation? Should not civil society also try to forestall forms of extremism and to incorporate their eventual adherents - to the extent possible - in the great currents shaping social life, and thus avoid their being segregated, with all its consequences? Can it be completely mistaken to work to break down obstinacy and narrowness, and to make space for what is positive and retrievable for the whole? I myself saw, in the years after 1988, how the return of communities which had been separated from Rome changed their interior attitudes; I saw how returning to the bigger and broader Church enabled them to move beyond one-sided positions and broke down rigidity so that positive energies could emerge for the whole. Can we be totally indifferent about a community which has 491 priests, 215 seminarians, 6 seminaries, 88 schools, 2 university-level institutes, 117 religious brothers, 164 religious sisters and thousands of lay faithful? Should we casually let them drift farther from the Church? I think for example of the 491 priests. We cannot know how mixed their motives may be. All the same, I do not think that they would have chosen the priesthood if, alongside various distorted and unhealthy elements, they did not have a love for Christ and a desire to proclaim Him and, with Him, the living God. Can we simply exclude them, as representatives of a radical fringe, from our pursuit of reconciliation and unity? What would then become of them?

"Certainly, for some time now, and once again on this specific occasion, we have heard from some representatives of that community many unpleasant things - arrogance and presumptuousness, an obsession with one-sided positions, etc. Yet to tell the truth, I must add that I have also received a number of touching testimonials of gratitude which clearly showed an openness of heart. But should not the great Church also allow herself to be generous in the knowledge of her great breadth, in the knowledge of the promise made to her? Should not we, as good educators, also be capable of overlooking various faults and making every effort to open up broader vistas? And should we not admit that some unpleasant things have also emerged in Church circles? At times one gets the impression that our society needs to have at least one group to which no tolerance may be shown; which one can easily attack and hate. And should someone dare to approach them - in this case the Pope - he too loses any right to tolerance; he too can be treated hatefully, without misgiving or restraint. (Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church concerning the remission of the excommunication of the four Bishops consecrated by Archbishop Lefebvre, March 10, 2009.)

Fr Federico Lombardi, S.J., Director of the Holy See Press Office: What do you say to those who, in France, fear that the "Motu proprio' Summorum Pontificum signals a step backwards from the great insights of the Second Vatican Council? How can you reassure them?

Benedict XVI: Their fear is unfounded, for this "Motu Proprio' is merely an act of tolerance, with a pastoral aim, for those people who were brought up with this liturgy, who love it, are familiar with it and want to live with this liturgy. They form a small group, because this presupposes a schooling in Latin, a training in a certain culture. Yet for these people, to have the love and tolerance to let them live with this liturgy seems to me a normal requirement of the faith and pastoral concern of any Bishop of our Church. There is no opposition between the liturgy renewed by the Second Vatican Council and this liturgy.

On each day [of the Council], the Council Fathers celebrated Mass in accordance with the ancient rite and, at the same time, they conceived of a natural development for the liturgy within the whole of this century, for the liturgy is a living reality that develops but, in its development, retains its identity. Thus, there are certainly different accents, but nevertheless [there remains] a fundamental identity that excludes a contradiction, an opposition between the renewed liturgy and the previous liturgy. In any case, I believe that there is an opportunity for the enrichment of both parties. On the one hand the friends of the old liturgy can and must know the new saints, the new prefaces of the liturgy, etc.... On the other, the new liturgy places greater emphasis on common participation, but it is not merely an assembly of a certain community, but rather always an act of the universal Church in communion with all believers of all times, and an act of worship. In this sense, it seems to me that there is a mutual enrichment, and it is clear that the renewed liturgy is the ordinary liturgy of our time. (Interview of the Holy Father during the flight to France, September 12, 2008.)

Liturgical worship is the supreme expression of priestly and episcopal life, just as it is of catechetical teaching. Your duty to sanctify the faithful people, dear Brothers, is indispensable for the growth of the Church. In the Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum”, I was led to set out the conditions in which this duty is to be exercised, with regard to the possibility of using the missal of Blessed John XXIII (1962) in addition to that of Pope Paul VI (1970). Some fruits of these new arrangements have already been seen, and I hope that, thanks be to God, the necessary pacification of spirits is already taking placeI am aware of your difficulties, but I do not doubt that, within a reasonable time, you can find solutions satisfactory for all, lest the seamless tunic of Christ be further torn. Everyone has a place in the Church. Every person, without exception, should be able to feel at home, and never rejected. God, who loves all men and women and wishes none to be lost, entrusts us with this mission by appointing us shepherds of his sheep. We can only thank him for the honour and the trust that he has placed in us. Let us therefore strive always to be servants of unity! (Meeting with the French Bishops in the Hemicycle Sainte-Bernadette, Lourdes, 14 September 2008.)

Ratzinger/Benedict’s supposed magnanimity to traditionally-minded Catholics attached to the counterfeit church of conciliarism in the mistaken belief that it is the Catholic Church and the conciliar entity has true sacramental rites, true bishops, true priests and continues to have true popes was based on sentiment towards those who have a “nostalgic” or “aesthetic” attachment to an “older” liturgy, not upon a desire to protect the inviolable integrity of the doctrines of the Holy Faith. Summorum Pontificum was bound to weaken over time as it was founded upon false premises that were not clear in the ever opaque, obscurantist, Hegelian mind of Antipope Benedict XVI. Ratzinger/Benedict repeatedly contradicted himself in the explanatory letter accompanying Summorum Pontificum in 2007 and then in the explanatory letter he issued in early 2009 to explain why he lifted the ban of excommunication that his predecessor, Karol Josef Wojtyla/John Paul II, had imposed upon Bishops Bernard Fellay, Bernard Tissier de Mallerais, Richard Williamson, and Alonso de Galaretta in 1988 after they had been consecrated without a “papal” mandate by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre and co-consecrated by Bishop Antonio Castro de Mayer, both of whom remain “excommunicated” to this day.

II. Muting Criticism of Ratzinger/Benedict's Letter to Chinese Catholics

The former Joseph “Cardinal” Ratzinger’s most consistent and courageous critics were, at least for the most part, rendered mute when “Pope Benedict XVI” issued his letter to Chinese Catholics that formalized the sellout of underground Catholics in Red China (that was completed eleven years later by Jorge Mario Bergoglio, see  A Betrayal Worthy of the AntichristRed China: Still A Workshop For The New EcclesiologyStill Selling The Rope After All These Years, part twoNeville Bergoglio's Appeasement of the Chicom MonstersDoubly Betrayed by Jorge and His False Church, Bergoglio the Red Surrenders Faithful Catholics to Their Persecutors, and Vanquished by Our Lady: Comrade Bergoglio) a week before the much-anticipated issuance of Summorum Pontificum.

Interestingly, however, Ratzinger’s letter to Chinese Catholics contradicted Summorum Pontificum on how to understand human history, which Ratzinger/Benedict said in his letter to Chinese Catholics, July 30, 2007, was indecipherable even though he noted in his explanatory letter to Summorum Pontificum was fully understandable:

History remains indecipherable, incomprehensible. No one can read it. (Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, Letter to Bishops, Priests, Consecrated Persons and Lay Faithful of Red China, June 30, 2007.)

If history is "indecipherable" and "incomprehensible," as Ratzinger/Benedict contended in his Letter to Bishops, Priests, Consecrated Persons and Lay Faithful of Red China of June 30, 2007, what business did have a week later trying to "teach" us about alleged "missed opportunities" to prevent or heal schisms in the past?

Looking back over the past, to the divisions which in the course of the centuries have rent the Body of Christ, one continually has the impression that, at critical moments when divisions were coming about, not enough was done by the Church's leaders to maintain or regain reconciliation and unityOne has the impression that omissions on the part of the Church have had their share of blame for the fact that these divisions were able to harden. This glance at the past imposes an obligation on us today: to make every effort to unable for all those who truly desire unity to remain in that unity or to attain it anew. I think of a sentence in the Second Letter to the Corinthians, where Paul writes: "Our mouth is open to you, Corinthians; our heart is wide. You are not restricted by us, but you are restricted in your own affections. In return … widen your hearts also!" (2 Corinthians 6:11-13). Paul was certainly speaking in another context, but his exhortation can and must touch us too, precisely on this subject. Let us generously open our hearts and make room for everything that the faith itself allows. (Explanatory Letter on "Summorum Pontificum")

If history is "indecipherable" and "incomprehensible, as Ratzinger/Benedict contended in his Letter to Bishops, Priests, Consecrated Persons and Lay Faithful of Red China on June 30, 2007, then how was it possible on July 7, 2007, to "decipher" that "not enough was done by the Church's leaders to maintain or regain reconciliation and unity?"

Remember, Ratzinger/Benedict wrote the following in his Letter to Bishops, Priests, Consecrated Persons and Lay Faithful of Red China:

History remains indecipherable, incomprehensible. No one can read it. (Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, Letter to Bishops, Priests, Consecrated Persons and Lay Faithful of Red China, June 30, 2007.)

If "no one can read" history, then how can Ratzinger/Benedict claim to know that "not enough was done by the Church's leaders to maintain or regain reconciliation and unity"?

Obviously, the contention made on June 30, 2007, is completely contradictory of his statement seven days later. Ratzinger/Benedict's statement about the "incomprehensible" and "indecipherable" nature of a history that "no one can read" also makes it impossible for him to "know" the alleged "historical circumstances" that he contends, contrary to right reason and Catholic dogma, that make specific dogma formulae and papal pronouncement "obsolete after having fulfilled their pastoral mission at their proper time."

Ratzinger/Benedict, a disciple of the late Father Hans Urs von Balthasar, an Hegelian who believed in the heresy of "universal salvation" that contradicts the plain words of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, daring to impute "ignorance" to Our Lord on the matter of the time of His Second Coming to judge the living and the dead on the Last Day (see Father Regis Scanlon, O.F.M., Cap., The Inflated Reputation of Hans Urs von Balthasar), was as blithe to his contradictions as he blithe to the fact that errors can in no way serve as the foundation of personal sanctity or of social order, as an article in Si, Si, No, No made clear:

Up to the very end of his conference, Card. Ratzinger resolutely continues on this road of agnosticism and now logically comes to the most disastrous of conclusions. He writes:

In conclusion, as we contemplate our present-day religious situation, of which I have tried to throw some light on some of its elements, we may well marvel at the fact that, after all, people still continue believing in a Christian manner, not only according to Hick's, Knitter's as well as others' substitute ways or forms, but also according to that full and joyous Faith found in the New Testament of the Church of all time.

So, there it is: For Card. Ratzinger, "Hick, Knitter, and others" who deny the divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ, His Church, His sacraments, and, in short, all of Christianity, continue "despite everything" "believing in a Christian manner," even though they do so using "substitute forms of belief"! Here, the Cardinal Prefect of the Congregation for the Faith leaves us wondering indeed, just what it is he means by "believing in a Christian manner."

Moreover, once the "preambula fidei" have been eliminated, that "full and joyous Faith of the Church of all time" which seems [for Card. Ratzinger] to be no different from modern-day apostasies other than by its style and total character, is utterly lacking in any rational credibility in comparison with and in relation to what he refers to as "substitute ways or forms" of faith. "How is it," Card. Ratzinger wonders, "in fact, that the Faith [the one of all time] still has a chance of success?" Answer: 

I would say that it is because it finds a correspondence in man's nature…..There is, in man, an insatiable desire for the infinite. None of the answers we have sought is sufficient [but must we take his own word for it, or must we go through the exercise of experiencing all religions?]. God alone [but Whom, according to Card. Ratzinger, human reason cannot prove to be truly God], Who made Himself finite in order to shatter the bonds of our own finitude and bring us to the dimension of His infinity [...and not to redeem us from the slavery of sin?] is able to meet all the needs of our human existence.

According to this, it is therefore not objective motives based on history and reason, and thus the truth of Christianity, but only a subjective appreciation which brings us to "see" that it [Christianity] is able to satisfy the profound needs of human nature and which would explain the "success" [modernists would say the "vitality"] of the "faith" ["of all time" or in its "substitute forms," it is of but little importance]. Such, however, is not at all Catholic doctrine: this is simply modernist apologetics (cf. Pope St. Pius X, Pascendi), based on their affirmed impossibility of grasping metaphysical knowledge (or agnosticism or skepticism), which Card. Ratzinger seemed to want to shun in the first part of his address.

