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Revised and Expanded: The "Second" Vatican Council Was the Dirty Work of True Bishops and True Priests
One of the most insidious aspects of the conciliar revolution is how it has produced a true spiritual amnesia even in the minds of many fully traditional Catholics, many of whom do not realize or want to accept the fact that the conciliar revolution was centuries in the making. The revolutionaries did not simply “popup” out of the woodwork during the “Second” Vatican Council. Preceded by those clergy whose affinity for Judeo-Masonry was condemned by Pope Pius VIII and Leo XII and whose support of a “reconciliation” with the anti-Incarnational spirit of Modernity, the Modernists condemned by Pope Saint Pius X in Pascendi Dominici Gregis, September 8, 1907, propagated errors that constituted what His Holiness termed as “the synthesis of all heresies. The Modernists were careful thereafter, but they did not go away as they gained control of seminaries and universities to await the day when the “new dawn” would arrive for them to teach their condemned propositions under the supposed aegis of the Catholic Church.
Papal Condemnations of Modern Errors Before Pascendi Dominci Gregis
Aware of the influences that the various naturalist philosophies that followed in the wake of the Protestant Revolution, Pope Pius VI warned his bishops to be take action in defense of the integrity of the Holy Faith lest their clergy be infected with the falsehoods that were taking deep root in the minds of many of the “intelligentsia” in Europe and, obviously, in the English colonies in North America that would become the United States of America:
We thought it useful to speak to you lovingly on these matters in order to strengthen your excellent resolve. But a much more serious subject demands that We speak of it, or rather mourn over it. We refer to the pestilent disease which the wickedness of our times brings forth. We must unite our minds and strength in treating this plague before it grows rife and becomes incurable in the Church through Our oversight. For in recent days, the dangerous times foretold by the Apostle Paul have clearly arrived, when there will be "men who love themselves, who are lifted up, proud, blasphemous, traitors, lovers of pleasure instead of God, men who are always learning but never arriving at the knowledge of truth, possessing indeed the appearance of piety but denying its power, corrupt in mind, reprobate about the faith." These men raise themselves up into "lying" teachers, as they are called by Peter the prince of the Apostles, and bring in sects of perdition. They deny the Lord who bought them and bring upon themselves swift destruction. They say they are wise and they have become fools, and their uncomprehending heart is darkened.
You yourselves, established as scouts in the house of Israel, see clearly the many victories claimed by a philosophy full of deceit. You see the ease with which it attracts to itself a great host of peoples, concealing its impiety with the honorable name of philosophy. Who could express in words or call to mind the wickedness of the tenets and evil madness which it imparts? While such men apparently intend to search out wisdom, "they fail because they do not search in the proper way. . . and they fall into errors which lead them astray from ordinary wisdom."[9] They have come to such a height of impiety that they make out that God does not exist, or if He does that He is idle and uncaring, making no revelation to men. Consequently it is not surprising that they assert that everything holy and divine is the product of the minds of inexperienced men smitten with empty fear of the future and seduced by a vain hope of immortality. But those deceitful sages soften and conceal the wickedness of their doctrine with seductive words and statements; in this way, they attract and wretchedly ensnare many of the weak into rejecting their faith or allowing it to be greatly shaken. While they pursue a remarkable knowledge, they open their eyes to behold a false light which is worse than the very darkness. Naturally our enemy, desirous of harming us and skilled in doing so, just as he made use of the serpent to deceive the first human beings, has armed the tongues of those men with the poison of his deceitfulness in order to lead astray the minds of the faithful. The prophet prays that his soul may be delivered from such deceitful tongues. In this way these men by their speech "enter in lowliness, capture mildly, softly bind and kill in secret." This results in great moral corruption, in license of thought and speech, in arrogance and rashness in every enterprise.
When they have spread this darkness abroad and torn religion out of men's hearts, these accursed philosophers proceed to destroy the bonds of union among men, both those which unite them to their rulers, and those which urge them to their duty. They keep proclaiming that man is born free and subject to no one, that society accordingly is a crowd of foolish men who stupidly yield to priests who deceive them and to kings who oppress them, so that the harmony of priest and ruler is only a monstrous conspiracy against the innate liberty of man.
Everyone must understand that such ravings and others like them, concealed in many deceitful guises, cause greater ruin to public calm the longer their impious originators are unrestrained. They cause a serious loss of souls redeemed by Christ's blood wherever their teaching spreads, like a cancer; it forces its way into public academies, into the houses of the great, into the palaces of kings, and even enters the sanctuary, shocking as it is to say so.
Consequently, you who are the salt of the earth, guardians and shepherds of the Lord's flock, whose business it is to fight the battles of the Lord, arise and gird on your sword, which is the word of God, and expel this foul contagion from your lands. How long are we to ignore the common insult to faith and Church? Let the words of Bernard arouse us like a lament of the spouse of Christ: "Of old was it foretold and the time of fulfillment is now at hand: Behold, in peace is my sorrow most sorrowful. It was sorrowful first when the martyrs died; afterwards it was more sorrowful in the fight with the heretics and now it is most sorrowful in the conduct of the members of the household.... The Church is struck within and so in peace is my sorrow most sorrowful. But what peace? There is peace and there is no peace. There is peace from the pagans and peace from the heretics, but no peace from the children. At that time the voice will lament: Sons did I rear and exalt, but they despised me. They despised me and defiled me by a bad life, base gain, evil traffic, and business conducted in the dark." Who can hear these tearful complaints of our most holy mother without feeling a strong urge to devote all his energy and effort to the Church, as he has promised? Therefore cast out the old leaven, remove the evil from your midst. Forcefully and carefully banish poisonous books from the eyes of your flock, and at once courageously set apart those who have been infected, to prevent them harming the rest. The holy Pope Leo used to say, "We can rule those entrusted to us only by pursuing with zeal for the Lord's faith those who destroy and those who are destroyed and by cutting them off from sound minds with the utmost severity to prevent the plague spreading." In doing this We exhort and advise you to be all of one mind and in harmony as you strive for the same object, just as the Church has one faith, one baptism, and one spirit. As you are joined together in the hierarchy, so you should unite equally with virtue and desire.
The affair is of the greatest importance since it concerns the Catholic faith, the purity of the Church, the teaching of the saints, the peace of the empire, and the safety of nations. Since it concerns the entire body of the Church, it is a special concern of yours because you are called to share in Our pastoral concern, and the purity of the faith is particularly entrusted to your watchfulness. "Now therefore, Brothers, since you are overseers among God's people and their soul depends on you, raise their hearts to your utterance," that they may stand fast in faith and achieve the rest which is prepared for believers only. Beseech, accuse, correct, rebuke and fear not: for ill-judged silence leaves in their error those who could be taught, and this is most harmful both to them and to you who should have dispelled the error. The holy Church is powerfully refreshed in the truth as it struggles zealously for the truth. In this divine work you should not fear either the force or favor of your enemies. The bishop should not fear since the anointing of the Holy Spirit has strengthened him: the shepherd should not be afraid since the prince of pastors has taught him by his own example to despise life itself for the safety of his flock: the cowardice and depression of the hireling should not dwell in a bishop's heart. Our great predecessor Gregory, in instructing the heads of the churches, said with his usual excellence: "Often imprudent guides in their fear of losing human favor are afraid to speak the right freely. As the word of truth has it, they guard their flock not with a shepherd's zeal but as hirelings do, since they flee when the wolf approaches by hiding themselves in silence.... A shepherd fearing to speak the right is simply a man retreating by keeping silent." But if the wicked enemy of the human race, the better to frustrate your efforts, ever brings it about that a plague of epidemic proportions is hidden from the religious powers of the world, please do not be terrified but walk in God's house in harmony, with prayer, and in truth, the three arms of our service. Remember that when the people of Juda were defiled, the best means of purification was the public reading to all, from the least to the greatest, of the book of the law lately found by the priest Helcias in the Lord's temple; at once the whole people agreed to destroy the abominations and seal a covenant in the Lord's presence to follow after the Lord and observe His precepts, testimonies and ceremonies with their whole heart and soul." For the same reason Josaphat sent priests and Levites to bring the book of the law throughout the cities of Juda and to teach the people. The proclamation of the divine word has been entrusted to your faith by divine, not human, authority. So assemble your people and preach to them the gospel of Jesus Christ. From that divine source and heavenly teaching draw draughts of true philosophy for your flock. Persuade them that subjects ought to keep faith and show obedience to those who by God's ordering lead and rule them. To those who are devoted to the ministry of the Church, give proofs of faith, continence, sobriety, knowledge, and liberality, that they may please Him to whom they have proved themselves and boast only of what is serious, moderate, and religious. But above all kindle in the minds of everyone that love for one another which Christ the Lord so often and so specifically praised. For this is the one sign of Christians and the bond of perfection. (Pope Pius VI, Inscrutabile, December 25, 1776.)
The conciliar “sanctuary,” such as it is, is awash with “bishops,” priests and presbyters who support the very false ideas that Pope Pius VI warned his bishops to root out from the midst of the faithful. The Protestant and Judeo-Masonic Novus Ordo liturgical abomination is based on the anti-liturgical principles that were endorsed by illegal Synod of Pistoia in 1792 and condemned as follows by Pope Pius VI in his introduction to Auctorem Fidei, August 28, 1794:
They knew the capacity of innovators in the art of deception. In order not to shock the ears of Catholics, the innovators sought to hide the subtleties of their tortuous maneuvers by the use of seemingly innocuous words such as would allow them to insinuate error into souls in the most gentle manner. Once the truth had been compromised, they could, by means of slight changes or additions in phraseology, distort the confession of the faith that is necessary for our salvation, and lead the faithful by subtle errors to their eternal damnation. This manner of dissimulating and lying is vicious, regardless of the circumstances under which it is used. For very good reasons it can never be tolerated in a synod of which the principal glory consists above all in teaching the truth with clarity and excluding all danger of error.
Moreover, if all this is sinful, it cannot be excused in the way that one sees it being done, under the erroneous pretext that the seemingly shocking affirmations in one place are further developed along orthodox lines in other places, and even in yet other places corrected; as if allowing for the possibility of either affirming or denying the statement, or of leaving it up the personal inclinations of the individual – such has always been the fraudulent and daring method used by innovators to establish error. It allows for both the possibility of promoting error and of excusing it.
It is as if the innovators pretended that they always intended to present the alternative passages, especially to those of simple faith who eventually come to know only some part of the conclusions of such discussions, which are published in the common language for everyone's use. Or again, as if the same faithful had the ability on examining such documents to judge such matters for themselves without getting confused and avoiding all risk of error.
It is a most reprehensible technique for the insinuation of doctrinal errors and one condemned long ago by our predecessor St. Celestine who found it used in the writings of Nestorius, bishop of Constantinople, and which he exposed in order to condemn it with the greatest possible severity. Once these texts were examined carefully, the impostor was exposed and confounded, for he expressed himself in a plethora of words, mixing true things with others that were obscure; mixing at times one with the other in such a way that he was also able to confess those things which were denied while at the same time possessing a basis for denying those very sentences which he confessed.
In order to expose such snares, something which becomes necessary with a certain frequency in every century, no other method is required than the following:
Whenever it becomes necessary to expose statements that disguise some suspected error or danger under the veil of ambiguity, one must denounce the perverse meaning under which the error opposed to Catholic truth is camouflaged. The more freely We embraced a program of complete moderation, the more we foresaw that, in order to reconcile souls and bring them to the unity of spirit in the bond of peace (which, we are glad to say, has by God’s favor already happily occurred in many), it would be of enormous assistance to be prepared in case pertinacious sectarians of the synod – if any, God forbid, still remain, – should be free in the future to bring in as allies Catholic schools and make them partners of their own just condemnation in order to set in motion new disturbances: They endeavor to entice to their side the clearly unwilling and resistant schools by a kind of distorted likeness of similar terms, even though the schools profess expressly different opinions. Then, if any previously imagined, milder opinion about the synod has hitherto escaped the notice of these imprudent men, let every opportunity of complaining still be closed to them. If they are sound in doctrine, as they wish to seem, they cannot take it hard that the teachings identified in this manner– teachings that exhibit errors from which they claim to be entirely distant – stand condemned.
Yet We did not think that We had sincerely proved our mildness, or more correctly, the charity that impels us toward our brother, whom we wish to assist by every means, if We may still be able. Indeed, We are impelled by the charity that moved our predecessor Celestine. He did not refuse to wait with a greater patience than what seemed to be called for, even against what the law demanded, for priests [bishops] to mend their ways. For we, along with Augustine and the Fathers of Milevis, prefer and desire that men who teach perverse things be healed in the Church by pastoral care rather than be cut off from Her without hope of salvation, if necessity does not force one to act.
Therefore, so as it should not appear that any effort to win over a brother was overlooked, before We progressed further, We thought to summon the aforementioned bishop to Us by means of very cordial letters written to him at our request, promising that we would receive him with good will and that he would not be barred from freely and openly declaring what seemed to him to meet the needs of his interests. In truth, We had not lost all hope of the possibility that, if he possessed that teachable mind, which Augustine, following the Apostle, required above all else in a bishop, as soon as the chief points of doctrine under dispute, which seemed worthy of greater consideration, were proposed to him simply and candidly, without contention and rancor, then almost beyond a doubt he could, upon reflection, more reasonably explain what had been proposed ambiguously and openly repudiate the notions displaying manifest perversity.
And so, with his name held in high regard amid the delighted acclaim of all good men, the turmoil aroused in the Church would be restrained as peaceably as possible by means of a much-desired correction.
But now since he, alleging ill health, has decided not to make use of the kindness offered to him, We can no longer postpone fulfilling our apostolic duty. It is not a matter of the danger of only one or another diocese: Any novelty at all assails the Universal Church. Now for a long time, from every side, the judgment of the supreme Apostolic See has not only been awaited but earnestly demanded by unremitting, repeated petitions. God forbid that the voice of Peter ever be silent in that See, where, living and presiding perpetually, he presents the truth of the faith to those in search of it.
A lengthier forbearance in such matters is not safe, because it is almost just as much of a crime to close one’s eyes in such cases, as it is to preach such offenses to religion.
Therefore, such a wound must be cut away, a wound by which not one member is hurt, but the entire body of the church is damaged.
And with the aid of divine piety, We must take care that, with the dissensions removed, the Catholic faith be preserved inviolate, and that those whose faith has been proved may be fortified by our authority once those who defend perverse teachings have been recalled from error. (Novus Ordo Watch's World Exclusive, First-Ever English Translation of the Introductory Text to Pope Pius VI's Auctorem Fidei, August 28, 1794.)
True shepherds denounce errror.
True shepherds can never remain silent about errors, especially grave errors that endanger the welfare of souls and that, in many cases today, also jeopardize physical health and safety, something that is happening at the present time as a putative "pope" and far too many traditional clergy endorse the myth of "brain death," "vital organ donation and transplantation," "palliative care," the starvation and dehydration of innocent human beings" and "natural family planning." Errors must be denounced. They do not, as Angelo Roncalli/John XXIII said in his opening address at the "Second" Vatican Council on Saturday, October 11, 1962, the Feast of ohe Divine Maternity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, kind of, sort of just "fade away" in the mist.
Pope Pius IX denounced errors in Quanta Cura and The Syllabus of Errors, both issued on December 8, 1864.
Pope Pius IX condemned the following propositions in The Syllabus of Errors that are among the most foundational building blocks of the gigantic erector set that is the counterfeit church of conciliarism:
77. In the present day it is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion should be held as the only religion of the State, to the exclusion of all other forms of worship. -- Allocution "Nemo vestrum," July 26, 1855.
78. Hence it has been wisely decided by law, in some Catholic countries, that persons coming to reside therein shall enjoy the public exercise of their own peculiar worship. -- Allocution "Acerbissimum," Sept. 27, 1852.
79. Moreover, it is false that the civil liberty of every form of worship, and the full power, given to all, of overtly and publicly manifesting any opinions whatsoever and thoughts, conduce more easily to corrupt the morals and minds of the people, and to propagate the pest of indifferentism. -- Allocution "Nunquam fore," Dec. 15, 1856.
80. The Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization.- -Allocution "Jamdudum cernimus," March 18, 1861. (Pope Pius IX, The Syllabus of Errors, December 8, 1864.)
Pope Pius IX elaborated on some of these errors in his encyclical letter that accompanied the Syllabus of Errors, Quanta Cura:
"For you well know, venerable brethren, that at this time men are found not a few who, applying to civil society the impious and absurd principle of "naturalism," as they call it, dare to teach that "the best constitution of public society and (also) civil progress altogether require that human society be conducted and governed without regard being had to religion any more than if it did not exist; or, at least, without any distinction being made between the true religion and false ones." And, against the doctrine of Scripture, of the Church, and of the Holy Fathers, they do not hesitate to assert that "that is the best condition of civil society, in which no duty is recognized, as attached to the civil power, of restraining by enacted penalties, offenders against the Catholic religion, except so far as public peace may require." From which totally false idea of social government they do not fear to foster that erroneous opinion, most fatal in its effects on the Catholic Church and the salvation of souls, called by Our Predecessor, Gregory XVI, an "insanity," viz., that "liberty of conscience and worship is each man's personal right, which ought to be legally proclaimed and asserted in every rightly constituted society; and that a right resides in the citizens to an absolute liberty, which should be restrained by no authority whether ecclesiastical or civil, whereby they may be able openly and publicly to manifest and declare any of their ideas whatever, either by word of mouth, by the press, or in any other way." But, while they rashly affirm this, they do not think and consider that they are preaching "liberty of perdition;" and that "if human arguments are always allowed free room for discussion, there will never be wanting men who will dare to resist truth, and to trust in the flowing speech of human wisdom; whereas we know, from the very teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ, how carefully Christian faith and wisdom should avoid this most injurious babbling."
"And, since where religion has been removed from civil society, and the doctrine and authority of divine revelation repudiated, the genuine notion itself of justice and human right is darkened and lost, and the place of true justice and legitimate right is supplied by material force, thence it appears why it is that some, utterly neglecting and disregarding the surest principles of sound reason, dare to proclaim that "the people's will, manifested by what is called public opinion or in some other way, constitutes a supreme law, free from all divine and human control; and that in the political order accomplished facts, from the very circumstance that they are accomplished, have the force of right." But who, does not see and clearly perceive that human society, when set loose from the bonds of religion and true justice, can have, in truth, no other end than the purpose of obtaining and amassing wealth, and that (society under such circumstances) follows no other law in its actions, except the unchastened desire of ministering to its own pleasure and interests?" (Pope Pius IX, Quanta Cura, December 8, 1864.)
Pope Leo XIII explained that it is the duty of all Catholics, shepherds and laity alike, to denounce and to vigorously oppose errors:
But in this same matter, touching Christian faith, there are other duties whose exact and religious observance, necessary at all times in the interests of eternal salvation, become more especially so in these our days. Amid such reckless and widespread folly of opinion, it is, as We have said, the office of the Church to undertake the defense of truth and uproot errors from the mind, and this charge has to be at all times sacredly observed by her, seeing that the honor of God and the salvation of men are confided to her keeping. But, when necessity compels, not those only who are invested with power of rule are bound to safeguard the integrity of faith, but, as St. Thomas maintains: "Each one is under obligation to show forth his faith, either to instruct and encourage others of the faithful, or to repel the attacks of unbelievers." To recoil before an enemy, or to keep silence when from all sides such clamors are raised against truth, is the part of a man either devoid of character or who entertains doubt as to the truth of what he professes to believe. In both cases such mode of behaving is base and is insulting to God, and both are incompatible with the salvation of mankind. This kind of conduct is profitable only to the enemies of the faith, for nothing emboldens the wicked so greatly as the lack of courage on the part of the good. Moreover, want of vigor on the part of Christians is so much the more blameworthy, as not seldom little would be needed on their part to bring to naught false charges and refute erroneous opinions, and by always exerting themselves more strenuously they might reckon upon being successful. After all, no one can be prevented from putting forth that strength of soul which is the characteristic of true Christians, and very frequently by such display of courage our enemies lose heart and their designs are thwarted. Christians are, moreover, born for combat, whereof the greater the vehemence, the more assured, God aiding, the triumph: "Have confidence; I have overcome the world." Nor is there any ground for alleging that Jesus Christ, the Guardian and Champion of the Church, needs not in any manner the help of men. Power certainly is not wanting to Him, but in His loving kindness He would assign to us a share in obtaining and applying the fruits of salvation procured through His grace.
The chief elements of this duty consist in professing openly and unflinchingly the Catholic doctrine, and in propagating it to the utmost of our power. For, as is often said, with the greatest truth, there is nothing so hurtful to Christian wisdom as that it should not be known, since it possesses, when loyally received, inherent power to drive away error. (Pope Leo XIII, Sapientiae Christianae, January 10, 1890.)
Among the major errors facing Pope Pius VI during his reign was that of was “religious liberty,” which was enshrined into the constitution of the so-called French First Republic in 1792, and which he condemned as follows:
"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; Religious Liberty, a “Monstrous Right").
Yet there were, of course, numerous clergy in France at the time who succumbed to the wiles of the “Constitutional Church” between 1790 and 1801 much in the same way that Jorge Mario Bergoglio has told the brave underground Catholics in Red China to sell out to their Communist persecutors and jailkeepers after the way had been prepared for him by Karol Josef Wojtyla/John Paul II and Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI (see A Betrayal Worthy of the Antichrist, Red China: Still A Workshop For The New Ecclesiology, Still Selling The Rope After All These Years, part two, Neville Bergoglio's Appeasement of the Chicom Monsters, Doubly Betrayed by Jorge and His False Church and Bergoglio the Red Surrenders Faithful Catholics to Their Persecutors). The revolutionary spirit of some in the French clergy continued even after Pope Pius VII reconciled the apostates and even after he had issued his own condemnation of religious liberty in 1814:
For how can We tolerate with equanimity that the Catholic religion, which France received in the first ages of the Church, which was confirmed in that very kingdom by the blood of so many most valiant martyrs, which by far the greatest part of the French race professes, and indeed bravely and constantly defended even among the most grave adversities and persecutions and dangers of recent years, and which, finally, that very dynasty to which the designated king belongs both professes and has defended with much zeal - that this Catholic, this most holy religion, We say, should not only not be declared to be the only one in the whole of France supported by the bulwark of the laws and by the authority of the Government, but should even, in the very restoration of the monarchy, be entirely passed over? But a much more grave, and indeed very bitter, sorrow increased in Our heart - a sorrow by which We confess that We were crushed, overwhelmed and torn in two - from the twenty-second article of the constitution in which We saw, not only that "liberty of religion and of conscience" (to use the same words found in the article) were permitted by the force of the constitution, but also that assistance and patronage were promised both to this liberty and also to the ministers of these different forms of "religion". There is certainly no need of many words, in addressing you, to make you fully recognize by how lethal a wound the Catholic religion in France is struck by this article. For when the liberty of all "religions" is indiscriminately asserted, by this very fact truth is confounded with error and the holy and immaculate Spouse of Christ, the Church, outside of which there can be no salvation, is set on a par with the sects of heretics and with Judaic perfidy itself. For when favour and patronage is promised even to the sects of heretics and their ministers, not only their persons, but also their very errors, are tolerated and fostered: a system of errors in which is contained that fatal and never sufficiently to be deplored HERESY which, as St. Augustine says (de Haeresibus, no.72), "asserts that all heretics proceed correctly and tell the truth: which is so absurd that it seems incredible to me." (Pope Pius VII, Post Tam Diuturnas, April 29, 1814, POST TAM DIUTURNAS)
Undeterred by such a denunciation of the “new principles” with which the counterfeit church of conciliarism made its “official reconciliation” at the “Second” Vatican Council, especially in Dignitatis Humanae and Gaudium et Spes, December 7, 1965, a French priest who would later abandon the Holy Faith, Hugues-Felicite Robert de Lamennais, wrote in favor of religious indifferentism, separation of Church and State and unfettered “freedom” of speech, press and conscience. Lamennais’s writing prompted Pope Pius VII to issue Mirari Vos, August 15, 1832, after efforts to call the cleric back to the truth had failed:
"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.)