Now we are in a position to better understand why Card. Ratzinger has such a wide-open concept of "theology" and of "faith" that he includes everything: theology as well as heresies, faith and apostasy. On that road of denial of the human reason's ability of attaining metaphysical knowledge, a road which he continues to follow, he lacks the "means of discerning the difference between faith and non-faith" (R. Amerio, op. cit., p.340) and, consequently, theology from pseudo-theology, truth from heresy:

All theologies are nullified, because all are regarded as equivalent; the heart or kernel of religion is located in feelings or experiences, as the Modernists held at the beginning of this century (Amerio, op. cit., p.542).

We cannot see how this position of Card. Ratzinger can escape that solemn condemnation proclaimed at Vatican I: "If anyone says...that men must be brought to the Faith solely by their own personal interior experience...let him be anathema" (DB 1812). (Cardinal Ratzinger)

Actually, there is an explanation for Ratzinger's statement on June 30, 2007, that history is "indecipherable" and his exercise in deciphering history just seven days later by daring to state that true popes did not "do enough" "to maintain or regain reconciliation and unity." Ratzinger/Benedict did and said those things that he believed he “had” do or say to accomplish a given end. As a pure subjectivist, Ratzinger/Benedict simply did and said whatever he wanted to if he believed he could “reconcile” his words and actions with "elements" of the Catholic Faith by means of his "hermeneutic of continuity.”

It was expedient for Ratzinger/Benedict to appeal to the "indecipherability" of history on June 30, 2007, in order to overlook—or to "purify the memory" about—the crimes committed by the Red Chinese government and its Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association against the persecuted Catholics of the underground Church in Red China. Ratzinger/Benedict waned to forge a "unity" between the schismatic and heretical rump church that is a tool of the Communist Red Chinese government and the underground Church in China at the expense of truth, willing to jettison a complete adherence to principles of Faith and any discussion at all of Pope Pius XII's condemnation of the actions of the renegade bishops in Red China in Ad Sinarum Gentem, October 7, 1954, and Ad Apostolorum Principis, June 29, 1958, and Pope Pius XII's plea for prayers for the Church in Red China, Meminisse Iuvat, June 14, 1958, none of which were referenced in Ratzinger/Benedict's Letter to Bishops, Priests, Consecrated Persons and Lay Faithful of Red China, of June 30, 2007. Indeed, there were no references at all in any of that letter's fifty-six footnotes to any "preconciliar" document. Talk about "purification of memory."

It was also expedient for Ratzinger/Benedict to appeal his own understanding of history, that which had termed "indecipherable" ("who can read it") on June 30, 2007, in his Explanatory Letter on "Summorum Pontificum" on July 7, 2007, as doing so made it appear to conciliar "bishops" opposed to any "liberation" of the modernized version of the Immemorial Mass of Tradition that was promulgated by Angelo Roncalli/John XXIII in 1961 and 1962 that he, Ratzinger/Benedict, wanted to prove himself better in the "eyes of history," shall we say, than Pope Leo IX, who did not "do enough" to prevent the Greek Schism in 1054, and better than Pope Leo X, who excommunicated the hideous drunkard named Martin Luther in the Papal Bull Exsurge Domini, June 15, 1520, and better than Pope Saint Pius V, who excommunicated the bloodthirsty Queen Elizabeth I in Regnans in Excelsis, March 5, 1570. Ratzinger/Benedict believed his own understanding of dogmatic truth and of a "reconciled diversity" might have "saved the day" in the past, which is why it was necessary to make "reference" in his Explanatory Letter on "Summorum Pontificum" to a word that he called indecipherable in his Letter to Bishops, Priests, Consecrated Persons and Lay Faithful of Red China.

Summorum Pontificum was thus an effective muzzling device for Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI. Career-long critics of his in the “resist while recognize” movement when he as “Cardinal Ratzinger” ignored his lifelong warfare against the very nature of dogmatic truth (which is nothing other than warfare against the very nature of God Himself) and ignored each of his serial violations of the First Commandment as he personally esteemed the symbols and the places of “worship” of one false religion after another.

III. "Restoring the Latin Mass" Provides No Excuse to Offend God in Matters of Catholic Doctrine

The Immemorial Mass of Tradition is not about one's aesthetic "likes." It is about giving the Most Blessed Trinity fitting worship as the Holy Faith itself is conveyed flawlessly, without any defect or ambiguity whatsoever.

How was it an exercise in the "restoration of the ecclesiastical traditions of the Catholic Church” to accept a menorah as a symbol of the "perennial validity of God's covenant of peace?

How was it an exercise in the "restoration of the ecclesiastical traditions of the Catholic Church" to accept a copy of the Koran, which blasphemes Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ by denying His Sacred Divinity and is heretical in that it does that God is a Trinity of Persons, which was represented by the American conciliar "bishops" as "the revered word of God, proclaiming God’s message of peace"?

Would Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, God in the very Flesh, say what Ratzinger/Benedict said in May of 2008 when he, the false "pontiff," received yet another copy of the Koran, this time in the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican, called this work of blasphemy a "dear and precious book." Would Our Lord speak in such a way about a book that denies His Sacred Divinity? Restoring the ecclesiastical traditions of the Catholic Church?

How was it an exercise in the "restoration of the ecclesiastical traditions of the Catholic Church" to accept the "metallic cube" representing the principles of Jain?

How was it an exercise in the "restoration of the ecclesiastical traditions of the Catholic Church" to accept a brass incense burner (talk about a grain of incense!) with the word "Om" on it in order to "esteem" the Hindu religion?

How was it an exercise in the "restoration of the ecclesiastical traditions of the Catholic Church" to accept a bell used in the false worship of Buddhism?

How was it an exercise in the "restoration of the ecclesiastical traditions of the Catholic Church" for a putative Roman Pontiff to call a mosque, a place of diabolical worship, or a mountain revered by the devil-worshipers known as Buddhists as "sacred"?

How was it an exercise in the "restoration of the ecclesiastical traditions of the Catholic Church" for an alleged Successor of Saint Peter to enter into synagogues and to treat the false, blasphemous religion of Talmudic Judaism as a valid means of sanctification and salvation for its adherents? Was Bishop George Hay wrong when he wrote that the Catholic Church's attitude about the places of false worship, including the synagogue, will always be the same? Was Pope Pius XI wrong to insist on the same doctrine?

How was it an exercise in the "restoration of the ecclesiastical traditions of the Catholic Church" for an alleged Sovereign Pontiff to give an audience in October of 2007 so that they could lobby him for either the elimination or for the change of the Prayer for the Conversion of the Jews as found in the 1962 Missal whose use he had "liberalized" just three months previously?

Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI did indeed revise the prayer and mandated its use, although he pleased neither the Jews nor many traditional Catholics by so doing. Far from being a "papal masterstroke," the revised prayer was a concession to the ancient enemies of Christ the King and His true Church that they can make demands to have a say in the liturgical life of the Catholic Church. Some "papal masterstroke."

Summorum Pontificum silenced most of the people in the “resist while recognize” movement to the point where at least some within their number clung to the delusion that their beloved “restorer of tradition” never really resigned an office he never held authentically in the first place, namely, the papacy. Perhaps these “resignationists” have become sedevacanists now.

Fundamental principles of Catholic ecclesiology do not matter to those steeped in the emotionalism of believing that the “restoration” of a modernized version of the Immemorial Mass of Tradition was justification enough to ignore statements such as the following made by Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI:

As I begin to speak, I would like first of all to say how deeply grateful I am that we are able to come together.  I am particularly grateful to you, my dear brother, Pastor Schneider, for receiving me and for the words with which you have welcomed me here among you.  You have opened your heart and openly expressed a truly shared faith, a longing for unity.  And we are also glad, for I believe that this session, our meetings here, are also being celebrated as the feast of our shared faith.   Moreover, I would like to express my thanks to all of you for your gift in making it possible for us to speak with one another as Christians here, in this historic place.

As the Bishop of Rome, it is deeply moving for me to be meeting you here in the ancient Augustinian convent in Erfurt.  As we have just heard, this is where Luther studied theology.  This is where he was ordained a priest.  Against his father’s wishes, he did not continue the study of Law, but instead he studied theology and set off on the path towards priesthood in the Order of Saint Augustine.  And on this path, he was not simply concerned with this or that.  What constantly exercised him was the question of God, the deep passion and driving force of his whole life’s journey.  “How do I receive the grace of God?”: this question struck him in the heart and lay at the foundation of all his theological searching and inner struggle.  For Luther theology was no mere academic pursuit, but the struggle for oneself, which in turn was a struggle for and with God.

“How do I receive the grace of God?”  The fact that this question was the driving force of his whole life never ceases to make a deep impression on me.  For who is actually concerned about this today – even among Christians?  What does the question of God mean in our lives?  In our preaching?  Most people today, even Christians, set out from the presupposition that God is not fundamentally interested in our sins and virtues.  He knows that we are all mere flesh.  And insofar as people believe in an afterlife and a divine judgement at all, nearly everyone presumes for all practical purposes that God is bound to be magnanimous and that ultimately he mercifully overlooks our small failings.  The question no longer troubles us.  But are they really so small, our failings?  Is not the world laid waste through the corruption of the great, but also of the small, who think only of their own advantage?  Is it not laid waste through the power of drugs, which thrives on the one hand on greed and avarice, and on the other hand on the craving for pleasure of those who become addicted?  Is the world not threatened by the growing readiness to use violence, frequently masking itself with claims to religious motivation?  Could hunger and poverty so devastate parts of the world if love for God and godly love of neighbour – of his creatures, of men and women – were more alive in us?  I could go on.  No, evil is no small matter.  Were we truly to place God at the centre of our lives, it could not be so powerful.  The question: what is God’s position towards me, where do I stand before God? – Luther’s burning question must once more, doubtless in a new form, become our question too, not an academic question, but a real one.  In my view, this is the first summons we should attend to in our encounter with Martin Luther.

Another important point: God, the one God, creator of heaven and earth, is no mere philosophical hypothesis regarding the origins of the universe.  This God has a face, and he has spoken to us.  He became one of us in the man Jesus Christ – who is both true God and true man.  Luther’s thinking, his whole spirituality, was thoroughly Christocentric: “What promotes Christ’s cause” was for Luther the decisive hermeneutical criterion for the exegesis of sacred Scripture.  This presupposes, however, that Christ is at the heart of our spirituality and that love for him, living in communion with him, is what guides our life. (Meeting with representatives of the German Evangelical Church Council in the Chapter Hall of the Augustinian Convent Erfurt, Germany, September 23, 2011.)

Why should we have to encounter Martin Luther with anything other than total rejection?

To paraphrase from Pope Saint Pius X's Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910, what is this strange respect for false religions and errors of all kinds?

Like Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI four centuries after him, Martin Luther believed that the Gospel had been “corrupted” by certain Church Fathers and then by Saint Thomas Aquinas and Scholasticism, and he believed that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ could be understood fully without the infallible teaching authority of His spotless mystical spouse here on earth, Holy Mother Church.

Ah, who cares about all this “stuff”?

After all, Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI “restored the Latin Mass,” right?

Where was the shock and outrage when Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI praised the results of separation of Church and State in Portugal one hundred one years after Pope Saint Pius X had condemned such a separation in the country that Our Lady favored with her apparitions in the Cova da Iria near Fatima, Portugal, between May 13, 1917, and October 13, 1917?

From a wise vision of life and of the world, the just ordering of society follows. Situated within history, the Church is open to cooperating with anyone who does not marginalize or reduce to the private sphere the essential consideration of the human meaning of life. The point at issue is not an ethical confrontation between a secular and a religious system, so much as a question about the meaning that we give to our freedom. What matters is the value attributed to the problem of meaning and its implication in public life. By separating Church and State, the Republican revolution which took place 100 years ago in Portugal, opened up a new area of freedom for the Church, to which the two concordats of 1940 and 2004 would give shape, in cultural settings and ecclesial perspectives profoundly marked by rapid change. For the most part, the sufferings caused by these transformations have been faced with courage. Living amid a plurality of value systems and ethical outlooks requires a journey to the core of one’s being and to the nucleus of Christianity so as to reinforce the quality of one’s witness to the point of sanctity, and to find mission paths that lead even to the radical choice of martyrdom. (Official Reception at Lisbon Portela International Airport, Tuesday, May 11, 2010.)

Apostasy. "By separating Church and State, the Republican revolution which took place 100 years ago in Portugal, opened up a new area of freedom for the Church"?

Pluralism strengthens sanctity within the soul? Guess again.

Pope Saint Pius X specifically condemned the very separation of Church and State in Portugal that Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI praised on May 11, 2010:

2. Whilst the new rulers of Portugal were affording such numerous and awful examples of the abuse of power, you know with what patience and moderation this Apostolic See has acted towards them. We thought that We ought most carefully to avoid any action that could even have the appearance of hostility to the Republic. For We clung to the hope that its rulers would one day take saner counsels and would at length repair, by some new agreement, the injuries inflicted on the Church. In this, however, We have been altogether disappointed, for they have now crowned their evil work by the promulgation of a vicious and pernicious Decree for the Separation of Church and State. But now the duty imposed upon Us by our Apostolic charge will not allow Us to remain passive and silent when so serious a wound has been inflicted upon the rights and dignity of the Catholic religion. Therefore do We now address you, Venerable Brethren, in this letter and denounce to all Christendom the heinousness of this deed.

3. At the outset, the absurd and monstrous character of the decree of which We speak is plain from the fact that it proclaims and enacts that the Republic shall have no religion, as if men individually and any association or nation did not depend upon Him who is the Maker and Preserver of all things; and then from the fact that it liberates Portugal from the observance of the Catholic religion, that religion, We say, which has ever been that nation's greatest safeguard and glory, and has been professed almost unanimously by its people. So let us take it that it has been their pleasure to sever that close alliance between Church and State, confirmed though it was by the solemn faith of treaties. Once this divorce was effected, it would at least have been logical to pay no further attention to the Church, and to leave her the enjoyment of the common liberty and rights which belong to every citizen and every respectable community of peoples. Quite otherwise, however, have things fallen out. This decree bears indeed the name of Separation, but it enacts in reality the reduction of the Church to utter want by the spoliation of her property, and to servitude to the State by oppression in all that touches her sacred power and spirit. (Pope Saint Pius X, Iamdudum, May 24, 1911.)

"Gay marriage" and the surgical execution of children were already "legal" in Portugal when Ratzinger/Benedict XVI visited in 2010. Some “new area of freedom for the Church,” eh?

 

Where was the shock and outrage when Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI gave a “joint blessing” with the layman, Rowan Williams, then posing as the Anglican “archbishop” of Canterbury in Westminster Cathedral, Westminster, England, on Friday, September 17, 2010?

Like examples could be given ad nauseamad infinitum. Others, of course, can be found in numerous articles on this site and elsewhere in cyberspace, not to mention a compendium, necessarily dated now by the rush of subsequent events but nevertheless a handy reference guide, entitled www.amazon.com/No-Space-Between-Ratzinger-Bergoglio/dp/1506185533/ref=sr...">http://www.amazon.com/No-Space-Between-Ratzinger-Bergoglio/dp/1506185533..." title="No Space Between Ratzinger and Bergoglio: So Close in Apostasy, So Far From Catholic Truth">No Space Between Ratzinger and Bergoglio: So Close in Apostasy, So Far From Catholic Truth.

Moreover, who should care about the hobgoblins of inconsistency represented by Ratzinger/Benedict’s having said in 1985 and in 1999 that there was a rupture between the Mass of Tradition and the concoction created synthetically by Anniable Bugnini’s Consilium while saying in his explanatory letter accompanying Summorum Pontificum that there was no rupture at all?

What happened after the Council was something else entirely: in the place of liturgy as the fruit of development came fabricated liturgy. We abandoned the organic, living process of growth and development over centuries, and replaced it--as in a manufacturing process--with a fabrication, a banal on-the-spot product. Gamber, with the vigilance of a true prophet and the courage of a true witness, oppose this falsification, and thanks to his incredibly rich knowledge, indefatigably taught us about the living fullness of a true liturgy. As a man who knew and loved history, he showed us the multiple forms and paths of liturgical development; as a man who looked at history form the inside, he saw in this development and its fruit the intangible reflection of the eternal liturgy, that which is not the object of our action but which can continue marvelously to mature and blossom if we unite ourselves intimately with its mystery. (Joseph Ratzinger, Preface to the French language edition of Monsignor Klaus Gamber's The Reform of the Roman Liturgy.)

The prohibition of the missal that was now decreed, a missal that had known continuous growth over the centuries, starting with the sacramentaries of the ancient Church, introduced a breach into the history of the liturgy whose consequences could only be tragic. It was reasonable and right of the Council to order a revision of the missal such as had often taken place before and which this time had to be more thorough than before, above all because of the introduction of the vernacular.

But more than this now happened: the old building was demolished, and another was built, to be sure largely using materials from the previous one and even using the old building plans. There is no doubt that this new missal in many respects brought with it a real improvement and enrichment; but setting it as a new construction over against what had grown historically, forbidding the results of this historical growth. thereby makes the liturgy appear to be no longer living development but the produce of erudite work and juridical authority; this has caused an enormous harm. For then the impression had to emerge that liturgy is something "made", not something given in advance but something lying without our own power of decision. (Joseph Ratzinger, Milestones.)

There is no contradiction between the two editions of the Roman Missal. In the history of the liturgy there is growth and progress, but no rupture. What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too, and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful. It behooves all of us to preserve the riches which have developed in the Church's faith and prayer, and to give them their proper place. Needless to say, in order to experience full communion, the priests of the communities adhering to the former usage cannot, as a matter of principle, exclude celebrating according to the new books. The total exclusion of the new rite would not in fact be consistent with the recognition of its value and holiness (www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=1&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.zeni...">http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=1&url=http%3A%2F%2Fw...">Explanatory Letter on "Summorum Pontificum".)

No rupture?

What about a frontal lobotomy?

Oh, of course, Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI “restored the Latin Mass,” which was staged for the most part by men who were not validly ordained to the Catholic priesthood.

Did Ratzinger/Benedict abjure any of his defections from the Holy Faith on such matters as the nature of dogmatic truth, false ecumenism, the new ecclesiology, episcopal collegiality, religious liberty, separation of Church and State or Modernist Scriptural exegesis before he died on December 31, 2022, the Feast of Pope Saint Sylvester I.

Did he abjure a single one of the errors contained in his "private" books that were issued during his seven years, ten months, nine days in the conciliar seat of apostasy, including the following scandalous assertion made in Jesus of Nazareth: From the Entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection?

From a theological understanding of the empty tomb, a passage from Saint Peter's Pentecost sermon strikes me as important, when Peter for the first time openly proclaims Jesus' Resurrection to the assembled crowds. He communicates it, not in his own words, but by quoting Psalm 16:8-10 as follows: "... my flesh will dwell in hope. For you will not abandon my son to Hades, nor let your Holy One see corruption. You have made known to me the ways of life" (Acts 2:26-28). Peter quotes the psalm text using the version found in the Greek Bible. The Hebrew text is slightly different: "You do not give me up to Sheol, or let your godly one see the Pit. You show me the path of life" (Ps. 16:10-11). In the Hebrew version the psalmist speaks in the certainty that God will protect him, even in the threatening situation in which he evidently finds himself, that God will shield him from death and that he may dwell securely: he will not see the grave. The version Peter quotes is different: here the psalmist is confident that he will not remain in the underworld, that he will not see corruption.

Peter takes it for granted that it was David who originally prayed this psalm, and he goes on to state that this hope was not fulfilled in David: "He both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day" (Acts 2:29). The tomb containing his corpse is the proof of his not having risen. Yet the psalm text is still true: it applies to the definitive David. Indeed, Jesus is revealed here as the true David, precisely because in him this promise is fulfilled: "You will not let your Holy One see corruption."

We need not go into the question here of whether this address goes back to Peter and, if not, who else may have redacted it and precisely when and where it originated. Whatever the answer may be, we are dealing here with a primitive form of Resurrection proclamation, whose high authority in the early Church is clear from the fact that it was attributed to Saint Peter himself and was regarded as the original proclamation of the Resurrection. (Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week: From the Entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection, pp. 255-256.) 

Left unaddressed in this classic piece of Modernist deconstruction of Sacred Scripture that is a blasphemous affront to God the Holy Ghost and to Saint Peter is the little matter that three thousand Jews from all over the Mediterranean converted because of the stirring words delivered by our first pope moments after he had received the Seven Gifts and Twelve Fruits of God the Holy Ghost, being blessed at that moment with the charism of infallibility of doctrine. Ratzinger/Benedict had to place into question, no matter how subtly by way of refusing address the question that he raises, the fact that Saint Peter delivered this sermon as to admit openly that it is the case is to damn himself for refusing to speak to Jews as Saint Peter did.

Moreover, as we know that Saint Peter did deliver this sermon and that the Acts of the Apostles was written by Saint Luke under the inspiration of God the Holy Ghost, to assert that Saint Peter was wrong about the authorship of Psalm 16, attributing it "incorrectly" to King David, is to mock the papal infallibility with which our first pope had just been clothed by the same God the Holy Ghost. 

Consider this fact, my friends. Consider it if only for a moment.

Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, that "master" of true” Scripture exegesis who believed that his insights were superior to those of Holy Mother Church's Fathers and Doctors, including the Angelic Doctor, Saint Thomas Aquinas, had identified the first "papal error" for us, committed moments after Saint Peter received the Gifts and Fruits of God the Holy Ghost. If only Saint Peter had had the benefit of Ratzinger/Benedict's training with all its "access" to sources not known to the fisherman from Galilee, he would not have made such a blunder. It was necessary in Ratzinger/Benedict's view to place into question the very reality of Saint Peter's Pentecost Sunday sermon as a coherent whole and to point out his "error" that is no error at all. 

Ratzinger/Benedict, although a partial critic of the historical-critical method that he believed that he had transcended in his trilogy on Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ with his own kind of "hermeneutic" of Scriptural exegesis, is a prisoner of one Modernist presupposition after another. To believe that someone other than Saint Peter is responsible for the Pentecost Sunday sermon is to use the exact sort of Modernist methodology condemned by Pope Saint Pius X in Pascendi Dominici Gregis, September 8, 1907:

Then the philosopher must come in again to enjoin upon the historian the obligation of following in all his studies the precepts and laws of evolution. It is next for the historian to scrutinize his documents once more, to examine carefully the circumstances and conditions affecting the Church during the different periods, the conserving force she has put forth, the needs both internal and external that have stimulated her to progress, the obstacles she has had to encounter, in a word, everything that helps to determine the manner in which the laws of evolution have been fulfilled in her. This done, he finishes his work by drawing up a history of the development in its broad lines. The critic follows and fits in the rest of the documents. He sets himself to write. The history is finished. Now We ask here: Who is the author of this history? The historian? The critic? Assuredly neither of these but the philosopher. From beginning to end everything in it is a priori, and an apriorism that reeks of heresy. These men are certainly to be pitied, of whom the Apostle might well say: "They became vain in their thoughts...professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.'' At the same time, they excite resentment when they accuse the Church of arranging and confusing the texts after her own fashion, and for the needs of her cause. In this they are accusing the Church of something for which their own conscience plainly reproaches them.

34. The result of this dismembering of the records, and this partition of them throughout the centuries is naturally that the Scriptures can no longer be attributed to the authors whose names they bear. The Modernists have no hesitation in affirming generally that these books, and especially the Pentateuch and the first three Gospels, have been gradually formed from a primitive brief narration, by additions, by interpolations of theological or allegorical interpretations, or parts introduced only for the purpose of joining different passages together. This means, to put it briefly and clearly, that in the Sacred Books we must admit a vital evolution, springing from and corresponding with the evolution of faith. The traces of this evolution, they tell us, are so visible in the books that one might almost write a history of it. Indeed, this history they actually do write, and with such an easy assurance that one might believe them to have seen with their own eyes the writers at work through the ages amplifying the Sacred Books. To aid them in this they call to their assistance that branch of criticism which they call textual, and labor to show that such a fact or such a phrase is not in its right place, adducing other arguments of the same kind. They seem, in fact, to have constructed for themselves certain types of narration and discourses, upon which they base their assured verdict as to whether a thing is or is not out of place. Let him who can judge how far they are qualified in this way to make such distinctions. To hear them descant of their works on the Sacred Books, in which they have been able to discover so much that is defective, one would imagine that before them nobody ever even turned over the pages of Scripture. The truth is that a whole multitude of Doctors, far superior to them in genius, in erudition, in sanctity, have sifted the Sacred Books in every way, and so far from finding in them anything blameworthy have thanked God more and more heartily the more deeply they have gone into them, for His divine bounty in having vouchsafed to speak thus to men. Unfortunately. these great Doctors did not enjoy the same aids to study that are possessed by the Modernists for they did not have for their rule and guide a philosophy borrowed from the negation of God, and a criterion which consists of themselves. (Pope Saint Pius X, Pascendi Dominci Gregis, September 8, 1907.)