We can see with great clarity the prophetic nature of Pope Gregory XVI’s words, which some presbyters in the conciliar structures have said were not meant as universally immutable truths but merely an historically-conditioned reaction to the “thought” of Lamennais that become the “official teaching” of the conciliar sect at the “Second” Vatican Council. We are witnessing the stench of a world that is concerned about physical safety from a biologically weaponized virus that is not a threat in most instances to those who have no underlying condition while continuing to push the envelope on a variety of sins, including “polyamorous relationships,” that are the result of the triumph, albeit temporary in nature, of the effects of Protestantism and Judeo-Masonry upon men when they are not guided by the true Catholic Faith nor succored by the sacraments she has to offer for their sanctification and salvation.
Pope Pius VII was not amused by Lamennais’s arrogant, prideful refusal to accept the clear teaching of Holy Mother Church on the principles summarized in Mirari Vos, which is why His Holiness issued Singulari Nos, May 24, 1834, after Lamennai had published a book, Words of a Believer, wherein he publicly renounced the Holy Faith:
2. It hardly seemed believable that he whom We welcomed with such good will and affection would so quickly forget Our kindness and desert Our resolution. We can hardly believe that the good hope which occupied Us with the fruit of Our teaching has died. However, We have learned of the pamphlet written in French under the title Paroles d’un croyant, for it has been printed by this man and disseminated everywhere. It was written under a pseudonym, but matters of public record make clear the author’s identity. Though small in size, it is enormous in wickedness.
3. We were very much amazed, venerable brothers, when at first We understood the blindness of this wretched author, for in him knowledge does not come from God, but from the elements of the world; this “knowledge” bursts forth. Against the oath solemnly given in his declaration, he cloaked Catholic teaching in enticing verbal artifice, in order ultimately to oppose it and overthrow it. We expressed this in Our letter mentioned above concerning both the dutiful submission toward authorities and the prevention of the fatal contamination of the people by indifferentism. It also concerned measures to use against the spreading license of ideas and speeches. Finally, it concerned that freedom of conscience which should be thoroughly condemned and the repulsive conspiracy of societies enkindling destruction of sacred and state affairs, even from the followers of false religions, as We have made clear by the authority handed down to Us.
4. The mind shrinks from reading through those things in which the author tries to break the bond of loyalty and submission toward leaders. Once the torch of treason is ignited everywhere, it ruins public order, fosters contempt of government, and stimulates lawlessness. It overthrows every element of sacred and civil power. From this, the writer transposes the power of princes, through a new and wicked idea, to the power of Satan and an omen of subterfuge, as if it were dangerous to divine law, even a work of sin. He brands the same marks of wickedness on the priests and rulers because of the conspiracy of crimes and labors in which he dreams they are joined against the rights of the people. Not content with such temerity, he thrusts forth every kind of opinion, speech, and freedom of conscience. He prays that everything will be favorable and happy for the soldiers who will fight to free liberty from tyranny, and he encourages groups and associations in the furious combat which engulfs everything. He stands so firm in such heinous thoughts that We feel him trample right from the beginning Our advice and orders.
5. It is annoying to recount here everything which throws all human and divine affairs into confusion with the wicked fruit of impiety and daring. But these things especially arouse Our indignation and should clearly not be tolerated by religion. Especially dangerous is the fact that holy Scriptures that have been tainted with the errors of this author are disseminated to the unwary. Acting as if he were sent and inspired by God, he speaks in the name of the Trinity and then uses Scripture as a pretext for releasing the people from the law of obedience. He twists the words of holy Scripture in a bold and cunning manner in order to firmly establish his depraved ravings. He does this in order that, as St. Bernard used to say, “He might spread clouds for light or give poison for honey, or rather in the honey, creating a new Gospel for the people and laying a different foundation from the one which is already laid.”
6. He who placed Us as scouts in Israel for bids Us to hide in silence the great harm brought to sound doctrine. So We must warn about the error those whom Jesus, the author and perfector of the faith, entrusted to Our care. Therefore, We consulted many of Our venerable brothers, the cardinals of the Holy Roman Church. We have studied the book entitled Paroles d’un croyant. By Our apostolic power, We condemn the book: furthermore, We decree that it be perpetually condemned. It corrupts the people by a wicked abuse of the word of God, to dissolve the bonds of all public order and to weaken all authority. It arouses, fosters, and strengthens seditions, riots, and rebellions in the empires. We condemn the book because it contains false, calumnious, and rash propositions which lead to anarchy; which are contrary to the word of God; which are impious, scandalous, and erroneous; and which the Church already condemned, especially in regard to the Waldensians, Wycliffites, Hussites, and other heretics of this kind.
7. Venerable brothers, it will now be your duty to strongly support Our orders which We urgently demand as necessary for the safety and welfare of both sacred and civil affairs. Let us see that no writing of this kind comes out of hiding into the light, since it would be that much more harmful if it were to set sail through the passion of insane reform and creep far and wide like a crab among the people. It should be your duty to encourage sound doctrine through this whole affair and to make known the craftiness of the innovators. Watch more keenly over the care of the Christian flock, so that zeal for religion, piety of actions, and public peace might happily flourish and increase. We wait for this, trusting in your faith and commitment to the common good so that, with the help of God who is the Father of lights, We might give thanks (with St. Cyprian) that the error has been understood and weakened and then laid low, because it was recognized and discovered.
8. As for the rest, We greatly deplore the fact that, where the ravings of human reason extend, there is somebody who studies new things and strives to know more than is necessary, against the advice of the apostle. There you will find someone who is overconfident in seeking the truth outside the Catholic Church, in which it can be found without even a light tarnish of error. Therefore, the Church is called, and is indeed, a pillar and foundation of truth. You correctly understand, venerable brothers, that We speak here also of that erroneous philosophical system which was recently brought in and is clearly to be condemned. This system, which comes from the contemptible and unrestrained desire for innovation, does not seek truth where it stands in the received and holy apostolic inheritance. Rather, other empty doctrines, futile and uncertain doctrines not approved by the Church, are adopted. Only the most conceited men wrongly think that these teachings can sustain and support that truth. (Pope Gregory XVI, Singulari Nos, June 25, 1834.)
Pope Gregory XVI was not only condemning the false ideas of Lamennais, he was condemning the work of each of the progenitors of the “Second” Vatican Council and the whole false ethos of conciliarism including but by no means limited to Fathers Joseph Alois Ratzinger, John Courtney Murray, Henri de Lubac, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Karl Rahner, Gregory Baum, Edward Schillebeecx, Yves Congar, Bernard Harring and Augustin Cardinal Bea, Archbishops Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini, Albino Luciani, and none other than Karol Josef Wojtyla himself. These heretics, innovators and lovers of novelty were true priests and/or true bishops, that putting the lie to the shallow and patently false assertion made by even some in fully traditional circles that any private revelation that contains a message about souls being led to perdition by bishops and priests must be reject as clerics would never do such a thing.
Everything About Conciliarism Was Planned by True Bishops and Priests
No, the “Second Vatican Council and the events that unfolded thereafter did not simply happen. Everything about its work—dogmatic evolutionism, the new ecclesiology, false ecumenism, episcopal collegiality, heterodox interpretations of Sacred Scripture, a de facto rejection of Sacred Tradition as a source of Divine Revelation, religious liberty, separation of church and state, the inverting of the ends proper to Holy Matrimony, spurious teachings on moral theology and the formulation and implementation of the Judeo-Masonic Novus Ordo liturgical abomination—had been presaged by centuries worth of work by the adversary to use, yes, true cardinals, bishops and priests to do his bidding for them by adhering to, if not openly promoting, ideas that had been condemned but which they hoped would one day receive the endorsement of that mythical “liberal pope.”
Although Modernism had been condemned by Pope Saint Pius X in Pascendi Dominici Gregis, Modernists were clever enough to bide their time as they took advantage of Pope Benedict XVI’s preoccupation with World War I and its aftermath to advance their propositions in seminaries, universities and conferences by using the “double-minded” technique that Pope Saint Pius X had critiqued as follows in Pascendi Dominici Gregis:
18. This will appear more clearly to anybody who studies the conduct of Modernists, which is in perfect harmony with their teachings. In their writings and addresses they seem not unfrequently to advocate doctrines which are contrary one to the other, so that one would be disposed to regard their attitude as double and doubtful. But this is done deliberately and advisedly, and the reason of it is to be found in their opinion as to the mutual separation of science and faith. Thus in their books one finds some things which might well be approved by a Catholic, but on turning over the page one is confronted by other things which might well have been dictated by a rationalist. When they write history they make no mention of the divinity of Christ, but when they are in the pulpit they profess it clearly; again, when they are dealing with history they take no account of the Fathers and the Councils, but when they catechize the people, they cite them respectfully. In the same way they draw their distinctions between exegesis which is theological and pastoral and exegesis which is scientific and historical. So, too, when they treat of philosophy, history, and criticism, acting on the principle that science in no way depends upon faith, they feel no especial horror in treading in the footsteps of Luther and are wont to display a manifold contempt for Catholic doctrines, for the Holy Fathers, for the Ecumenical Councils, for the ecclesiastical magisterium; and should they be taken to task for this, they complain that they are being deprived of their liberty. Lastly, maintaining the theory that faith must be subject to science, they continuously and openly rebuke the Church on the ground that she resolutely refuses to submit and accommodate her dogmas to the opinions of philosophy; while they, on their side, having for this purpose blotted out the old theology, endeavor to introduce a new theology which shall support the aberrations of philosophers. (Pope Saint Pius X, Pascendi Dominci Gregis, September 8, 1907.)
The Modernists realized that Popes Benedict XV, Pius XI and Pius XII came to the papacy from diplomatic careers and were averse to direct conflict with the enemies within Holy Mother Church, although Pope Pius XII was preparing a new document to condemn modern errors at the time he died, something that will be discussed at length later in this commentary. For the most part, despite Pope Pius XII’s condemnation of the nouvelle theologie [new theology] in Humani Generis, August 12, 1950, the Modernists charted their course with great and patience. However, they were very open about their intention to “reform” the Sacred Liturgy according to the anti-liturgical principles of Jansenism that had been condemned by Pope Pius VI in Auctorem Fidei, August 28, 1794.
Dr. Carol A. Byrne, who accepts the “legitimacy” of the conciliar “popes,” chronicled the efforts of those in the hijacked Liturgical Movement that had begun with Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., to use the Sacred Liturgy as the means to propagate Modernist principles and, especially, to promote false ecumenism. Here is a brief excerpt from part one of her very scholarly fifty-four part series:
The role of Dom Lambert Beauduin
After the fateful and entirely inappropriate expression “active participation” appeared out of the blue in 1903, it got a muted reception. Few people – unless they had a goal to score – knew what to make of it or what to do with it.
The first person to pick up the ball and run with it was the Benedictine monk, Dom Lambert Beauduin (1873-1960) of the Monastery of Mont César in Belgium. His goal was both ecumenical and secular: to promote the “universal priesthood of all believers” through “participatory” liturgy and unite them in a common programme of social reform and pan-Christian “unity.”
It was not for nothing that Beauduin is regarded as the founder of the New Liturgical Movement and a prophet of the “pastoral” Vatican II. He actually anticipated by half a century the most important progressivist advances of Vatican II in the key areas of liturgy, ecumenism and ecclesiology.
The barbarian in the citadel
From the beginning of his clerical career, Beauduin revealed a deep alienation from the values and spirituality of traditional Catholicism. He pursued a campaign of increasing hostility against Catholic devotions. Even in his seminary days, he rebelled against the regime of spirituality and the necessity to follow the strict rubrics of the Mass. (1)
It is unsurprising that he showed no interest in the Missal: it was, for him, “a closed and sealed book” (un livre fermé et scellé). He considered the liturgical books in general to be no more than “mumbo jumbo, incantations and magical formulae” (des grimoires). He also admitted that he had never recited his Breviary with the least devotion or interest. (2)
It is clear that, as a priest, Beauduin had not received – because he rejected – a proper Catholic formation. Instead, he spent his days in the seminary at Liège under the tutelage of the Professor of Moral Theology, Fr. Antoine Pottier, who, as the local leader of the Christian Democrat Movement, was a political firebrand, kindling workers’ demonstrations and strikes.