Furthermore, did not “Pope Benedict XVI” offend God and mislead souls repeatedly by esteeming the symbols of false religions with his own priestly hands by giving "joint blessings" with the non-ordained "clergy" of various Protestant sects and with the heretical and schismatic Orthodox?

IV. Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI: A Firm Disciple of the Absurdity of "Religious Liberty"

Did not "Pope" Benedict XVI” offend God and thus harmed the good of souls, both eternally and temporally, by rejecting what he called disparagingly "the ecumenism of the return" and insisting that adherents of false religions can use the "tenets" of their sects to help "build" a better world and to provide for world peace as he had just over and over again, including before Christmas in 2009 and in his “World Day of Peace” message in 2011:

VATICAN CITY, 17 DEC 2009 (VIS) - Today in the Vatican, the Holy Father received the Letters of Credence of eight new ambassadors to the Holy See: Hans Klingenberg of Denmark; Francis K. Butagira of Uganda; Suleiman Mohamad Mustafa of Sudan; Elkanah Odembo of Kenya; Mukhtar B. Tileuberdi of Kazakhstan; Abdul Hannan of Bangladesh; Alpo Rusi of Finland, and Einars Semanis of Latvia.

Addressing the diplomats as a group, the Pope referred to the need for "a just relationship between human beings and the creation in which they live and work" In this context, he underlined the need for "environmental responsibility" because "the continual degradation of the environment constitutes a direct threat to man's survival and his development, and threatens peace among individuals and peoples".

Benedict XVI encouraged the political authorities of the countries the ambassadors represent, and those of all nations, "not only to increase their efforts in favour of environmental protection but also - since the problem cannot be faced only at the national level - to produce proposals and provide encouragement in order to reach vital international agreements that may prove useful and just for all sides".

After then highlighting the importance of "converting or modifying the current development model of our societies", the Pope pointed out that "the Church proposes that this profound change ... be guided by the notion of the integral development of the human person".

"If it is true", said the Holy Father, "that over history religions have often been a factor of conflict, it is also nonetheless true that religions lived according to their profound essence have been, and still are, a force for reconciliation and peace. At this moment in history religions must, through open and sincere dialogue, seek the path of purification in order to conform ever more closely to their true vocation".

"Peaceful coexistence of different religions in each nation is sometimes difficult", he continued. "More than a political problem, this co-existence is a religious problem which lies within the bosom of each one of those traditions. Believers are called to ask God about His will concerning each human situation".

"For people of faith or people of good will, the resolution of human conflicts and the delicate coexistence of different religious expressions can be transformed into an opportunity for human coexistence within a social order full of goodness and wisdom, the origin and impulse of which lies in God. Such coexistence, respecting the nature of things and the inherent wisdom that comes from God, is called peace", said Pope Benedict.

"The peace we so long for will not come into being save by the joint action of individuals, who discover the true nature of God, and of leaders of civil and religious society who - respecting the dignity and faith of all people - know how to give religion its noble and authentic role in creating and perfecting the human person. This overall reworking, at once temporal and spiritual, will enable a new beginning towards the peace that God wishes to be universal". (http://212.77.1.245/news_services/press/vis/dinamiche/d1_en.htm">RELIGIONS ARE A FORCE FOR PEACE AND RECONCILIATION .)

Religious freedom expresses what is unique about the human person, for it allows us to direct our personal and social life to God, in whose light the identity, meaning and purpose of the person are fully understood. To deny or arbitrarily restrict this freedom is to foster a reductive vision of the human person; to eclipse the public role of religion is to create a society which is unjust, inasmuch as it fails to take account of the true nature of the human person; it is to stifle the growth of the authentic and lasting peace of the whole human family.

For this reason, I implore all men and women of good will to renew their commitment to building a world where all are free to profess their religion or faith, and to express their love of God with all their heart, with all their soul and with all their mind (cf. Mt 22:37). This is the sentiment which inspires and directs this Message for the XLIV World Day of Peace, devoted to the theme: Religious Freedom, the Path to Peace.

A sacred right to life and to a spiritual life

2. The right to religious freedom is rooted in the very dignity of the human person, whose transcendent nature must not be ignored or overlooked. God created man and woman in his own image and likeness (cf. Gen 1:27). For this reason each person is endowed with the sacred right to a full life, also from a spiritual standpoint. Without the acknowledgement of his spiritual being, without openness to the transcendent, the human person withdraws within himself, fails to find answers to the heart’s deepest questions about life’s meaning, fails to appropriate lasting ethical values and principles, and fails even to experience authentic freedom and to build a just society.

Sacred Scripture, in harmony with our own experience, reveals the profound value of human dignity: “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have established, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man, that you care for him? Yet you have made him little less than God, and crowned him with glory and honour. You have given him dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet” (Ps 8:3-6).

Contemplating the sublime reality of human nature, we can experience the same amazement felt by the Psalmist. Our nature appears as openness to the Mystery, a capacity to ask deep questions about ourselves and the origin of the universe, and a profound echo of the supreme Love of God, the beginning and end of all things, of every person and people.The transcendent dignity of the person is an essential value of Judeo-Christian wisdom, yet thanks to the use of reason, it can be recognized by all. This dignity, understood as a capacity to transcend one’s own materiality and to seek truth, must be acknowledged as a universal good, indispensable for the building of a society directed to human fulfilment. Respect for essential elements of human dignity, such as the right to life and the right to religious freedom, is a condition for the moral legitimacy of every social and legal norm. (www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/messages/peace/documents/hf_ben-...">http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/messages/peace/documents/...">44th World Day of Peace 2011, Religious Freedom, the Path to Peace.)

Religious freedom expresses what is unique about the human person?

What is unique about the human being is that he has a rational, immortal soul created in the very image and likeness of the Most Blessed Trinity. God has created man to know, love and to serve Him as He has revealed Himself to us exclusively through His Catholic Church. Catholicism and it alone is the only foundation of peace among men, whose immortal souls must be at peace with God by means of persisting in a state of Sanctifying Grace.

Judeo-Christian norms?

What about the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law as they have been entrusted by Christ the King solely to His Catholic Church for their eternal safekeeping and infallible explication?

Religious freedom is a condition for the moral legitimacy of every social and legal norm? I

I know that many of my former colleagues in the resist and recognize movement airbrushed their past criticisms of the former Joseph "Cardinal" Ratzinger because he “restored the Latin Mass.”

 However, a review of their own past articles and books indicates that they savaged Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II for making such clearly apostate comments time and time again during the disaster that was his 9,666 days of his "reign" that began on Monday, October 16, 1978, and Saturday, April 2, 2005 (if we accept the conciliar Vatican's official line that he died on Saturday, April 2, 2005, and not the day before when seventeen conciliar "bishops" were appointed even though the "pontiff" was comatose and near death, if not already dead).

This is what Pope Pius VI called "religious freedom," a heresy that cannot but lead to the triumph of blasphemy and religious indifferentism despite the fact that the currently governing false "pontiff" cannot recognize or accept as being so:

"The necessary effect of the constitution decreed by the Assembly is to annihilate the Catholic Religion and, with her, the obedience owed to Kings. With this purpose it establishes as a right of man in society this absolute liberty that not only insures the right to be indifferent to religious opinions, but also grants full license to freely think, speak, write and even print whatever one wishes on religious matters – even the most disordered imaginings. It is a monstrous right, which the Assembly claims, however, results from equality and the natural liberties of all men.

"But what could be more unwise than to establish among men this equality and this uncontrolled liberty, which stifles all reason, the most precious gift nature gave to man, the one that distinguishes him from animals?

"After creating man in a place filled with delectable things, didn’t God threaten him with death should he eat the fruit of the tree of good and evil? And with this first prohibition didn’t He establish limits to his liberty? When, after man disobeyed the command and thereby incurred guilt, didn’t God impose new obligations on him through Moses? And even though he left to man’s free will the choice between good and evil, didn’t God provide him with precepts and commandments that could save him “if he would observe them”? …

"Where then, is this liberty of thinking and acting that the Assembly grants to man in society as an indisputable natural right? Is this invented right not contrary to the right of the Supreme Creator to whom we owe our existence and all that we have? Can we ignore the fact that man was not created for himself alone, but to be helpful to his neighbor? …

"Man should use his reason first of all to recognize his Sovereign Maker, honoring Him and admiring Him, and submitting his entire person to Him. For, from his childhood, he should be submissive to those who are superior to him in age; he should be governed and instructed by their lessons, order his life according to their laws of reason, society and religion. This inflated equality and liberty, therefore, are for him, from the moment he is born, no more than imaginary dreams and senseless words." (Pope Pius VI, Brief Quod aliquantum, March 10, 1791; www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=1&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.trad...">http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=1&url=http%3A%2F%2Fw...">Religious Liberty, a “Monstrous Right"). 

The language of the conciliar revolutionaries, including the late Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, himself a progenitor and principal apologist of all things conciliar, is that of the French Revolution, meaning that it is the language of Judeo-Masonry.

Conciliarism's view of Church-State relations, hinging upon the twin falsehoods of religious liberty and separation of Church and State, is nothing new. It is but a contemporary expression of the first organized effort on the part of Catholics to attempt to "reconcile" the Catholic Faith with the "principles of the new era inaugurated in 1789." That first effort to "reconcile" the irreconcilable was made by the proponents of The Sillon, whose false tenets, including a specious understanding of "human dignity," was condemned by Pope Saint Pius X in Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910:

Alas! yes, the double meaning has been broken: the social action of the Sillon is no longer Catholic. The Sillonist, as such, does not work for a coterie, and “the Church”, he says, “cannot in any sense benefit from the sympathies that his action may stimulate.” A strange situation, indeed! They fear lest the Church should profit for a selfish and interested end by the social action of the Sillon, as if everything that benefited the Church did not benefit the whole human race! A curious reversal of notions! The Church might benefit from social action! As if the greatest economists had not recognized and proved that it is social action alone which, if serious and fruitful, must benefit the Church! But stranger still, alarming and saddening at the same time, are the audacity and frivolity of men who call themselves Catholics and dream of re-shaping society under such conditions, and of establishing on earth, over and beyond the pale of the Catholic Church, "the reign of love and justice" with workers coming from everywhere, of all religions and of no religion, with or without beliefs, so long as they forego what might divide them - their religious and philosophical convictions, and so long as they share what unites them - a "generous idealism and moral forces drawn from whence they can" When we consider the forces, knowledge, and supernatural virtues which are necessary to establish the Christian City, and the sufferings of millions of martyrs, and the light given by the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, and the self-sacrifice of all the heroes of charity, and a powerful hierarchy ordained in heaven, and the streams of Divine Grace - the whole having been built up, bound together, and impregnated by the life and spirit of Jesus Christ, the Wisdom of God, the Word made man - when we think, I say, of all this, it is frightening to behold new apostles eagerly attempting to do better by a common interchange of vague idealism and civic virtues. What are they going to produce? What is to come of this collaboration? A mere verbal and chimerical construction in which we shall see, glowing in a jumble, and in seductive confusion, the words Liberty, Justice, Fraternity, Love, Equality, and human exultation, all resting upon an ill-understood human dignity. It will be a tumultuous agitation, sterile for the end proposed, but which will benefit the less Utopian exploiters of the people. Yes, we can truly say that the Sillon, its eyes fixed on a chimera, brings Socialism in its train.

We fear that worse is to come: the end result of this developing promiscuousness, the beneficiary of this cosmopolitan social action, can only be a Democracy which will be neither Catholic, nor Protestant, nor Jewish. It will be a religion (for Sillonism, so the leaders have said, is a religion) more universal than the Catholic Church, uniting all men become brothers and comrades at last in the "Kingdom of God". - "We do not work for the Church, we work for mankind."

And now, overwhelmed with the deepest sadness, We ask Ourselves, Venerable Brethren, what has become of the Catholicism of the Sillon? Alas! this organization which formerly afforded such promising expectations, this limpid and impetuous stream, has been harnessed in its course by the modern enemies of the Church, and is now no more than a miserable affluent of the great movement of apostasy being organized in every country for the establishment of a One-World Church which shall have neither dogmas, nor hierarchy, neither discipline for the mind, nor curb for the passions, and which, under the pretext of freedom and human dignity, would bring back to the world (if such a Church could overcome) the reign of legalized cunning and force, and the oppression of the weak, and of all those who toil and suffer. (Pope Saint Pius X, Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910.) 

Human dignity? What about the sacred rights of the Social Reign of Christ the King?

The world has heard enough of the so-called "rights of man." Let it hear something of the rights of God. That the time is suitable is proved by the very general revival of religious feeling already referred to, and especially that devotion towards Our Saviour of which there are so many indications, and which, please God, we shall hand on to the New Century as a pledge of happier times to come. But as this consummation cannot be hoped for except by the aid of divine grace, let us strive in prayer, with united heart and voice, to incline Almighty God unto mercy, that He would not suffer those to perish whom He had redeemed by His Blood. May He look down in mercy upon this world, which has indeed sinned much, but which has also suffered much in expiation! And, embracing in His loving-kindness all races and classes of mankind, may He remember His own words: "I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all things to Myself" (John xii., 32).  (Pope Leo XIII, Tametsi Futura Prospicientibus, November 1, 1900.) 

Ratzinger/Benedict's mind, shaped by the Hegelian mentality he learned from his mentor, the late Father Hans Urs von Balthasar, lived in such a world of contradiction and paradox that he could not see that he had contradicted himself at different points in this "2011 World Day of Peace Message:" 

A freedom which is hostile or indifferent to God becomes self-negating and does not guarantee full respect for others. A will which believes itself radically incapable of seeking truth and goodness has no objective reasons or motives for acting save those imposed by its fleeting and contingent interests; it does not have an “identity” to safeguard and build up through truly free and conscious decisions. As a result, it cannot demand respect from other “wills”, which are themselves detached from their own deepest being and thus capable of imposing other “reasons” or, for that matter, no “reason” at all. The illusion that moral relativism provides the key for peaceful coexistence is actually the origin of divisions and the denial of the dignity of human beings. Hence we can see the need for recognition of a twofold dimension within the unity of the human person: a religious dimension and a social dimension. In this regard, “it is inconceivable that believers should have to suppress a part of themselves – their faith – in order to be active citizens. It should never be necessary to deny God in order to enjoy one’s rights”. . . .

Religious freedom is, in this sense, also an achievement of a sound political and juridical culture. It is an essential good: each person must be able freely to exercise the right to profess and manifest, individually or in community, his or her own religion or faith, in public and in private, in teaching, in practice, in publications, in worship and in ritual observances. There should be no obstacles should he or she eventually wish to belong to another religion or profess none at all. In this context, international law is a model and an essential point of reference for states, insofar as it allows no derogation from religious freedom, as long as the just requirements of public order are observed. The international order thus recognizes that rights of a religious nature have the same status as the right to life and to personal freedom, as proof of the fact that they belong to the essential core of human rights, to those universal and natural rights which human law can never deny. (www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/messages/peace/documents/hf_ben-...">http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/messages/peace/documents/...">44th World Day of Peace 2011, Religious Freedom, the Path to Peace.)

Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI condemned what he called a "freedom which is hostile or indifferent to God" such "becomes self-negating and does not guarantee full respect for others" while at the same time stating that there must be no obstacles placed in the way of those who wish "to belong to another religion or to none at all, holding that "each person must be able freely to exercise the right to profess and manifest, individually or in community, his or her own religion or faith, in public and in private, in teaching, in practice, in publications, in worship and in ritual observances."

How can religious indifferentism, succeeded in its turn by hostility to God, not triumph when those who belong to false religions or to no religious belief at all are said to have a "civil right" that comes from God Himself to directly contradict Him and the Sacred Deposit of Faith that He has given exclusively to His Catholic Church for the right ordering of men and their nations? Ratzinger/Benedict does indeed live in a www.christorchaos.com/BenedictinWonderland.html">http://www.christorchaos.com/BenedictinWonderland.html">wonderland of self-delusional absurdity.

Ratzinger/Benedict believed that a "search for God" would lead to a "greater respect for human dignity."

Absolute insanity.

Where was this greater respect to be found?

One cannot even find this in the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic service as so-called "extraordinary ministers of the Eucharist" and lectors dress in short skirts or tight pants and as members of the laity dress casually and immodestly and speak or applaud almost at will?

Greater respect for human dignity?

Where?

In one's local pharmacy, where one can find a variety of pills and devices to frustrate the natural end of marriage and, at least in most instances, to chemically execute an innocent preborn baby?

Where?

In local abortuaries, in hospices, in hospitals, where elderly or chronically or terminally ill patients are routinely denied food and water and/or are administered with such increasingly higher doses of sedatives and palliatives that they stop respirating?

Where? In the world's entertainment industry?

As a progenitor of and exponent of the conciliar revolution, Joseph Alois Ratzinger lived in a fanciful world of his own creation, a world that does not correspond to reality in the slightest.

Ratzinger/Benedict's respect for "religions" was indeed of the essence of Judeo-Masonry and it has been condemned in no uncertain terms by our true popes: 

Everyone should avoid familiarity or friendship with anyone suspected of belonging to masonry or to affiliated groups. Know them by their fruits and avoid them. Every familiarity should be avoided, not only with those impious libertines who openly promote the character of the sect, but also with those who hide under the mask of universal tolerance, respect for all religions, and the craving to reconcile the maxims of the Gospel with those of the revolution. These men seek to reconcile Christ and Belial, the Church of God and the state without God. (Pope Leo XIII, Custodi di Quella Fede, December 8, 1892.) 

We do not respect all religions. They possess no "ability" to "contribute" to a just social order or to world peace. Consider these words of Pope Saint Pius X in Notre Charge Apostolique as he explained that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour, Christ the King, did not respect false ideas. Neither should we:

We wish to draw your attention, Venerable Brethren, to this distortion of the Gospel and to the sacred character of Our Lord Jesus Christ, God and man, prevailing within the Sillon and elsewhere. As soon as the social question is being approached, it is the fashion in some quarters to first put aside the divinity of Jesus Christ, and then to mention only His unlimited clemency, His compassion for all human miseries, and His pressing exhortations to the love of our neighbor and to the brotherhood of men. True, Jesus has loved us with an immense, infinite love, and He came on earth to suffer and die so that, gathered around Him in justice and love, motivated by the same sentiments of mutual charity, all men might live in peace and happiness. But for the realization of this temporal and eternal happiness, He has laid down with supreme authority the condition that we must belong to His Flock, that we must accept His doctrine, that we must practice virtue, and that we must accept the teaching and guidance of Peter and his successors. Further, whilst Jesus was kind to sinners and to those who went astray, He did not respect their false ideas, however sincere they might have appeared. He loved them all, but He instructed them in order to convert them and save them. Whilst He called to Himself in order to comfort them, those who toiled and suffered, it was not to preach to them the jealousy of a chimerical equality. Whilst He lifted up the lowly, it was not to instill in them the sentiment of a dignity independent from, and rebellious against, the duty of obedience. Whilst His heart overflowed with gentleness for the souls of good-will, He could also arm Himself with holy indignation against the profaners of the House of God, against the wretched men who scandalized the little ones, against the authorities who crush the people with the weight of heavy burdens without putting out a hand to lift them. He was as strong as he was gentle. He reproved, threatened, chastised, knowing, and teaching us that fear is the beginning of wisdom, and that it is sometimes proper for a man to cut off an offending limb to save his body. Finally, He did not announce for future society the reign of an ideal happiness from which suffering would be banished; but, by His lessons and by His example, He traced the path of the happiness which is possible on earth and of the perfect happiness in heaven: the royal way of the Cross. These are teachings that it would be wrong to apply only to one's personal life in order to win eternal salvation; these are eminently social teachings, and they show in Our Lord Jesus Christ something quite different from an inconsistent and impotent humanitarianism. (Pope Saint Pius X, Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910.)

 Alas, the man who “restored the Latin Mass” believed that religious and social pluralism was an "irreversible" phenomenon of Modernity. Moreover, the late antipope emeritus believed that this pluralism, which was condemned as insanity by Popes Gregory XVI and Pius IX, is beneficial to what he thought was the Catholic Church and to the right ordering of the civil state. Indeed, Ratzinger/Benedict believed that anyone who would want to restore the confessional Catholic state was a "fundamentalist" who is to  be compared with those in the Mohammedan world.

8. The same determination that condemns every form of fanaticism and religious fundamentalism must also oppose every form of hostility to religion that would restrict the public role of believers in civil and political life.

It should be clear that religious fundamentalism and secularism are alike in that both represent extreme forms of a rejection of legitimate pluralism and the principle of secularity. Both absolutize a reductive and partial vision of the human person, favouring in the one case forms of religious integralism and, in the other, of rationalism. A society that would violently impose or, on the contrary, reject religion is not only unjust to individuals and to God, but also to itself. God beckons humanity with a loving plan that, while engaging the whole person in his or her natural and spiritual dimensions, calls for a free and responsible answer which engages the whole heart and being, individual and communitarian. Society too, as an expression of the person and of all his or her constitutive dimensions, must live and organize itself in a way that favours openness to transcendence. Precisely for this reason, the laws and institutions of a society cannot be shaped in such a way as to ignore the religious dimension of its citizens or to prescind completely from it. Through the democratic activity of citizens conscious of their lofty calling, those laws and institutions must adequately reflect the authentic nature of the person and support its religious dimension. Since the latter is not a creation of the state, it cannot be manipulated by the state, but must rather be acknowledged and respected by it.

Whenever the legal system at any level, national or international, allows or tolerates religious or antireligious fanaticism, it fails in its mission, which is to protect and promote justice and the rights of all. These matters cannot be left to the discretion of the legislator or the majority since, as Cicero once pointed out, justice is something more than a mere act which produces and applies law. It entails acknowledging the dignity of each person, which, unless religious freedom is guaranteed and lived in its essence, ends up being curtailed and offended, exposed to the risk of falling under the sway of idols, of relative goods which then become absolute. All this exposes society to the risk of forms of political and ideological totalitarianism which emphasize public power while demeaning and restricting freedom of conscience, thought and religion as potential competitors. (www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/messages/peace/documents/hf_ben-...">http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/messages/peace/documents/...">44th World Day of Peace 2011, Religious Freedom, the Path to Peace.) 

Catholicism was never violently imposed upon any nation.

The Catholic Faith grew organically amongst the former barbaric tribes and pagan peoples of Europe in the First Millennium, resulting in the establishment of the era we know as Christendom, that Christ-centered world that was distinguished by many holy civil rulers who understood that they had to rule according to the mind of Christ the King as He had discharged It in Holy Mother Church.

Sure, there were stinkers in the Middle Ages who ruled for their themselves and their corrupt courtiers, enabled all too frequently by bishops who betrayed Christ the King by selling out the Faith and even the demands of natural justice in order to live lives of empty pleasure at the court. There were also, however, the likes of Saint Louis IX, King of France, and Saint Edward the Confessor in England and Saint Wenceslaus in Bohemia and Saint Casimir in Poland and Saint Canute in Denmark. These exemplars of the Social Reign of Christ the King did not "impose" their rule upon anyone. They simply attempted to pursue the common temporal good in light of man's 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.

Ratzinger/Benedict believed, incredibly enough, that the rise of political and ideological totalitarianism is the result of the lack of the "guarantee" of "religious freedom," not the overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King wrought by the Protestant Revolution and institutionalized by the rise of the revolutionary naturalistic forces associated with the phrase Judeo-Masonry.

It is the madness of "freedom of conscience" that has led to such social abyss in "democratic" nations that provides naturalists with one opportunity to impose statism, whether all or once, as happened in Russia and other Communist nations, or incrementally, as has been happening for decades now right here in the United States of America until recently as the Deep State, allied with Big Tech and Big Pharma, have sought to engage in repression of dissent in a manner worthy of Joseph Stalin or Xi Jinping.

“Religious freedom” leads to totalitarianism, which must attempt to crush Catholicism as there is no place in the totalitarian mind for the secular state of the woke civil state and the true Church instituted by God Himself.

Pope Gregory XVI, who was nowhere quoted in any of the documents of the "Second" Vatican Council and who, quite of course, was not quoted in Ratzinger/Benedict's new "World Day of Peace Message," explained in very succinct terms what happens to nations that permit unrestricted liberty of conscience of the sort favored by Ratzinger/Benedict that permits people of every  religion or of no religion to express their views publicly in the "marketplace of ideas:"

"This shameful font of indifferentism gives rise to that absurd and erroneous proposition which claims that liberty of conscience must be maintained for everyone. It spreads ruin in sacred and civil affairs, though some repeat over and over again with the greatest impudence that some advantage accrues to religion from it. "But the death of the soul is worse than freedom of error," as Augustine was wont to say. When all restraints are removed by which men are kept on the narrow path of truth, their nature, which is already inclined to evil, propels them to ruin. Then truly "the bottomless pit" is open from which John saw smoke ascending which obscured the sun, and out of which locusts flew forth to devastate the earth. Thence comes transformation of minds, corruption of youths, contempt of sacred things and holy laws -- in other words, a pestilence more deadly to the state than any other. Experience shows, even from earliest times, that cities renowned for wealth, dominion, and glory perished as a result of this single evil, namely immoderate freedom of opinion, license of free speech, and desire for novelty.