In fact, Fr. Pottier’s militant pro-worker activities, coupled with his antagonism against employers in Liège, caused Leo XIII to intervene personally in 1895 and require him to give up his social and political activism for the sake of peace and harmony. (3)
Soon after his ordination in 1897, Beauduin joined the Congregation des Aumôniers du Travail, a society of worker-priests that had been established by the Bishop of Liège, Mgr. Victor Doutreloux. He then spent 7 years living among the workers in the footsteps of Fr. Pottier after the latter’s enforced retirement from political agitation.
The experience radicalized his outlook. Just as he saw society in terms of a conflict between the rich and the poor, industrialists and workers, he saw a counterpart in the constitution of the Church. He argued that active participation in the liturgy would unite the faithful for social change and for the “emancipation” of the laity from “domination” by the clergy. At this point the Liturgical Movement was effectively turned into a platform for Marxist propaganda within the Church. (The Start of The New Liturgical Movement. One can follow the “Continued” links at the end of this article—and each subsequent one, numbering forty-five in total, to read the entire series, which is well worth reading.)
Catholics, for example, got accustomed to all manner of revolutionary changes in the Sacred Liturgy in the 1950s that were designed by the likes of Fathers Annibale Bugnini, C.M., and Ferdinando Antonelli, O.F.M., to lead to the full-scale liturgy of ecumenism that the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic liturgical service that the revolutionaries who had hijacked the Liturgical Movement in the 1920s and thereafter were hoping would see the light of day under an "enlightened 'pope.'" (For a very early look at what the revolutionaries wanted, one can take a look at the text of The Mass of the Future, which was written by Father Gerald Ellard, S.J., and published in 1948, a full year after Pope Pius XII used Mediator Dei, November 20, 1947, to warn against the very sort of developments favored by Father Ellard. Father Ellard wanted "Youth Masses," "Labor Masses," Mass facing the people, a simpler liturgy, etc.)
Jorge Mario Bergoglio, you see, is a true and most faithful ideological descendant of Dom Beaudoin Lambert, who was a true priest and whose work was all about using the principles condemned by Pope Pius IX and the Fathers of the [First] Vatican Council and the principles of Modernism and its close cousin, Sillonism, that were condemned by Pope Saint Pius X in, respectively, Pascendi Dominci Gregis, September 8, 1907, and Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15 1910.
No, the “Second” Vatican Council and the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic Novus Ordo liturgical abomination that followed in its wake did not just “happen.” True bishops and priests helped to prepare the way for the triumph of Modernism and Sillonism while the world’s attention was focused on World War I, World II and the Cold War.
The activities of the Modernists after World War I caught attention of many leading cardinals, who warned Pope Pius XI against any effort to convene a Second Vatican Council in the 1920s:
A little-known drama that unfolded during the reign of Pope Pius XI demonstrates that the underground current of Modernist thought was alive and well in the immediate post-Pius X period. Father Raymond Dulac relates that at the secret consistory of May 23, 1923, Pope Pius XI questioned the thirty Cardinals of the Curia on the timeliness of summoning an ecumenical council. In attendance were such illustrious prelates as Cardinals Merry del Val, De Lai, Gasparri, Boggiani and Billot. The Cardinals advised against it.
Cardinal Billot warned, "The existence of profound differences in the midst of the episcopacy itself cannot be concealed . . . [They] run the risk of giving place to discussions that will be prolonged indefinitely."
Boggiani recalled the Modernist theories from which, he said, a part of the clergy and of the bishops were not exempt. "This mentality can incline certain Fathers to present motions, to introduce methods incompatible with Catholic traditions."
Billot was even more precise. He expressed his fear of seeing the council "maneuvered" by the worst enemies of the Church, the Modernists, who are already getting ready, as certain indications show, to bring forth the revolution in the Church, a new 1789."
In discouraging the idea of a council for such reasons, these Cardinals showed themselves more apt at recognizing the "signs of the times" than all the post-Vatican II theologians combined. Yet their caution may have been rooted in something deeper. They may also have been haunted by the writings of the infamous illumine, the excommunicated Canon Roca (1830-1893), who preached revolution and Church "reform" and who predicted a subversion of the Church that would be brought about by a council. [John Vennari, The Permanent Instruction of the Alta Vendita: A Masonic Blueprint for the Subversion of the Catholic Church, pp. 15-16.]
Meaning quite deliberately to sound like a broken record, the Modernists whom Cardinal Billot warned Pope Pius XI about were true bishops and priests who were possessed of condemned Modernist presuppositions that were bound to do only one thing: lead souls to eternal perdition.
A new 1789?
Why not bring out the old “Cardinal” Ratzinger quote from Principles of Catholic Theology to demonstrate yet again that this now ninety-three year-old Hegelian played those “conservatives” and “semi-traditional” Catholics wedded to the structures of a false religious sect, the counterfeit church of conciliarism, for fools when he issued Summorum Pontificum, July 7, 2007?
Let us be content to say here that the text serves as a countersyllabus and, as such, represents on the part of the Church, an attempt at an official reconciliation with the new era inaugurated in 1789. (Joseph Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology, p. 382.)
What happened in 1789?
Wasn't there some kind of anti-Theistic revolution in France, the elder daughter of the Church? What did Pope Leo XIII write about such reconciling with the principles of the revolution?
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.)
The likes of Father Joseph Alois Ratzinger were very busy plotting their course of action even before his birth on April 16, 1927, but he joined outpaced them as a progenitor of Modernist concepts “updated” and “improved” by means of the “new theology” immediately after his priestly ordination on June 29, 1951, to such an extent that he was under suspicion of heresy by the Holy Office during the latter years of Pope Pius XII’s pontificate:
On 28 April 1969, Paul VI announced the foundation of the International Theological Commission, a organ intended to be parallel to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
On that occasion, the serious French magazine Informations Catholiques Internationales (n. 336 - May 15, 1969, p. 9), reported the story and gave the list of the 30 theologians chosen for the Commission (below in French). Among them, we translate this description:
Joseph RATZINGER: German, age 45, dogmatic theology, ecumenism; previously suspect [of heresy] by the Holy Office; member of the Faith and Ecumenism Commission; outstanding work in collaboration with Karl Rahner: Primacy and Episcopate.
Other theologians also under suspicion by the Holy Office were Yves Congar, Henri de Lubac, Karl Rahner, and Hans Urs von Balthasar. (As found at: Ratzinger Under Suspicion of Heresy.)
As it turns out, though, Ratzinger and his comrades might have wound up being formally condemned for their heresies and errors if Pope Pius XII had lived long enough to issue another papal document condemning Modernist errors. A scholarly researcher found evidence that this was the case when he gained access to the Vatican’s secret archives of the papacy under Pope Pius XII before his research was stopped when the archives were closed because of Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s decision to submit to his One World Government minders to “keep people safe” in the midst of the China/Wuhan/Chinese/Covid-19/Coronavirus:
When the Vatican opened its Apostolic Archives on the pontificate of Pope Pius XII (1939-58) on Mar. 2 of this year, most people were focused on what researchers would find about His Holiness’ work to protect Jews persecuted during World War II. While there is no doubt that the archives contain much information on that, a thorough research into all the available materials is also uncovering other things of even greater importance.
In tomorrow’s edition of the German Novus Ordo paper Die Tagespost (Mar. 12, 2020; p. 10), there can be found a brief news report by the Katholische Nachrichten-Agentur news agency on a noteworthy find by church historian Matthias Daufratshofer. Researching in the archives pertaining to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (the Novus Ordo version of the Holy Office), Prof. Daufratshofer says he came across “elaborate drafts” of an encyclical Pius XII was writing against the “modern errors of his time”.
According to the report, the errors the encyclical was going to condemn concern three specific subjects: moral theology, ecclesiastical authority and the requisite obedience, and the relations between Church and state. That is all the historian is able to tell us for now, as the Vatican archives are currently locked down due to the Coronavirus policies. However, we can surely look forward to more details from Prof. Daufratshofer in the not too distant future!
Pius XII had already published an encyclical against modern errors years prior. It was entitled Humani Generis and, although published as far back as Aug. 12, 1950, it is as relevant today as ever, inasmuch as it rejects many of the principles of the New Theology (Nouvelle Théologie) that were later enshrined in the Second Vatican Council and have infested all of “Catholic theology” since. (Draft of Pope Pius XII Encyclical Against Modern Errors Never Issued Found in Vatican Archives.)
Pope Pius XII did not live long enough to issue the condemnation. The rest, as they say, is history.
However, I do want to reiterate that each of the Modernist progenitors of the “Second” Vatican Council listed above were true priests who were literally hellbent on making condemned principles and propositions the “official” teaching of the Catholic Church. In other words, wittingly or not, they were hellbent on leading souls to perdition. Ratzinger and his comrades help to bring forth an “official reconciliation” with the “principles of 1789” and with the very propositions condemned by the Fathers of the [First] Vatican Council and by the various true popes listed earlier in this article.
Of particular interest to this writer is the fact that the proposed papal condemnation was going to deal a death blow to Father John Courtney Murray, S.J.’s, writings in support of the heresies of religious liberty and separation of Church and State, principles that are at odds with both the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law and had been, as noted earlier in this commentary, condemned repeatedly by our true popes.
It was as “Pope Benedict XVI” that Father Joseph Alois Ratzinger gave his “papal endorsement” to “religious liberty” and to the philosophically absurd and papally condemned Modernist precept of “dogmatic evolutionism” by which the Modernists had long sought to justify how they could advance ideas that Holy Mother Church had condemned:
Secondly, it was necessary to give a new definition to the relationship between the Church and the modern State that would make room impartially for citizens of various religions and ideologies, merely assuming responsibility for an orderly and tolerant coexistence among them and for the freedom to practise their own religion.
Thirdly, linked more generally to this was the problem of religious tolerance - a question that required a new definition of the relationship between the Christian faith and the world religions. In particular, before the recent crimes of the Nazi regime and, in general, with a retrospective look at a long and difficult history, it was necessary to evaluate and define in a new way the relationship between the Church and the faith of Israel.
These are all subjects of great importance - they were the great themes of the second part of the Council - on which it is impossible to reflect more broadly in this context. It is clear that in all these sectors, which all together form a single problem, some kind of discontinuity might emerge. Indeed, a discontinuity had been revealed but in which, after the various distinctions between concrete historical situations and their requirements had been made, the continuity of principles proved not to have been abandoned. It is easy to miss this fact at a first glance.
It is precisely in this combination of continuity and discontinuity at different levels that the very nature of true reform consists. In this process of innovation in continuity we must learn to understand more practically than before that the Church's decisions on contingent matters - for example, certain practical forms of liberalism or a free interpretation of the Bible - should necessarily be contingent themselves, precisely because they refer to a specific reality that is changeable in itself. It was necessary to learn to recognize that in these decisions it is only the principles that express the permanent aspect, since they remain as an undercurrent, motivating decisions from within.
On the other hand, not so permanent are the practical forms that depend on the historical situation and are therefore subject to change.
Basic decisions, therefore, continue to be well-grounded, whereas the way they are applied to new contexts can change. Thus, for example, if religious freedom were to be considered an expression of the human inability to discover the truth and thus become a canonization of relativism, then this social and historical necessity is raised inappropriately to the metaphysical level and thus stripped of its true meaning. Consequently, it cannot be accepted by those who believe that the human person is capable of knowing the truth about God and, on the basis of the inner dignity of the truth, is bound to this knowledge.
It is quite different, on the other hand, to perceive religious freedom as a need that derives from human coexistence, or indeed, as an intrinsic consequence of the truth that cannot be externally imposed but that the person must adopt only through the process of conviction.
The Second Vatican Council, recognizing and making its own an essential principle of the modern State with the Decree on Religious Freedom, has recovered the deepest patrimony of the Church. By so doing she can be conscious of being in full harmony with the teaching of Jesus himself (cf. Mt 22: 21), as well as with the Church of the martyrs of all time. The ancient Church naturally prayed for the emperors and political leaders out of duty (cf. I Tm 2: 2); but while she prayed for the emperors, she refused to worship them and thereby clearly rejected the religion of the State.
The martyrs of the early Church died for their faith in that God who was revealed in Jesus Christ, and for this very reason they also died for freedom of conscience and the freedom to profess one's own faith - a profession that no State can impose but which, instead, can only be claimed with God's grace in freedom of conscience. A missionary Church known for proclaiming her message to all peoples must necessarily work for the freedom of the faith. She desires to transmit the gift of the truth that exists for one and all. (Christmas greetings to the Members of the Roman Curia and Prelature, December 22, 2005.)
The early Catholic martyrs died for the Catholic Faith by refusing to acknowledge the legitimacy of any false god or other pagan idol. They did exactly what Joseph Alois Ratzinger did as "Pope Benedict XVI" and that Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria/Paul VI and Karol Josef Wojtyla/John Paul II did before him and that Jorge Mario Bergolio continues to do with abandon after him.
Blasphemers all, each and of every single one of them.
Ratzinger/Benedict had thus told us in his own words that it was “necessary” to “learn” this “truth,” meaning that the Third Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, God the Holy Ghost, had kept it hidden from Holy Mother Church until now and that He did not direct the expression of dogmatic truths by the Fathers of the Church's dogmatic councils, a belief that is as blasphemous as it is heretical.
For Ratzinger to have been correct that it was necessary for the Church to “learn to recognize that in these decisions it is only the principles that express the permanent aspect” and that the “practical forms that depend on the historical situation” are “subject to change,” then God the Holy Ghost failed the Catholic Church at the [First] Vatican Council when the following decree was issued with the approval of Pope Pius IX:
- For the doctrine of the faith which God has revealed is put forward
- not as some philosophical discovery capable of being perfected by human intelligence,
- but as a divine deposit committed to the spouse of Christ to be faithfully protected and infallibly promulgated.
- Hence, too, that meaning of the sacred dogmas is ever to be maintained which has once been declared by holy mother church, and there must never be any abandonment of this sense under the pretext or in the name of a more profound understanding.
- God cannot deny himself, nor can truth ever be in opposition to truth.
The appearance of this kind of specious contradiction is chiefly due to the fact that either: the dogmas of faith are not understood and explained in accordance with the mind of the church, or unsound views are mistaken for the conclusions of reason.
Therefore we define that every assertion contrary to the truth of enlightened faith is totally false. . . .
3. If anyone says that it is possible that at some time, given the advancement of knowledge, a sense may be assigned to the dogmas propounded by the church which is different from that which the church has understood and understands: let him be anathema.
And so in the performance of our supreme pastoral office, we beseech for the love of Jesus Christ and we command, by the authority of him who is also our God and saviour, all faithful Christians, especially those in authority or who have the duty of teaching, that they contribute their zeal and labour to the warding off and elimination of these errors from the church and to the spreading of the light of the pure faith.
But since it is not enough to avoid the contamination of heresy unless those errors are carefully shunned which approach it in greater or less degree, we warn all of their duty to observe the constitutions and decrees in which such wrong opinions, though not expressly mentioned in this document, have been banned and forbidden by this holy see. (Pope Pius IX, Vatican Council, Session III, Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith, Chapter 4, On Faith and Reason, April 24, 1870. SESSION 3 : 24 April 1870.)
God the Holy Ghost guided Pope Pius IX and the Fathers of the [Vatican] Council in proclaiming immutable truths.
Alas, the entire teaching, liturgy and ethos of the counterfeit church of conciliarism conciliar antipopes, including Karol Josef Wojtyla/John Paul II with his “living tradition.” Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI and his “hermeneutic of continuity” and Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s open embrace of dogmatic evolutionism is a false faith that is mutable and is dictated by the circumstances in which men find themselves. In short, they believe in a false religion that is conditioned by time, circumstance and the subjective motivations of fallen creatures who suffer from the vestigial after-effects of Original Sin (the darkened intellect, the weakened will, the overthrow of the higher rational faculties in favor of the lower sensual appetites). Conciliarism is a religion of relativism that leads to pantheism, paganism and, ultimately, to Antichrist himself.
Indeed, the very ethos permeating what has been taught for five decades now by so-called “moral theologians” Catholic seminaries, professional schools (medial schools, law schools), who were considered to be “dissident” during the reigns of Antipopes Montini and Wojtyla that has been give an antipapal “imprimatur” by Jorge Mario Bergoglio was dissected and condemned by Pope Pius XII in an address he gave at the Thirtieth General Congregation of the Society of Jesus on September 14, 1957. Here is an excerpt from that address as found in an article on the corruption of Catholic higher education by the Jesuits authored by the late Monsignor George A. Kelly, who was a priest of the Archdiocese of New York:
The more serious cause, however, was the movement in high Jesuit circles to modernize the understanding of the magisterium by enlarging the freedom of Catholics, especially scholars, to dispute its claims and assertions. Jesuit scholars had already made up their minds that the Catholic creeds and moral norms needed nuance and correction. It was for this incipient dissent that the late Pius XII chastised the Jesuits’ 30th General Congregation one year before he died (1957). What concerned Pius XII most in that admonition was the doctrinal orthodoxy of Jesuits. Information had reached him that the Society’s academics (in France and Germany) were bootlegging heterodox ideas. He had long been aware of contemporary theologians who tried “to withdraw themselves from the Sacred Teaching authority and are accordingly in danger of gradually departing from revealed truth and of drawing others along with them in error” (Humani generis).
In view of what has gone on recently in Catholic higher education, Pius XII’s warnings to Jesuits have a prophetic ring to them. He spoke then of a “proud spirit of free inquiry more proper to a heterodox mentality than to a Catholic one”; he demanded that Jesuits not “tolerate complicity with people who would draw norms for action for eternal salvation from what is actually done, rather than from what should be done.” He continued, “It should be necessary to cut off as soon as possible from the body of your Society” such “unworthy and unfaithful sons.” Pius obviously was alarmed at the rise of heterodox thinking, worldly living, and just plain disobedience in Jesuit ranks, especially at attempts to place Jesuits on a par with their Superiors in those matters which pertained to Faith or Church order (The Pope Speaks, Spring 1958, pp. 447-453). (Monsignor George A. Kelly, Ph.D.,The Catholic College: Death, Judgment, Resurrection. See also the full Latin text of Pope Pius XII's address to the thirtieth general congregation of the Society of Jesus at page 806 of the Acta Apostolicae Sedis for 1957: AAS 49 [1957]. One will have to scroll down to page 806.)
Although the late Monsignor Kelly, whom I knew and consulted on occasion in the 1980s and 1990s, tried to “save” that which was beyond saving because it was in the hands of apostates, the history he provided should illustrate the fact that not all was well in the 1950s, the supposed “golden era” of Catholicism in the United States of America. All manner of revolutionaries, including those within the Society of Jesus, got imprimaturs from like-minded Americanist bishops, men such as John Dearden, Francis Spellman, Richard Cushing, Albert Meyer, et al,, to push the envelope, especially in the field of bioethics, as far as they could during the waning years of the pontificate of our last true pope thus far, Pope Pius XII. Quite by the way—well, actually, quite to the point of this brief commentary, each of the men just listed were true priests and bishops, and three of them—Dearden, Spellman and Meyer—were true cardinals as well.
We Had Been Warned
Judas priests started to infiltrate the ranks of Holy Mother Church centuries before the “Second” Vatican Council, but that infiltration became more accelerated and diffused in the six decades preceding that robber council’s opening session on Saturday, October 11, 1959, the Feast of the Divine Maternity of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
It was of these Judas priests that the seers of Our Lady of Garabandal spoke, and even though the message itself will have to await a true pope’s approval, which would be rendered after the message itself is fulfilled, it is important to remember that multitudes of the French flocked to the Grotto of Massabielle outside of Lourdes, France, in 1858, and to the Cova da Iria near Fatima, Portugal, in 1917, prior to approbation from the Holy See. The fact that seers said Our Lady told her that bishops and priests would lead souls to perdition is a sign of its probable authenticity, not of its being doubtful, as the message was rendered in 1961 as true bishops and priests were conspiring to make the “Second” Vatican Council a forum for the “canonization” of every principle condemned by Holy Mother Church in the preceding two centuries.
Pope Pius VIII noted in his first and only encyclical letter that the barbarians had already entered the gates of Holy Mother Church:
We open Our heart with joy to you, venerable brothers, whom God has given to Us as helpers in the conduct of so great an administration. We are pleased to let you know the intimate sentiments of Our will. We also think it helpful to communicate those things from which the Christian cause may benefit. For the duty of Our office is not only to feed, rule, and direct the lambs, namely the Christian people, but also the sheep, that is the clergy.
2. We rejoice and praise Christ, who raised up shepherds for the safekeeping of His flock. These shepherds vigilantly lead their flocks so as not to lose even one of those they have received from the Father. For We know well, venerable brothers, your unshakeable faith, your zeal for religion, your sanctity of life, and your singular prudence. Co-workers such as you make Us happy and confident. This pleasant situation encourages Us when We fear because of the great responsibility of Our office, and it refreshes and strengthens Us when We feel overwhelmed by so many serious concerns. We shall not detain you with a long sermon to remind you what things are required to perform sacred duties well, what the canons prescribe lest anyone depart from vigilance over his flock, and what attention ought to be given in preparing and accepting ministers. Rather We call upon God the Savior that He may protect you with His omnipresent divinity and bless your activities and endeavors with happy success.
3. Although God may console Us with you, We are nonetheless sad. This is due to the numberless errors and the teachings of perverse doctrines which, no longer secretly and clandestinely but openly and vigorously, attack the Catholic faith. You know how evil men have raised the standard of revolt against religion through philosophy (of which they proclaim themselves doctors) and through empty fallacies devised according to natural reason. In the first place, the Roman See is assailed and the bonds of unity are, every day, being severed. The authority of the Church is weakened and the protectors of things sacred are snatched away and held in contempt. The holy precepts are despised, the celebration of divine offices is ridiculed, and the worship of God is cursed by the sinner.[1] All things which concern religion are relegated to the fables of old women and the superstitions of priests. Truly lions have roared in Israel.[2] With tears We say: "Truly they have conspired against the Lord and against His Christ." Truly the impious have said: "Raze it, raze it down to its foundations."[3]
4. Among these heresies belongs that foul contrivance of the sophists of this age who do not admit any difference among the different professions of faith and who think that the portal of eternal salvation opens for all from any religion. They, therefore, label with the stigma of levity and stupidity those who, having abandoned the religion which they learned, embrace another of any kind, even Catholicism. This is certainly a monstrous impiety which assigns the same praise and the mark of the just and upright man to truth and to error, to virtue and to vice, to goodness and to turpitude. Indeed this deadly idea concerning the lack of difference among religions is refuted even by the light of natural reason. We are assured of this because the various religions do not often agree among themselves. If one is true, the other must be false; there can be no society of darkness with light. Against these experienced sophists the people must be taught that the profession of the Catholic faith is uniquely true, as the apostle proclaims: one Lord, one faith, one baptism.[4] Jerome used to say it this way: he who eats the lamb outside this house will perish as did those during the flood who were not with Noah in the ark.[5] Indeed, no other name than the name of Jesus is given to men, by which they may be saved.[6] He who believes shall be saved; he who does not believe shall be condemned.[7]
5. We must also be wary of those who publish the Bible with new interpretations contrary to the Church's laws. They skillfully distort the meaning by their own interpretation. They print the Bibles in the vernacular and, absorbing an incredible expense, offer them free even to the uneducated. Furthermore, the Bibles are rarely without perverse little inserts to insure that the reader imbibes their lethal poison instead of the saving water of salvation. Long ago the Apostolic See warned about this serious hazard to the faith and drew up a list of the authors of these pernicious notions. The rules of this Index were published by the Council of Trent;[8] the ordinance required that translations of the Bible into the vernacular not be permitted without the approval of the Apostolic See and further required that they be published with commentaries from the Fathers. The sacred Synod of Trent had decreed[9] in order to restrain impudent characters, that no one, relying on his own prudence in matters of faith and of conduct which concerns Christian doctrine, might twist the sacred Scriptures to his own opinion, or to an opinion contrary to that of the Church or the popes. Though such machinations against the Catholic faith had been assailed long ago by these canonical proscriptions, Our recent predecessors made a special effort to check these spreading evils.[10] With these arms may you too strive to fight the battles of the Lord which endanger the sacred teachings, lest this deadly virus spread in your flock.