Here We must include that harmful and never sufficiently denounced freedom to publish any writings whatever and disseminate them to the people, which some dare to demand and promote with so great a clamor. We are horrified to see what monstrous doctrines and prodigious errors are disseminated far and wide in countless books, pamphlets, and other writings which, though small in weight, are very great in malice. We are in tears at the abuse which proceeds from them over the face of the earth. Some are so carried away that they contentiously assert that the flock of errors arising from them is sufficiently compensated by the publication of some book which defends religion and truth. Every law condemns deliberately doing evil simply because there is some hope that good may result. Is there any sane man who would say poison ought to be distributed, sold publicly, stored, and even drunk because some antidote is available and those who use it may be snatched from death again and again? (Pope Gregory XVI, Mirari Vos, August 15, 1832.)

Where has this pluralism extolled by the conciliar “popes,” including Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, gotten the Catholic Faith?

Mohammedans and Hindus and Buddhists and downright atheists continue to attack Catholics worldwide.

Where has this pluralism gotten the Catholic Faith in the very nation of pluralism that Ratzinger/Benedict believed was the "model" for the rest of the world, the United States of America?

It is pluralism that has led to the sort of subtle and now quite open persecutions in the land of the “free and the home of the brave.”

Pope Leo XIII saw what “Pope Benedict XVI,” steeped in a world of contradiction, paradox, ambiguity, and opaqueness, rejected outright

To hold, therefore, that there is no difference in matters of religion between forms that are unlike each other, and even contrary to each other, most clearly leads in the end to the rejection of all religion in both theory and practice. And this is the same thing as atheism, however it may differ from it in name. Men who really believe in the existence of God must, in order to be consistent with themselves and to avoid absurd conclusions, understand that differing modes of divine worship involving dissimilarity and conflict even on most important points cannot all be equally probable, equally good, and equally acceptable to God. (Pope Leo XIII, Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885.) 

The pluralism that was extolled by Ratzinger/Benedict is what has cowed Catholics into saying "happy holidays" in their places of business and that prevents even the secular music associated with the "holiday season," no less actual Christmas music, from being played in public places. I was told at Bear Mountain State Park in Bear Mountain, New York, on Saturday, January 1, 2011, the Feast of the Circumcision, that even secular music connoting Christmas in any way could not be played on an outdoor loudspeaker as too many people had registered complaints that they were "offended" by such music. It is also the fear of "offending" others that causes many Catholic businessmen to avoid posting signs wishing their customers a "Merry Christmas."

This fear of human respect is but the natural, logical, inexorable end-result of pluralism, which makes Catholics believe that they are somehow exempt from the example provided us by the Apostles about the willingness to suffer for the sake of the Holy Name of Jesus:

Then went the officer with the ministers, and brought them without violence; for they feared the people, lest they should be stoned. And when they had brought them, they set them before the council. And the high priest asked them, Saying: Commanding we commanded you, that you should not teach in this name; and behold, you have filled Jerusalem with your doctrine, and you have a mind to bring the blood of this man upon us. But Peter and the apostles answering, said: We ought to obey God, rather than men. The God of our fathers hath raised up Jesus, whom you put to death, hanging him upon a tree.

Him hath God exalted with his right hand, to be Prince and Saviour, to give repentance to Israel, and remission of sins. And we are witnesses of these things and the Holy Ghost, whom God hath given to all that obey him. When they had heard these things, they were cut to the heart, and they thought to put them to death. But one in the council rising up, a Pharisee, named Gamaliel, a doctor of the law, respected by all the people, commanded the men to be put forth a little while. And he said to them: Ye men of Israel, take heed to yourselves what you intend to do, as touching these men.

For before these days rose up Theodas, affirming himself to be somebody, to whom a number of men, about four hundred, joined themselves: who was slain; and all that believed him were scattered, and brought to nothing. After this man, rose up Judas of Galilee, in the days of the enrolling, and drew away the people after him: he also perished; and all, even as many as consented to him, were dispersed. And now, therefore, I say to you, refrain from these men, and let them alone; for if this council or this work be of men, it will come to nought; But if it be of God, you cannot overthrow it, lest perhaps you be found even to fight against God. And they consented to him. And calling in the apostles, after they had scourged them, they charged them that they should not speak at all in the name of Jesus; and they dismissed them.

And they indeed went from the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were accounted worthy to suffer reproach for the name of Jesus. And every day they ceased not in the temple, and from house to house, to teach and preach Christ Jesus. (Acts 5: 26-42) 

Pluralism is of the devil.

So is the separation of Church and State that Ratzinger/Benedict exalted time and time again throughout his priestly life, including when, as “Cardinal Ratzinger, he met with Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre on July 14, 1987, and in his World Day of Peace message fourteen years later:

Under pressure, Rome gave in. On July 14 [1987], Cardinal Ratzinger received Archbishop Lefebvre at the Holy Office. At first the Cardinal persisted in arguing that "the State is incompetent in religious matters."

"But the State must have an ultimate and eternal end," replied the Archbishop.

"Your Grace, that is the case for the Church, not the State. By itself the State does not know."

Archbishop Lefebvre was distraught: a Cardinal and Prefect of the Holy Office wanted to show him that the State can have no religion and cannot prevent the spread of error. However, before talking about concessions, the Cardinal made a threat: the consequence of an illicit episcopal consecration would be "schism and excommunication."

"Schism?" retorted the Archbishop: "If there is a schism, it is because of what the Vatican did at Assisi and how you replied to our Dubiae: the Church is breaking with the traditional Magisterium. But the Church against her past and her Tradition is not the Catholic Church; this is why being excommunicated by a liberal, ecumenical, and revolutionary Church is a matter of indifference to us."

As this tirade ended, Joseph Ratzinger gave in: "Let us find a practical solution. Make a moderate declaration on the Council and the new missal a bit like the one that Jean Guitton has suggested to you. Then, we would give you a bishop for ordinations, we could work out an arrangement with the diocesan bishops, and you could continue as you are doing. As for a Cardinal Protector, and make your suggestions."

How did Marcel Lefebvre not jump for joy? Rome was giving in! But his penetrating faith went to the very heart of the Cardinal's rejection of doctrine. He said to himself: "So, must Jesus no longer reign? Is Jesus no longer God? Rome has lost the Faith. Rome is in apostasy. We can no longer trust this lot!" To the Cardinal, he said:

"Eminence, even if you give us everything--a bishop, some autonomy from the bishops, the 1962 liturgy, allow us to continue our seminaries--we cannot work together because we are going in different directions. You are working to dechristianize society and the Church, and we are working to Christianize them.

"For us, our Lord Jesus Christ is everything. He is our life. The Church is our Lord Jesus Christ; the priest is another Christ; the Mass is the triumph of Jesus Christ on the cross; in our seminaries everything tends towards the reign of our Lord Jesus Christ. But you! You are doing the opposite: you have just wanted to prove to me that our Lord Jesus Christ cannot, and must not, reign over society.

Recounting this incident, the Archbishop described the Cardinal's attitude" "Motionless, he looked at me, his eyes expressionless, as if I had just suggested something incomprehensible or unheard of." Then Ratzinger tried to argue that "the Church can still say whatever she wants to the State," while Lefebvre, the intuitive master of Catholic metaphysics, did not lose sight of the true end of human societies: the Reign of Christ." Fr. de Tinguy hit the nail on the head when he said of Marcel Lefebvre: "His faith defies those who love theological quibbles." (His Excellency Bishop Bernard Tissier de Mallerais, The Biography of Marcel Lefebvre, Kansas City, Missouri: Angelus Press, 2004, pp. 547-548.)

9. The patrimony of principles and values expressed by an authentic religiosity is a source of enrichment for peoples and their ethos. It speaks directly to the conscience and mind of men and women, it recalls the need for moral conversion, and it encourages the practice of the virtues and a loving approach to others as brothers and sisters, as members of the larger human family.

With due respect for the positive secularity of state institutions, the public dimension of religion must always be acknowledged. A healthy dialogue between civil and religious institutions is fundamental for the integral development of the human person and social harmony.  (www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/messages/peace/documents/hf_ben-...">http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/messages/peace/documents/...">44th World Day of Peace 2011, Religious Freedom, the Path to Peace.) 

Authentic religiosity?

This is the talk of Judeo-Masonry. The civil state is duty bound to recognize the true religion as its leaders seek to foster those conditions in which citizens may better sanctify and save their souls as members of the Catholic Church.

Who says so?

Pope after true pope. For the sake of brevity, let me just cite one that most of you should have committed to memory by now:

That the State must be separated from the Church is a thesis absolutely false, a most pernicious error. Based, as it is, on the principle that the State must not recognize any religious cult, it is in the first place guilty of a great injustice to God; for the Creator of man is also the Founder of human societies, and preserves their existence as He preserves our ownWe owe Him, therefore, not only a private cult, but a public and social worship to honor Him. Besides, this thesis is an obvious negation of the supernatural order. It limits the action of the State to the pursuit of public prosperity during this life only, which is but the proximate object of political societies; and it occupies itself in no fashion (on the plea that this is foreign to it) with their ultimate object which is man's eternal happiness after this short life shall have run its course. But as the present order of things is temporary and subordinated to the conquest of man's supreme and absolute welfare, it follows that the civil power must not only place no obstacle in the way of this conquest, but must aid us in effecting it. The same thesis also upsets the order providentially established by God in the world, which demands a harmonious agreement between the two societies. Both of them, the civil and the religious society, although each exercises in its own sphere its authority over them. It follows necessarily that there are many things belonging to them in common in which both societies must have relations with one another. Remove the agreement between Church and State, and the result will be that from these common matters will spring the seeds of disputes which will become acute on both sides; it will become more difficult to see where the truth lies, and great confusion is certain to arise. Finally, this thesis inflicts great injury on society itself, for it cannot either prosper or last long when due place is not left for religion, which is the supreme rule and the sovereign mistress in all questions touching the rights and the duties of men. Hence the Roman Pontiffs have never ceased, as circumstances required, to refute and condemn the doctrine of the separation of Church and State. (Pope Saint Pius X, Vehementer Nos, February 11, 1906.) 

When our true popes referred to religion, my few readers, they were referring to the one and only true religion, Catholicism. Pope Saint Pius X made it abundantly clear in Notre Charge Apostolique that Catholicism is the only foundation of personal and social order.

Here we have, founded by Catholics, an inter-denominational association that is to work for the reform of civilization, an undertaking which is above all religious in character; for there is no true civilization without a moral civilization, and no true moral civilization without the true religion: it is a proven truth, a historical fact. The new Sillonists cannot pretend that they are merely working on “the ground of practical realities” where differences of belief do not matter. Their leader is so conscious of the influence which the convictions of the mind have upon the result of the action, that he invites them, whatever religion they may belong to, “to provide on the ground of practical realities, the proof of the excellence of their personal convictions.” And with good reason: indeed, all practical results reflect the nature of one’s religious convictions, just as the limbs of a man down to his finger-tips, owe their very shape to the principle of life that dwells in his body. (Pope Saint Pius X, Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910.) 

The late Antipope Emeritus Benedict XVI did not believe this as a matter of principle as a regrettable concession to the circumstances of the moment. He did not believe that it was even necessary to plant the seeds for the conversion of men and their nations to the Catholic Faith. He rejected the confessional Catholic State as a matter of firm principle in favor of "religious freedom" and "positive" or "healthy" "secularity,” doing so in perfect continuity with the men who had preceded him in the conciliar seat of apostasy and with the man who succeeded him, the hideously vulgar Jorge Mario Bergoglio.

The true Roman Pontiffs, however, "have never ceased, as circumstances required, to refute and condemn the doctrine of the separation of Church and State." Ratzinger/Benedict endorsed what our true popes have condemned. He did the work of Antichrist. This simply cannot get any clearer except, it would appear, to those who believe that the “restoration” of a Modernized version of the Immemorial Mass of Tradition obviated all of Ratzinger/Benedict’s many offenses against Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and Hid Sacred Deposit of Faith.