6. When this corruption has been abolished, then eradicate those secret societies of factious men who, completely opposed to God and to princes, are wholly dedicated to bringing about the fall of the Church, the destruction of kingdoms, and disorder in the whole world. Having cast off the restraints of true religion, they prepare the way for shameful crimes. Indeed, because they concealed their societies, they aroused suspicion of their evil intent. Afterwards this evil intention broke forth, about to assail the sacred and the civil orders. Hence the supreme pontiffs, Our predecessors, Clement XII, Benedict XIV, Pius VII, Leo XII,[11] repeatedly condemned with anathema that kind of secret society. Our predecessors condemned them in apostolic letters; We confirm those commands and order that they be observed exactly. In this matter We shall be diligent lest the Church and the state suffer harm from the machinations of such sects. With your help We strenuously take up the mission of destroying the strongholds which the putrid impiety of evil men sets up.
7. We want you to know of another secret society organized not so long ago for the corruption of young people who are taught in the gymnasia and the lycea. Its cunning purpose is to engage evil teachers to lead the students along the paths of Baal by teaching them un-Christian doctrines. The perpetrators know well that the students' minds and morals are molded by the precepts of the teachers. Its influence is already so persuasive that all fear of religion has been lost, all discipline of morals has been abandoned, the sanctity of pure doctrine has been contested, and the rights of the sacred and of the civil powers have been trampled upon. Nor are they ashamed of any disgraceful crime OT error. We can truly say with Leo the Great that for them "Law is prevarication; religion, the devil; sacrifice, disgrace.'[12] Drive these evils from your dioceses. Strive to assign not only learned, but also good men to train our youth. (Pope Pius VIII, Traditii Humiliatae Nostrae, May 24, 1829.)
Pope Pius VIII’s description of how the bishops of his day at the end of the third decade of the Nineteenth Century is exactly the opposite of what Jorge Mario Bergoglio wants his own “bishops” to be, and this is because he, Bergoglio, belongs to the category of evil forces that Pope Pius VIII warned his bishops to remove from their very midst.
Pope Saint Pius X summarized the spirit of the Judas priests who paved the way for a pagan antipope who speaks openly of “mother earth” in Pascendi Dominici Gregis and in Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910:
One of the primary obligations assigned by Christ to the office divinely committed to Us of feeding the Lord’s flock is that of guarding with the greatest vigilance the deposit of the faith delivered to the saints, rejecting the profane novelties of words and the gainsaying of knowledge falsely so called. There has never been a time when this watchfulness of the supreme pastor was not necessary to the Catholic body, for owing to the efforts of the enemy of the human race, there have never been lacking “men speaking perverse things,”1 “vain talkers and seducers,”2 “erring and driving into error.”3 It must, however, be confessed that these latter days have witnessed a notable increase in the number of the enemies of the Cross of Christ, who, by arts entirely new and full of deceit, are striving to destroy the vital energy of the Church, and, as far as in them lies, utterly to subvert the very Kingdom of Christ. Wherefore We may no longer keep silence, lest We should seem to fail in Our most sacred duty, and lest the kindness that, in the hope of wiser counsels, We have hitherto shown them, should be set down to lack of diligence in the discharge of Our office. (Pope Saint Pius X, Pascendi Dominici Gregis, September 8, 1907.)
The Modernists completely invert the parts, and of them may be applied the words which another of Our predecessors Gregory IX, addressed to some theologians of his time: “Some among you, puffed up like bladders with the spirit of vanity strive by profane novelties to cross the boundaries fixed by the Fathers, twisting the meaning of the sacred text…to the philosophical teaching of the rationalists, not for the profit of their hearer but to make a show of science…these men, led away by various and strange doctrines, turn the head into the tail and force the queen to serve the handmaid.” (Pope Saint Pius X, Pascendi Dominici Gregis, September 8, 1907.)
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.)
It is impossible for a true pope to teach error on Faith and Morals and it is impossible for Holy Mother Church, she who is the spotless, virginal mystical bride of her Divine Founder, Invisible Head and Mystical Bridegroom, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, to be a forum for error, heresy, sacrilege and the sorts of fearful abominations that would have made even some of the heretics of yore blush with shame.
Pope Leo the Great, whose feast was suppressed this year because it fell on Holy Saturday, April 11, explained the indefectibility of Holy Mother Church as follows:
When the Lord, as we read in the Evangelist, asked His disciples Who did men, amid their divers speculations, believe that He, the Son of Man, was; blessed Peter answered and said Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus answered and said unto him Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but My Father, Which is in heaven and I say also unto thee, that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it; and I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Thus therefore standeth the ordinance of the Truth, and blessed Peter, abiding still that firm rock which God hath made him, hath never lost that right to rule in the Church which God hath given unto him.
In the universal Church it is Peter that doth still say every day, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God, and every tongue which confesseth that Jesus is Lord is taught that confession by the teaching of Peter. This is the faith that overcometh the devil and looseth the bands of his prisoners. This is the faith which maketh men free of the world and bringeth them to heaven, and the gates of hell are impotent to prevail against it. With such ramparts of salvation hath God fortified this rock, that the contagion of heresy will never be able to infect it, nor idolatry and unbelief to overcome it. This teaching it is, my dearly beloved brethren, which maketh the keeping of this Feast to-day to be our reasonable service, even the teaching which maketh you to know and honour in myself, lowly though I be, that Peter who is still entrusted with the care of all other shepherds and of all the flocks to them committed, and whose authority I have, albeit unworthy to be his heir.
When, therefore, we address our exhortations to your godly ears, believe ye that ye are hearing him speak whose office we are discharging. Yea, it is with his love for you that we warn you, and we preach unto you no other thing than that which he taught, entreating you that ye would gird up the loins of your mind and lead pure and sober lives in the fear of God. My disciples dearly beloved, ye are to me, as the disciples of the Apostle Paul were to him, (Phil. iv. 1,) a crown and a joy, if your faith, which, in the first times of the Gospel, was spoken of throughout the whole world, Rom. i. 8, abide still lovely and holy. For, albeit it behoveth the whole Church which is spread throughout all the world, to be strong in righteousness, you it chiefly becometh above all other peoples to excel in worth and godliness, whose house is built upon the very crown of the Rock of the Apostle, and whom not only hath our Lord Jesus Christ, as He hath redeemed all men, but whom also His blessed Apostle Peter hath made the foremost object of his teaching. (Pope Saint Leo the Great, as found in Matins, The Divine Office, Feast of Pope Saint Leo the Great.)
Well, it is all there, isn’t it?
One must engage in all kinds of intellectual gymnastics to believe that the contagion of heresy is not rife within the counterfeit church of conciliarism, which is why all those who are not yet convinced of the truth of our ecclesiastical situation in this time of apostasy and betrayal should re-read these words:
This is the faith which maketh men free of the world and bringeth them to heaven, and the gates of hell are impotent to prevail against it. With such ramparts of salvation hath God fortified this rock, that the contagion of heresy will never be able to infect it, nor idolatry and unbelief to overcome it. (Pope Saint Leo the Great, as found in Matins, The Divine Office, Feast of Pope Saint Leo the Great.)
The false “popes” of conciliarism have esteemed the symbols of idolaters. So have Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI and “Saint John Paul II” before the latter’s own election as the head of the false conciliar sect on March 13, 2013, and Jorge Mario Bergoglio has shown repeatedly that he has no belief in the integrity of the Catholic Faith. So have his predecessors in the past sixty -one and one-half years. However, none has anything to with the Catholic Church as it is the product of her counterfeit ape, which is nothing other than a creation and instrument of the adversary himself.
Indeed, Dom Prosper Gueranger. O.S.B., reminded us in his prayer to Saint Basil the Great that the Arians had taken over the structures of the Catholic Church in many places around the world but had lost the Faith themselves, which is why he had separated himself from them when he was a lector and would later become one of their sternest foes upon his being appointed as the Patriarch of Constantinople:
He thus wrote to his monks, likewise pursued and vexed by a government that would not own itself a persecutor: 'There are many honest men who, though they admit that you are being treated without a shadow of justice, still will not grant that the sufferings you are enduring can quite deserve to be called confessing the faith; ah! it is by no means necessary to be a pagan in order to make us martyrs! The enemies we have nowadays detest us no less than did the idolaters; if they would deceive the crowd as to the motive of their hatred, it is merely because they hope thereby to rob you of the glory that surrounded confessors in bygone days. Be convinced of it before the face of the just Judge, your confession is every whit as real. So take heart! under every stroke renew yourselves in love; let your zeal gain strength every day, knowing that in you are to be preserved the last remains of godliness which the Lord, at his return, may find upon the earth. Trouble not yourselves about treacheries, nor whence they come: was it not princes among God's priests, the scribes and the ancients among his own, that plotted the snares wherein our divine Master suffered himself to be caught? Heed not what the crowd may think, for a breath is sufficient to sway the crowd to and fro, like the rippling wave. Even though only one were to be saved, as in the case of Lot out of Sodom, it would not be lawful for him to deviate from the path of rectitude, merely because he finds that he is the only one that is right. No; he must stand alone, unmoved, holding fast his hope in Jesus Christ.' (Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year.)
Saint Basil was saying that the Arian enemies of the Faith in his day were persecuting true believers with the fierceness of the idolaters of the past.
Isn't this happening now in our own day as idolatry that has been and continues to be practiced by the conciliar “popes” and their “bishops,” as well as almost everyone in the official quarters of the counterfeit church of conciliarism remain absolutely silent about such idolatry?
Of course, it is.
A Brief Reflection on Good Shepherd Sunday
Yesterday, Sunday, April 26, 2020, the Second Sunday after Easter and the Commemoration of Pope Saints Cletus and Marcellinus and, although not on Holy Mother Church’s general calendar, the feast day of Our Lady of Good Counsel. The Second Sunday after Easter is also known as Good Shepherd Sunday.
Shepherds in the Holy Land at the time when Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ lived were accustomed to herding their sheep at common at night. Each shepherd taught his own sheep to follow his voice when he sang a particular melody or played a melody on a reed instrument, thereby signaling the sheep to follow him for their next day’s journey.
Father Maurice Meschler, S.J., commented on the historical setting of shepherds and the sheep of their flock at the time that Our Lord spoke of Himself as the Good Shepherd:
The reason why our Saviour speaks of the heads and teachers of Israel as “shepherds” is probably that Scripture very often represents the guidance of the nation by God and His representatives under the figure of a shepherd leading his sheep (Gen. xlviii. 15. Ps xxii. Isa. Xl II. Jer. Xxiii. I. Ex. xxxiv. 1-23; xxxvii. 24. Zach. xi. 17; xiii. 7. Matt. ix. 36). And this was quite in keeping with the character of peace and benevolence which this guidance bore. The simile was equally well-founded as regards the economical conditions of the country, since the wealth of Palestine, especially in the highlands, consisted chiefly in pasture-land, meadows and flocks. These flocks fed in the meadows from spring until winter. In the evening the sheep, which were separated into different flocks by day, were brought into a common fold surrounded by a wall, which was provided with a gate or door and a little lodge. The door was given into the charge of a door-keeper or porter. In the morning he opened the door to admit the shepherds; each of these called the flock belonging to him, and the sheep obeyed the call of their shepherd and followed him to their own place of pasture. Our Saviour now takes the chief figures of His parable from the picture of Oriental rural life.—But the immediate occasion of the parable was given by the Pharisees, through their unjust and unauthorized measures against the adherents of Jesus. Not content with not believing in Him themselves, they wished forcibly to draw away from His those who did believe, and therefore expelled them from the synagogue. They hereby arrogated to themselves the supreme pastoral office, and guarded violently and arbitrarily the entrance to the kingdom of God. . . .