Unlike what Karol Josef Wojtyla/John Paul II, Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, and Jorge Mario Bergoglio have contended is the “path to peace,” religious liberty, Pope Pius XI explained firmly that Catholicism, nothing else, is the one and only path to world peace based on right principles founded in both Faith and authentic reason, not the rationalism that clouded the mind of the recently deceased new theologian from Bavaria:

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

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

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

It is apparent from these considerations that true peace, the peace of Christ, is impossible unless we are willing and ready to accept the fundamental principles of Christianity, unless we are willing to observe the teachings and obey the law of Christ, both in public and private life. If this were done, then society being placed at last on a sound foundation, the Church would be able, in the exercise of its divinely given ministry and by means of the teaching authority which results therefrom, to protect all the rights of God over men and nations.

It is possible to sum up all We have said in one word, "the Kingdom of Christ." For Jesus Christ reigns over the minds of individuals by His teachings, in their hearts by His love, in each one's life by the living according to His law and the imitating of His example. Jesus reigns over the family when it, modeled after the holy ideals of the sacrament of matrimony instituted by Christ, maintains unspotted its true character of sanctuary. In such a sanctuary of love, parental authority is fashioned after the authority of God, the Father, from Whom, as a matter of fact, it originates and after which even it is named. (Ephesians iii, 15) The obedience of the children imitates that of the Divine Child of Nazareth, and the whole family life is inspired by the sacred ideals of the Holy Family. Finally, Jesus Christ reigns over society when men recognize and reverence the sovereignty of Christ, when they accept the divine origin and control over all social forces, a recognition which is the basis of the right to command for those in authority and of the duty to obey for those who are subjects, a duty which cannot but ennoble all who live up to its demands. Christ reigns where the position in society which He Himself has assigned to His Church is recognized, for He bestowed on the Church the status and the constitution of a society which, by reason of the perfect ends which it is called upon to attain, must be held to be supreme in its own sphere; He also made her the depository and interpreter of His divine teachings, and, by consequence, the teacher and guide of every other society whatsoever, not of course in the sense that she should abstract in the least from their authority, each in its own sphere supreme, but that she should really perfect their authority, just as divine grace perfects human nature, and should give to them the assistance necessary for men to attain their true final end, eternal happiness, and by that very fact make them the more deserving and certain promoters of their happiness here below.

It is, therefore, a fact which cannot be questioned that the true peace of Christ can only exist in the Kingdom of Christ -- "the peace of Christ in the Kingdom of Christ." It is no less unquestionable that, in doing all we can to bring about the re-establishment of Christ's kingdom, we will be working most effectively toward a lasting world peace. (Pope Pius XI, Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 23, 1922.) 

Our true popes have been apostles of Christ the King. The conciliar "popes" have been apostles of Antichrist. It is very clear.

V. Concluding Remarks

Permit me to make it clear at this juncture that I was guilty of serving as a cheerleader for Karol Joseph Wojtyla/John Paul II for the first sixteen years of his antipapal presidency as I projected onto him my own fervent desires for the restoration of right order in the Church Militant on earth. Even after writing an “open letter to Pope John Paul II” in The Wanderer in April of 1994 after his decision to permit girl altar boys at the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic www.amazon.com/dp/B09CRW3696">https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09CRW3696">Novus Ordo liturgical travesty, there were still occasions when I praised the Polish phenomenologist before realizing by the latter part of the 1990s that the problem might not be with the “pope” but with the whole conciliar enterprise, a realization I kept suppressing while my criticism of “Pope John Paul II” reached fever pitch in 2002 (see www.dailycatholic.org/issue/2002Apr/apr2coc.htm">http://www.dailycatholic.org/issue/2002Apr/apr2coc.htm">Time for Plain Talk).

Indeed, I wrote the following 2008 about how I sang “the old songs” about Karol Josef Wojtyla/John Paul II that some of my former colleagues were singing at that time about the man who had “restored the Latin Mass,” Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI:

To wit, all of my own former efforts to project Catholicity into the mind and the heart of the late Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II were founded in looking at bits and pieces of the puzzle, refusing to admit that the false "pontiff" expressed most publicly a belief in various condemned propositions (including false ecumenism, the new ecclesiology, inter-religious dialogue, religious liberty, separation of Church and State, praising false religions for the "good" that they do and how they can contribute to "world peace," etc.). Undeterred by these inconvenient little facts, I sang "the old songs" to defend Wojtyla/John Paul II for far too long. This is how the "old songs" went:

1. It was within a week of his election on October 16, 1978, that John Paul II said that he wanted to see priests back in their clerical garb and women religious back in their habits. He's traditionally-minded, I told people repeatedly.

2. He tried to put catechesis back on the "right track" with the issuance of the post-synodal exhortation Sapientia Christianae

3. He told off the Communists in Poland in June of 1979, saying in a "homily" at an outdoor "Mass" in Victory Square in Warsaw that no one could ever remove Christ as the center of history. See, he's not an appeaser like Paul VI, I said triumphantly.

4. John Paul II whacked the American bishops over the head but good during his first pilgrimage to the United States of America in October of 1979, using some of their own pastoral letters against them, knowing full well that they were not enforcing their own documents. He told Catholic educators assembled at The Catholic University of America on October 7, 1979, and I was one of those educators in attendance that day, that the Church needed her theologians to be "faithful to the magisterium." I gloated as John Paul II said this, staring in the direction of the notorious dissenter named Father Charles Curran, a priest of the Diocese of Rochester, New York, who was sitting two rows in back of me, dressed in a jacket and tie. It was later that same day that the "pope" denounced abortion as the nine justices of the Supreme Court of the United States of America sat in the very front row of chairs on the Capitol Mall during an outdoor "Mass," saying in a most stirring manner, "And when God gives life, it is forever!"

5. Two months thereafter, in December of 1979, Father Hans Kung was declared by the then named Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to be ineligible to hold a chair in theology at Tubingen University in Germany (all right, all right, "other arrangements" were made to permit Kung to stay). "Let the heads roll," I told my classes at Allentown College of Saint Francis de Sales that day. "Let the heads of the dissenters roll."

6. John Paul II wanted to correct abuses in the Novus Ordo Missae, using his Holy Thursday letter, Dominicae Cenae, February 24, 1980, going so far as to state:

As I bring these considerations to an end, I would like to ask forgiveness-in my own name and in the name of all of you, venerable and dear brothers in the episcopate-for everything which, for whatever reason, through whatever human weakness, impatience or negligence, and also through the at times partial, one-sided and erroneous application of the directives of the Second Vatican Council, may have caused scandal and disturbance concerning the interpretation of the doctrine and the veneration due to this great sacrament. And I pray the Lord Jesus that in the future we may avoid in our manner of dealing with this sacred mystery anything which could weaken or disorient in any way the sense of reverence and love that exists in our faithful people.

 

See, I said proudly, to one and all. He's going to "fix" things, isn't he? The issuance of Inaestimabile Donum two months later, which I would wave in the faces of "disobedient" conciliar priests for about a decade before it began to dawn on me that there was going to be no enforcement of "rules" in an ever-changing and ever-changable liturgical abomination, was "proof," I said at the time, of how the "pope" is "turning things around in right direction. I wasn't the only one. The Angelus, a publication of the Society of Saint Pius X, commented favorably on some of these things itself in 1980.

7. "Pope" John Paul II personally opened a Perpetual Adoration Chapel in the Piazza Venezia in Rome at the behest of Mother Teresa of Calcutta, also mandating daily periods of Solemn Eucharistic Adoration in each of the four major basilicas in Rome. He used his pilgrimage to South Korea in 1984 to state that he wanted to see Perpetual Eucharistic Adoration established in all of the parishes of the world.

8. Father Charles Curran was finally denied in 1986 the right to teach as a theologian in Catholic institutions and Father Matthew Fox, O.P., was forbidden to teach in Catholic institutions by John Paul II's "defender of the faith," Joseph "Cardinal" Ratzinger, and dismissed from the Order of Preachers in 1992  for his New Age "creation spirituality" beliefs.

9. John Paul II would take various American "bishops" to task during the quinquennial (or ad limina apostolorum) visits, pointedly asking the late "Bishop" John Raymond McGann of the Diocese of Rockville Center in 1983 why sixteen of his diocese's parishes did not have regularly scheduled confessions during the recently concluded Easter Triduum. Being dissatisfied with McGann's answer ("Our priests are very busy, Your Holiness"), John Paul said, "Excellency, I was not too buy to hear Confessions in Saint Peter's on Good Friday." McGann got into further trouble later that day in April of 1983 when he was talking at lunch with John Paul and the other New York Province "bishops" about how most young people today do not know their faith and are thus in theological states of error, inculpable for their ignorance. John Paul II put down his soup spoon and said, "I agree with you. You are correct. However, the bishops and priests who are responsible for these young people being in states of error go directly to Hell when they die." McGann turned ashen, reportedly having difficulty eating for three days. "Ah, what a pope we have,"  I said when learning of this from Roman contacts.

10. Silvio Cardinal Oddi, then the Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy, told me personally in his office on the Via della Concilazione on October 10, 1984, the very day that the first "indult" for the Immemorial Mass of Tradition was issued, "I want the Mass of Saint Pius V back! The Pope wants the Mass of Saint Pius V back! We will get the Mass of Saint Pius V back!" Cardinal Oddi explained that there was much opposition to what the "pope" wanted to, that he had to move cautiously and with conditions. He made it clear, however, that it was the mind of the "pope" for the "old Mass" to return. 

Such a litany could go on and on and on. Oh, did I mention that I did indeed "sing the old songs" quite literally? Yes, indeed, my friends, I stood with several thousand people outside and across the street from what was then called the Apostolic Delegation (now called the Papal Nunciature) on Massachusetts Avenue in Washington, D.C., on the evening of Saturday, October 6, 1979, serenading "Pope" John Paul II with endless renditions of "Stolat, stolat, may you live a hundred years!" Get the idea?

Sure, sure sure, I was always "uncomfortable" with ecumenism in particular and the whole ethos of Vatican II in general. John Paul II was going to "fix" things, I convinced myself. No more "Hamlet on the Tiber" as had been experienced under Giovanni Montini/Paul VI. I simply ignored those things that contradicted my delusional concept of who Karol Wojtyla was and what he believed, that he had been a leading revolutionary at the "Second" Vatican Council and was a thorough-going Modernist in both theological and philosophical terms.

I ignored the simple fact that Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II praised false ecumenism in his inaugural address to the "cardinals" in the Basilica of Saint Peter on Tuesday, October 17, 1978, the exact thing that his "successor," Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI would do on Wednesday, April 20, 2005. I ignored John Paul II's embrace of the "archbishop" of Canterbury, who was no more a clergyman than was Mike Huckabee when he plied his trade as a Baptist "minister." I winced a little when John Paul II praised Martin Luther during his pilgrimage to the Federal Republic of Germany (also known at the time as "West Germany") in 1980. I buried my head in the sand after the egregious sacrileges associated with the Day of World Prayer for Peace in Assisi, Italy, on October 27, 1986. I could not defend the indefensible, considering the Assisi event to have been an "aberration" rather than an actual symptom of the apostate heart beating within Karol Wojtyla's very soul. And I was vocal, at least privately in my conversations with fellow "conservative" Catholics, about liturgical abominations at "papal" "Masses (half-naked women bringing up to the "gifts," rock music at "youth" "Masses," praise offered to voodoo witch doctors, etc.). Face facts that Wojtyla was not a Catholic? Perish the thought, which is what I did for a very long time.

How did I try to reconcile what I knew to be un-Catholic with the list of things above that I hoped against hope represented "progress" for the end of the confusion wrought by the "Second" Vatican Council? Rationalization is a fine art, my friends. One can rationalize almost anything, especially if one tries to balance "good" and "bad" developments on a scale as in a butcher market or as an attorney attempted to defend a client whose record is, shall we say, questionable at the very best. What I did not understand in those early years of the Wojtyla "pontificate" is that the measure of what makes one a Catholic is not how frequently he sounds like a Catholic and even does things that seem to advance the Catholic Faith now and again.

The measure of what makes one a Catholic is a total adherence to the Deposit of Faith that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ has entrusted exclusively to the infallible teaching authority of the true Church that He founded upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope, without one iota of dissent. I did not accept the simple truth that the "Second" Vatican Council institutionalized condemned propositions (false ecumenism, religious liberty) and promulgated a definition of the very nature of the Church over which even believing Catholics still argue to this very day. Ambiguity has never been part of the language of the Catholic Church. That people can argue yet over the meaning of the word "subsist" in Lumen Gentium, November 21, 1964, while the conciliar Vatican continues to defend Lumen Gentium against charges that it is representative of a new ecclesiology that sees the "Church of Christ" as something not coextensive with the Catholic Church (see His Excellency Bishop Donald Sanborn's www.traditionalmass.org/articles/article.php?id=93&catname=15">http://www.traditionalmass.org/articles/article.php?id=93&catname=15">Ratzinger's Subsistent Error). I did not accept the truth that the "Second" Vatican Council embodied condemned propositions and therefore was demonstrative of a new religion that was at odds with the true Faith. I grasped at straws for a very long time to reconcile the irreconcilable.