This whole parable and teaching of our Saviour here is a magnificent and glorious revelation of Himself as the Messias, the supreme Shepherd of all nations, a priestly King, who asserts His rights over all shepherds and peoples, and who will unite them all under His peaceful and beneficent pastoral staff in one great kingdom of happiness and glory, which will arise from His voluntary Death for all. How many glorious prophecies of the Messias, who is to be also the Shepherd of Israel (Ez. xxiv. 23 Isa. xl. II), of the king of nations (Ps. ii. 8); of the redeeming Death of the Messias (Isa. liii. 7); of the great kingdom that will spring from this Death (xxi. 28). All is of tremendous import, yet full of charm; all is perfectly in keeping with the character of our Saviour.
These words of His, spoken with majestic calmness and judicial severity, did not fail of their effect. The enemies of Jesus sought to weaken this effect by calling His sayings senseless and attributing them to possession by a devil (John x. 19 20). Others, again, replied that no demoniac could speak like this; no evil spirit could make the blind to see (John x. 21). And so there was dissension among them.
3. Application of This Figure to Ourselves
The application to ourselves consists in this, that we give ourselves unreservedly to this Shepherd of our souls. The motives are as follows. First, He is our rightful Shepherd, because He is our God and Lord. The pastoral office is only one title and manifestation of his royal sovereignty, which is His peculiar birthright as Man God. —Secondly, He is really and in all the mysteries of His life a Shepherd and the Good Shepherd. In His Incarnation He forsakes high heaven and the bright choirs of angels for our little earth, that He may seek after us poor strayed sheep, and He assumes our nature in order to win us. In His Public Life he is again the Good Shepherd. He hastens after the poor sinners over mountains and vale, through thorns and thickets; He carries them gently back, heals them by His grace, leads them to the good pastures of His teaching and example, and nourishes them with His own Flesh and Blood. In his Passion He dies in our stead, that we may live. In His Resurrection He gathers His sheep together again, comforts them, gives them the Holy Ghost and eternal life. He is everywhere the Good Shepherd. Oh, let us never forget His tender, all-embracing, all-sacrificing, faithful love, and all that we owe to it! Our Saviour is everything to us: fold, door, way, pasture and shepherd. —Thirdly, let us reflect that we must have a shepherd. We must belong to some flock and some shepherd. We have only the choice between Christ and the world or the Evil One. Is there a more selfish and cruel tyrant than the world and its prince? In what powerful and terrifying characters our Saviour depicts its sway! And what a terrible fate it prepares for us, whilst our Saviour promises us life, abundant, beatific, eternal life!
Let us therefore be good sheep of the Good Shepherd. Let us learn to know Him by His word, His example, His footprints. This is a mark by which the true sheep of Jesus may be known, this pleasure, this joy in everything that concerns Him. Let us follow Him, let us permit ourselves to be guided aright, when He wishes to hold us back from the poisonous pastures of worldly joys and from lurking wolves. Let us offer Him the poor gift of or life, our body, our sufferings and our labours. Who deserves it more than He? Let us follow Him everywhere, to Bethlehem, to Thabor, or to Mount Quarantine, Gethsemani and Calvary. If the Good Shepherd is with us, we shall want for nothing. “Dominus regit me, et nihil mhi deerit.” (Ps. xxii. 1.) ((Father Maurice Meschler, S.J., The Life of Our Lord Jesus Christ, The Son of God, in Meditations, Volume I, Freiburg Im Breisgau 1928 Herder & Co., Publishers to the Holy Apostolic See, pp. 610-612; 615-616.)
Yes, we must conform everything in our own lives and in our outlook on the world and all that happens in it exclusively through the eyes of the true Faith as we seek to follow the Good Shepherd, Christ the King, as His consecrated slaves through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of His Most Blessed Mother. To do this, however, we must sake to flee from the hirelings I the counterfeit church of conciliarism as conciliar “popes” and their “bishops” are hirelings who not only flee from danger, as most of them have done when ordered to shutter the doors of the churches by the civil authorities, but are active agents in leading the sheep who have entrusted themselves to their false pastoral leadership and care to perdition by teaching condemned principles, staging sacrilegious and abominable liturgies that are devoid of any sacramental validity or fruitfulness and “accompanying” those living in sin, up to and including the sin of Sodom itself, while refusing to exhort them to amend their lives. This is to say nothing of how these spiritual robber barons support the evils of “brain death,” the vivisection of human beings by means of vital organ donation and transplantation and the not-so-disguised euthanasia that is “palliative care.” Our Lady wants us to have nothing to do with the hirelings except to pray for their conversion as they are as blinded by their own pride and pagan superstitions as the Pharisees themselves.
Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ Himself specifically warned us that there would be wolves in sheep’s clothing who would seek to deceive and mislead the flock that belongs to Him, the Good Shepherd:
Enter ye in at the narrow gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there are who go in thereat. [14] How narrow is the gate, and strait is the way that leadeth to life: and few there are that find it! [15] Beware of false prophets, who come to you in the clothing of sheep, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.
[16] By their fruits you shall know them. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? [17] Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit, and the evil tree bringeth forth evil fruit. [18] A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can an evil tree bring forth good fruit. [19] Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit, shall be cut down, and shall be cast into the fire. [20] Wherefore by their fruits you shall know them. (Matthew 7: 13-20.)
Does any reader of this site want to contend that the fruit of the counterfeit church of conciliarism is anything but bad?
Well, there might be some who believe this to be so. However, the truth is otherwise, and the tree from which this bad fruit has come forth was planted by the Judas priests in the centuries leading up to the “election” of Angelo Roncalli and the “Second” Vatican Council.
As recounted in the Acts of the Apostles, Saint Paul the Apostle warned his own flock that there would come from their own ranks wolves in sheep’s clothing:
[26] Wherefore I take you to witness this day, that I am clear from the blood of all men; [27] For I have not spared to declare unto you all the counsel of God. [28] Take heed to yourselves, and to the whole flock, wherein the Holy Ghost hath placed you bishops, to rule the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood. [29] I know that, after my departure, ravening wolves will enter in among you, not sparing the flock. [30] And of your own selves shall arise men speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them. (Acts 20: 26-30.)
Many were the ravening wolves and false prophets who just bided their time in the decades immediately the death of Pope Pius XII on October 9, 1958.
Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ has pastured us in His Holy Catholic Church, and He nurtures us with the true Sacraments so that we, who are but dump sheep prone to go astray and lose sight of Our Good Shepherd, can lead us homely safely to Heaven as we cling so lovingly and loyally to His Most Blessed Mother, especially by means of her Most Holy Rosary.
Our Lady of Good Counsel, 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 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.
Saint Bede the Venerable, pray for us.
Pope Saint John I, pray for us.
Appendix A
On the Feast of Saint Bede the Venerable
Ah, but those us who are noble monolinguists (that is, we speak only English, and some of us do that very barely) not only have the holy example of Saint Augustine of Canterbury to remain steadfast in the Holy Faith, we have the example as well as Saint Bede the Venerable, a Doctor of Holy Mother Church, whose defense of the Faith against heresy and all corruption was described the great defender of the integrity of the Faith, Dom Prosper Gueranger:
The blessing given by Our Lord as he ascended not heaven has revealed its power in the most distant pagan lands, and during these days in the liturgical cycle bears witness to a concentration of graces upon the west of Europe.
The band of missionaries begged of Pope Eleutherius by the British king Lucius has been followed by the apostolate of Augustine, the envoy of Gregory the Great, and to-day, as though impatient to justify the lavish generosity of heaven, England brings forward her illustrious son, the Venerable Bede. This humble monk, whose life was spent in the praise of God, sought his divine Master in nature and in history, but above all in holy Scripture, which he studied with a loving attention and fidelity to tradition. He who was ever a disciple of the ancients, takes his place to-day among his masters as a Father and Doctor of the Church.
He thus sums up his own life: ‘I am priest of the monastery of the Apostles Peter and Paul. I was born on their land, and ever since my seventh year I have always lived in the house, observing the Rule, singing day by day in their church, and making it my delight to learn to teach or to write. Since I was made a priest, I have written commentaries on the holy Scripture for myself and my brethren, using the words of our venerated Fathers and following their method of interpretation. And, now, good Jesus, I beseech thee, thou who has given me in thy mercy to drink of the sweetness of thy word, grant me now to attain to the source, the fount of wisdom, and to gaze upon thee for ever and ever.’
The holy death of the servant of God was one of the most precious lessons he ever left to his disciples. His last sickness lasted fifty days, and he spent them, like the rest of his life, in singing the psalms and in teaching. As the Feast of the Ascension drew near, he repeated over and over again with tears of joy the Antiphon: ‘O king of glory, who has ascended triumphantly above the heavens, leave us not orphans, but send us the promise of the Father, the Spirit of truth.’ He said to his disciples in the words of St. Ambrose: ‘I have not lived in such a sort a to be ashamed to live with you, but I am not afraid to die, for we have a good Master.’ Then, returning to his translation of the Gospel of St. John and a work, which he had begun, on St. Isidore, he would say: ‘I do not wish my disciples to be hindered after my death by error nor to lose the fruit of their studies.’
On Tuesday before the Ascension he grew worse, and it was evident that the end was near. He was full of joy and spent the day in dictating and the night in prayers of thanksgiving. The dawn of Wednesday morning found him urging his disciples to hurry on their work. At the hour of Terce they left him to take part in the procession made on that day with the relics of the saints. One of them, a child, who stayed with him, said: ‘Dear master, there is but one chapter left; hast thou strength for it?’ ‘It is easy,’ he answered with a smile: ‘take thy pen, cut it and write—but make haste.’ At the hour of None, he sent for the priests of the monastery and gave them little presents, begging them to remember him at the altar. All wept. But he was full of joy, saying: ‘It is time for me, if it so please my Creator, to return to him who made me out of nothing, when as yet I was not. My sweet Judge has well ordered my life, and now the time of dissolution is at hand. I desire to be dissolved and to be with Christ. Yea, my soul longs to see Christ my king in his beauty.’
So did he pass this last day. Then came the touching dialogue with Wilbert, the child mentioned above: ‘Dear master, there is yet one sentence more.’ ‘Write quickly.’ After a moment: ‘It is finished,’ said the child. ‘Thou sayest well,’ replied the blessed man. ‘It is finished. Take my head in thy hands and support me over against the Oratory, for it is a great joy to me to see myself against that holy place where I have so often prayed.’ They had laid him on the floor his cell. He said: ‘Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost,’ and when he had named the Holy Ghost, he yielded up his soul.
The following account of this holy monk is given in the Breviary. (Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year: Volume 8—Paschal Time, Book II, pp. 613-615.)
Bede, a priest, was born at Jarrow, on the borders of England and Scotland. At the age of seven years he was placed under the care of holy Benedict Biscop, Abbot of Wearmouth, to be educated. Thereafter he became a monk, and so ordered his life that, whilst he should devote himself wholly to the study of the sciences and of doctrine, he might in nothing relax the discipline of his Order. There was no branch of learning in which he was not most thoroughly versed, but his chief care was the study of Holy Scriptures; and that he might the better understand them he acquired a knowledge of the Greek and Hebrew tongues. When he was thirty years of age he was ordained priest at the command of his Abbot, and immediately, on the advice of Acca, Bishop of Hexham, undertook the work of expounding the Sacred Books. In his interpretations he so strictly adhered to the teaching of the holy Fathers that he would advance nothing which was not approved by their judgment, nay, had the warrant of their very words. He ever hated sloth, and by habitually passing from reading to prayer, and in turn from prayer to reading, he so inflamed his soul that often amid his reading and teaching he was bathed in tears. Lest also his mind should be distracted by the cares of transitory things, he never would take the office of Abbot when it was offered to him.