Similarly, I projected into the mind of Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II my own fondest hopes for Holy Mother Church, not realizing that he was a Modernist to very core of his being, as these passages from Fathers Francisco and Dominic Radecki's Tumultuous Times demonstrate:

His [Wojtyla's] stand on atheism puzzled many of the bishops, especially those from Communist countries. Archbishop Wojtyla believed that the human person should find the truth on their own and that conversion was unnecessary:

"Wojtyla was deeply convinced that personalist ethics--which stresses the uniqueness and inviolability of the human personality--would never allow the imposing of ideas on anyone. He took the same line when the council discussed the problems of atheism--a question that vexed the Council Fathers almost from the beginning to the end of Vatican II. 'It is not the Church's role to lecture unbelievers,' Wojtyla declared on taking the floor on October 21, 1964. 'We are involved a quest along with our fellow men. ...Let us avoid moralizing or suggesting that we have a monopoly on the truth.' ...Talk at the council of actual 'relations with atheism' meant dialogue with Marxists." (Carl Bernstein and Marco Politi, His Holiness, pp. 102-103, quoted in Tumultuous Times, p. 540.) 

These were revolutionary ideas, especially at a time when the West braced for nuclear war and when much of the world was held captive under Communist tyranny. He further expressed his ecumenical and Modernist persuasions a week later.

"He began with several previously expressed comments on the Church and the world and the president of the session was on the point of stopping him, when he quickly and skillfully captivated his audience and silenced all the noise in the auditorium. In a loud and distinct voice, he clearly explained that the Church should no longer pose as the sole dispenser of Truth and Goodness... She should, he went on, be in the world but not above it. ...The Church must alter her teaching; she should encourage Revelation and no longer dictate it." (Catherine and Jacques Legrand, John Paul II, p. 68.)

"Although he was only forty-two when the council opened, Wojtyla made eight oral interventions in the council hall, a rather high number, and often spoke in the name of large groups of bishops from Eastern Europe. (Altogether he made 22 interventions, oral and written.) He was an unusually active member of various drafting groups for Gaudium et Spes, and even a chief author of what was called the 'Polish draft.' His voice as crucial to the passage of the document on religious liberty.''"(William Madges and Michael Daly, Vatican II: Forty Personal Stories, p. 33) 

The Modernists Yves Congar, Henri de Lubac and Jean Danielou worked closely with Archbishop Wojtyla to draft the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World [Gaudium et Spes]. In his speeches of September 23 and 28, 1965, Wojtyla championed the heresy of religious liberty and encouraged dialogue with atheists.

"Archbishop Wojtyla then took up the question of atheism as a pastoral issue, as part of the Church's 'dialogue with everyone.' ...The Church's dialogue with atheism should begin not with arguments or proofs about the existence of God, but with a conversation about the human person's interior liberty." (Tumultuous Times, pp. 540-541.) 

Karol Wojtyla was a quintessential Modernist, mixing truth with error, carrying about himself a most definite Catholic bearing on some occasions while engaging in the most obscene blasphemies against God as he praised false religions, each of which is loathed by God, and reaffirmed adherents of false religions of the essentia l"goodness" of their beliefs. He believed that it was not necessary to adhere to everything that the Catholic Church had taught perennially and in the precise manner in which she had taught the truths entrusted to her by her Divine Founder and Invisible Head, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. In other words, Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II did not accept the [First] Vatican Council's simple statement about the fact that Divine Revelation is not a matter of "discussion" for "further understanding:"

"For the doctrine of faith which God has revealed has not been proposed, like a philosophical invention to be perfected by human ingenuity, but has been delivered as a divine deposit to the Spouse of Christ to be faithfully kept and infallibly declared. Hence that meaning of the sacred dogmas is perpetually to be retained which our Holy Mother, the Church, has once declared, nor is that meaning ever to be departed from under the pretense or pretext of a deeper comprehension of them." -Constitutio de Fide Catholica, Chapter iv. 

What applied to Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II applies also to Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI. While the two have their differences of philosophy and theology, both are committed to the agenda of the "Second" Vatican Council. One, Wojtyla, was a "council" Father. The other, Ratzinger, was a "council" peritus (expert) who was directly responsible for the insertion of the word "subsist" in Lumen Gentium, a recommendation he made at the behest of a German Lutheran "theologian." No honest observer who is committed to the good of souls can look at Joseph Ratzinger's career and not see the Modernism that has pervaded it throughout, a Modernism that influences his actions as Benedict XVI.

As has been demonstrated endlessly on this site, which exists more to reach those in the future rather than the infinitesimally small number of people who read it or who agree with its contents at the present time, at the core of Joseph Ratzinger's Modernist worldview is his Hegelian view of the nature of truth. This alone causes him to fall from the Catholic Faith. He believes in propositions about dogmatic truth that have been anathematized by the [First] Vatican Council and condemned by Pope Saint Pius X in Pascendi Dominci Gregis, September 8, 1907, and in the very Oath Against Modernism that he, Joseph Ratzinger, had to take prior to his ordination to the priesthood on June 29, 1951. Only those who are intellectually dishonest can refuse to acknowledge that Joseph Ratzinger's Modernist view of dogmatic truth, reiterated forcefully by him in his "capacity" as Benedict XVI on December 22, 2005, places him outside of the pale of the Catholic Faith. (As excerpted from: www.christorchaos.com/SingingtheOldSongs.html">http://www.christorchaos.com/SingingtheOldSongs.html">Singing the Old Songs.)

Thus, I recognize full well how it is possible to suspend one’s rationality as I did so for far, far too long as a cheerleader for the “pro-life” Pope John Paul II who, it should be pointed out, popularized the heretical “personalist” view of marriage that inverted the ends proper to Holy Matrimony that had been condemned specifically and categorically by Pope Pius XII on April 1, 1944, and again in his address to Italian Midwives on October 29, 1951.

There does come a time, however, when truth demands a response from us, and I, being absolutely no better—and, quite indeed, far worse—than anyone else, could no longer pretend that the Catholic Church could in any way be responsible for the decrees of the “Second” Vatican Council, for the hideous “new liturgy” and for the “magisterium” of the postconciliar “popes.” I had to come to realize that, as Saint Robert Bellarmine pointed out in his www.novusordowatch.org/wire/papal-error-bellarmine.htm">http://www.novusordowatch.org/wire/papal-error-bellarmine.htm" title="Papal Error? A Defense of Popes Said to Have Erred in Faith"> Defense of Popes Said to Have Erred in Faith and as the Council Fathers at the [First] Vatican Council confirmed, a “heretical pope” is an ontological impossibility.

Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI made warfare against the Catholic Faith throughout the entirety of his priestly life. There is ample evidence of this, and to pretend after his death that this warfare did not matter because he “restored” the since abrogated widespread staging of the “Latin Mass” is to do a disservice to the cause of truth.

To be sure, Ratzinger/Benedict was a pitiable figure in many ways, but he was also supremely proud of the fact that he had never changed, meaning he was same at the “Second” Council as he was as “Pope Benedict XVI”:

I've been taken apart various times: in my first phase as professor and in the intermediate phase, during my first phase as Cardinal and in the successive phase. Now comes a new division. Of course circumstances and situations and even people influence you because you take on different responsibilities. Let's say that my basic personality and even my basic vision have grown, but in everything that is essential I have remained identical. I'm happy that certain aspects that weren't noticed at first are now coming into the openwww.oecumene.radiovaticana.org/EN1/Articolo.asp?c=91054">http://www.oecumene.radiovaticana.org/EN1/Articolo.asp?c=91054">Interview with Bayerische Rundfunk (ARD), ZDF, Deutsche Welle and Vatican Radio

As I have noted in many articles, including www.christorchaos.com/SingingtheOldSongs.html">http://www.christorchaos.com/SingingtheOldSongs.html">Singing the Old Songs and www.christorchaos.com/ConnectingwithBetrayal.html">http://www.christorchaos.com/ConnectingwithBetrayal.html">"Connecting" with Betrayal, I know what it is to "project" one's own sensus Catholicus in the minds and hearts of the conciliar "popes." As noted just above, I did it for far too long with Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II, ignoring the plain evidence that was right in front of my face. This "projection" of Catholicism into the heart and mind of the late antipope, Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI took place even in spite of such frank admissions as he, Ratzinger/Benedict, gave in an interview to a reporter from a German television station in 2006. Ratzinger/Benedict never abjured nothing from his past.

Undaunted, however, many "conservative" Catholics yet attached to the structures of the counterfeit church of conciliarism are continuing to "project" Catholic thoughts and beliefs in the mind and heart of a man, Ratzinger/Benedict who had been www.christorchaos.com/AReferenceResourceRatzingerandCatholicism.html">http://www.christorchaos.com/AReferenceResourceRatzingerandCatholicism.html">at war with the Catholic Faith throughout the course of his priesthood after his death as they had done in life, and nothing written in these pages is going to convince them otherwise.

Nonetheless, however, we have a responsibility to defend the truth without respect for persons while recognizing full well that we will face the moment of our own Particular Judgment much sooner than we may think will be the case. Seeing the truth of our ecclesiastical situation in this time of apostasy and betrayal makes us not one whit better than anyone else and it is absolutely no guarantee of our final perseverance, for which we must pray to Our Lady every day.

It is, as Scripture reminds us, a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God:

www.drbo.org/x/d?b=drb&bk=65&ch=10&l=26#x">http://www.drbo.org/x/d?b=drb&bk=65&ch=10&l=26#x">[26] For if we sin wilfully after having the knowledge of the truth, there is now left no sacrifice for sins, www.drbo.org/x/d?b=drb&bk=65&ch=10&l=27#x">http://www.drbo.org/x/d?b=drb&bk=65&ch=10&l=27#x">[27] But a certain dreadful expectation of judgment, and the rage of a fire which shall consume the adversaries. www.drbo.org/x/d?b=drb&bk=65&ch=10&l=28#x">http://www.drbo.org/x/d?b=drb&bk=65&ch=10&l=28#x">[28] A man making void the law of Moses, dieth without any mercy under two or three witnesses: www.drbo.org/x/d?b=drb&bk=65&ch=10&l=29#x">http://www.drbo.org/x/d?b=drb&bk=65&ch=10&l=29#x">[29] How much more, do you think he deserveth worse punishments, who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and hath esteemed the blood of the testament unclean, by which he was sanctified, and hath offered an affront to the Spirit of grace? www.drbo.org/x/d?b=drb&bk=65&ch=10&l=30#x">http://www.drbo.org/x/d?b=drb&bk=65&ch=10&l=30#x">[30] For we know him that hath said: Vengeance belongeth to me, and I will repay. And again: The Lord shall judge his people.

www.drbo.org/x/d?b=drb&bk=65&ch=10&l=31#x">http://www.drbo.org/x/d?b=drb&bk=65&ch=10&l=31#x">[31] It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. (Hebrews 10: 26-31.) 

It is indeed a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. Each of us must remember this truth, contained in Saint Paul the Apostle's Epistle to the Hebrews. We are, after all, in the penitential season of Lent, a time during which we must call to mind the horror of our sins as we seek to live more penitentially so as to make reparation for them to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary. Our Lord us that we do not know the day or the hour of the time He will visit us at the moment of our deaths:

Be you then also ready: for at what hour you think not, the Son of man will come. (Luke 12: 40.) 

Many of us have much for which to answer. The hour of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ's visitation is something for which we must ask His Most Blessed Mother to prepare us each and every day as we examine our consciences nightly and make a perfect Act of Contrition in the morning and before we go to sleep, availing ourselves of the Mercy of the Divine Redeemer on a weekly basis, if at all possible, in the Sacred Tribunal of Penance. We must never seek to minimize our sins or the debt that we owe to God for them.

We need Our Lady’s help, especially by our being faithful to praying her Most Holy Rosary, to save our souls, and it is perhaps the greatest tragedy of the late Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI’s life is that he rarely made mention of Our Lady in his homilies and allocutions and almost never exhorted Catholics to pray her Most Holy Rosary.

 

May it not be that way with us as, to reiterate what I wrote just above, it is not possible to save our souls without a firm reliance upon, confidence in, and love for the August Queen of Heaven, the Mother of God, Our Lady.

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, 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 Andrew the Apostle, 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.

 

Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, pray for us.