The name of Bede soon became so famous for learning and piety that St. Sergius the Pope thought of calling him to Rome, where, certainly, he might have helped to solve the very difficult questions which had then arisen concerning sacred things. He wrote many books for the bettering of the lives of the faithful, and defending and extending of the faith. By those he gained everywhere such a reputation that the holy martyr Bishop Boniface styled him a Light of the Church; Lanfranc called him The Teacher of the English, and the Council of Aix-la-Chapelle The Admirable Doctor. But as his writings were publicly read in the churches during his life, and as it was not allowable to call him already a saint, they named him The Venerable, a title which in all times after has remained peculiarly his. The power of his teaching was the greater also, in that it was attested by a holy life and the graces of religious observance. In this way, by his earnestness and example, his disciples, who were many and distinguished, were made eminent, not only in letters and the sciences, but in personal holiness.
Broken at length by age and labour, he was seized by a grievous illness. Though he suffered under it for more than seven weeks, he ceased not from his prayers and his interpreting of the Scriptures; for at that time he was turning the Gospel of John into English for the use of his people. But when, on the Eve of the Ascension, he perceived that death was coming upon him, he desired to be fortified with the last sacraments of the Church: then, after he had embraced his companions, and was laid on a piece of sackcloth on the ground, he repeated the words, Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost, and fell asleep in the Lord. His body, very sweet, as it is related, breathing sweet odour, was buried in the monastery of Jarrow, and afterwards was translated to Durham with the relics of St. Cuthbert. Bede, who was already a Doctor among the Benedictines, and in other religious Orders, and venerated in certain dioceses, was declared by Pope Leo XIII., after consulting with the Congregation of Sacred Rites, to be a Doctor of the universal Church; and the Mass and Office for Doctors was ordered to be recited by all on his feast-day. (Matins, Divine Office, Feast of Saint Bede the Venerable.)
Once again, Dom Prosper Gueranger, mindful of the forces at work in the world in the middle of the Nineteenth Century, took pen to paper to connect the life of Saint Bede the Venerable to the events of his own day that are even more pronounced in our own:
‘Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost’ is the hymn of eternity. Before the creation of angels and of man, God, in the concert of the three divine Persons, sufficed for his own praise, and of this praise was adequate, infinite and perfect, like the divinity. This was only praise worthy of God. However magnificently the world may hymn its Creator n the thousand voices of nature, its praise is always below the divine Object. But, in the designs of God, creation was on day to send up to heaven an echo of that melody which is threefold and yet one, for the Word was to take flesh, through the operation of the Holy Ghost, in the womb of Mary, and was to be Son of creation fully and perfectly re-echoed the adorable harmonies once known only to the blessed Trinity. Since that day a man who has understanding finds his perfection in such conformity to the Son of Mary, that he may be one with the Son of God in the divine concert wherein God is glorified.
This, O Bede, was thy life, for understanding was given thee. It was fitting that thy last breath should be spent in that song of long which had filled thy mortal life, and that thus thou shouldst be spent in that song of love which had filled thy mortal life, and that thus shouldst enter at once into a glorious and blessed eternity. May we profit by that supreme lesson, which thus sums up all the teaching of thy grand and simple life!
Glory be to the almighty and merciful Trinity! These words form the close of the cycle of the mysteries which terminate at this time in the glorification of the Father, our sovereign Lord, by the triumph of the Son our Redeemer, and the inauguration of the reign of the Holy Ghost, our sanctifier. How splendid were the triumph of the Son and the reign of the Holy Ghost in the Isle of Saints in the days when Albion, twice given by Rome to Christ, shone like a priceless jewel in the diadem of the Spouse! O thou were wast the teacher of the English in the days of their fidelity, do not disappoint the hopes of the Supreme Pontiff, who has in our days extended thy cult to the Universal Church; but rekindle in the hearts of thy countrymen their former love for the Mother of all mankind. (Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year: Volume 8—Paschal Time, Book II, pp. 617-618.)
We could spend a lifetime reading and meditating upon the works of Saint Bede the Venerable, but of particular note to us should be his devotion to Our Lady and his defense of the dating of Easter that Jorge Mario Bergoglio believes can be “fixed,” placing the latter in full league the heretics Saint Bede himself combatted as described by Saint Cuthbert:
“With those who have wandered form the unity of the Catholic faith, either through not celebrating Easter at the proper time or through evil living, you are to have no dealings. Never forget that if you should ever be forced to make the choice of two evils I would prefer that you left the island, taking my bones with you, than you should be a party to wickedness on any pretext whatsoever, bending your necks to the yoke of schism. Strive most diligently to learn the catholic statutes of the fathers and put them into practice. Make it your special care to carry out those rules of the monastic life which God in His divine mercy has seen fit to give you through my ministry. I know that, though some may see that my teachings are not to be easily dismissed.” (Saint Cuthbert, as quoted by The Venerable Bede, The Life of Cuthbert. The Age of Bede, translated by J. F. Webb and edited with an introduction by D. H. Farmer, Penguin Books, published in 1965 and reprinted with revisions in 1988 and 1998, p. 95.)
Appendix B
On the Commemoration of Pope Saint John I
Saint Bede the Venerable shares his feast day with a pope, Saint John I, who was the victim of a pagan emperor who seethed with as much hatred for the true Faith as the Arian heretics that he, Pope Saint John I, fought against as he demonstrated his own steadfastness in the midst of persecution:
The palm of martyrdom was won by this holy Pope, not in a victory over a pagan persecutor, but in king. But this king was a heretic, and therefore an enemy of Pontiff that was zealous for the triumph of the true faith. The state of Christ’s Vicar here on earth is a state of combat; and it frequently happens that a Pope is veritably a martyr, without having shed his blood. St. John I, whom we honour to-day, was not slain by the sword; a loathsome dungeon was the instrument of his martyrdom; but there are many Popes who are now in heaven with him, martyrs like himself, who never passed a day in prison or in chains: the Vatican was their Calvary. They conquered, yet fell in the struggle with so little appearance of victory, that heaven had to take up the defence of their reputation, as was the case with the angelic Pontiff of the eighteenth century, Clement XIII.
The Saint of to-day teaches us, by his conduct, what should be the sentiment of every worthy member of the Church. He teaches us that we should never make a compromise with heresy, nor approve the measures taken by worldly policy for securing what it calls the rights of heresy. If the past ages aided by the religious indifference of Governments, have introduced the toleration of all religions, or even the principle that ‘all religions are to be treated alike by the state,’ let us, if we will, put up with this latitudinarianism, and be glad to see that the Church, in virtue of it, is guaranteed from legal persecution; but as Catholics, we can never look upon it as an absolute good. Whatever may be the circumstances in which Providence has placed us, we are bound to conform our views to the principles of our holy faith, and to the infallible teaching and practice of the Church—out of which, there is but contradiction, danger and infidelity. (Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year: Volume 8—Paschal Time, Book II,pp. 619-620.)
This has a practical application in our own day as it reminds of the fact that the conciliar revolutionaries have made every compromise imaginable with heresy and have defended its “rights” in civil society under the banner now of “diversity” and “respect” for all falsehoods, including those that deny the Sacred Divinity of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and that mock Him, His Blessed Mother, His Holy Catholic Church and the true liturgical rites He authorized her to institute in order to effect our sanctification and salvation.
Moreover, Dom Prosper Gueranger’s careful distinction between realizing the limitations imposed by the civil state’s imposition of “religious liberty” without ever once looking upon modern conditions as “an absolute good” as we must “conform our views to the principles of our holy faith, and to the infallible practice of the Church—out of which, there is but contradiction, danger and infidelity.”
It is not the English Way or the American Way or the “Conservative Cause” or anything else. It is Catholicism. Nothing else. And the conciliar revolutionaries themselves are the very embodiments of contradiction, danger and infidelity” as they embrace as an “absolute good” the very heresy of religious liberty that treats the Incarnation of the Second Person of the Most Blessed Trinity in the Virginal and Immaculate Womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary by the power of the Third Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, God the Holy Ghost, as a matter of complete indifference, if not a contempt that results in overt castigation and persecution of those who refuse to be silent about Christ the King and His true Catholic Church.
Here is the liturgical account of the life of Pope Saint John I:
John, by birth a Tuscan, governed the Church during the reign of Emperor Justin the Elder. He undertook a journey to Constantinople, in order to solicit the Emperor’s protection against the heretical king Theodoric, who was persecuting the faithful of Italy. God honoured the Pontiff, during this journey by several miracles. When about to visit Corinth, a certain nobleman lent him a horse, which he kept for his wife’s use, on account of its being so gentle. When the Pontiff afterwards returned, and gave the horse back to the nobleman, it was no longer a tame creature as before; but, as often as its mistress attempted to ride it, would snort and prance, and throw her from its back, as though it scorned to bear a woman’s weight, after it had carried the Vicar of Christ. The therefore gave the horse to the Pontiff. But a greater miracle was that which happened at Constantinople. Near the Golden Gate, and in the presence of an immense concourse of people, who had assembled there together with the Emperor to show honour to the Pontiff, he restored sight to a blind man. The Emperor also prostrated himself before him, out of a sentiment of veneration. Having arranged matters with the Emperor, he returned to Italy, and immediately addressed a letter to all its bishops, commanding them to consecrate the churches of the Arians, that they might be used for Catholic services. He added these words: ‘For, when at Constantinople, for the interests of the Catholic religion and on account of king Theodoric, we consecrated all the Arian churches we could find in that country, and made them Catholic.’ The body of St. John was taken from Ravenna to Rome, and buried in the Basilica of Saint Peter. (Matins, Hagiography of Pope Saint John I, Divine Office, May 27.)
The following prayer, composed, obviously by Dom Prosper Gueranger, teaches two important lessons: 1) that we must not view the world through as naturalists and thus be agitated by the twists and turns of the latest sideshows devised by the forces of hell to keep us away from prayer and spiritual reading; and 2) that we must “realize what divine truth is, and how error can never create prescription against her rights”:
Thy fair palm, O holy Pontiff, was the reward of proclaiming the spotless holiness of the Church of Christ. She is the glorious Church, as St. Paul calls her, having neither spot nor wrinkle; and, for that very reason she can never consent to yield heresy any given her by her divine Lord. Nowadays, men form their calculations on the interests of this passing world and are resolved to regulate society independently of all social order, as well as all truth. They have deprived the Church of her external constitution and influence; and at the same time, they give encouragement to the sect that have rebelled against her. O holy Pontiff, teach us to realize what divine truth is, and how error can never create prescription against her rights. Then shall we submit to the unhappy necessities handed down to us by the fatal triumph of heresy, without accepting, as a sign of progress, the principle and law that ‘all religions are on an equality.’ In thy prison, brave martyr, thou didist proclaim the rights of the one only Church; preserve us who are living during that revolt which was foretold by the Apostle, from those cowardly compromises, dangerous prejudices, and culpable want of solid instruction, which are the ruin of so many souls; and may our last words, on leaving this world, be those that were taught us by our Jesus himself: Heavenly Father! Hallowed be thy Name! May thy Kingdom come! (Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year: Volume 8—Paschal Time, Book II, pp. 619-620.)
Conclusion:
As May Nears An End, We Continue to Rely Upon Our Lady and Her Fatima Message
Although the end of the month of May is but three days away, this is still the month of Our Lady, who appeared to Jacinta and Francisco Marto and Lucia dos Santos in the Cova da Iria near Fatima, Portugal, for the first time on May 13, 1917. Our trust in Our Lady must be one of childlike simplicity, and our cooperation with the graces won for us by her Divine Son by the shedding of every single drop of His Most Precious Blood during His Passion and Death on the wood of the Holy Cross and that flow through her own most loving hands as the Mediatrix of All Graces must be persevering.
We have nothing to fear from the circumstances of the world nor from the double-mindedness of the likes of Jorge Mario Bergoglio as Our sins, of course, deserve no better, which is why we must, as the consecrated slaves of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ through Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart, pray as many Rosaries each day as our state-in-life permits, seeking to live more penitentially so that we do indeed strive for the ideal of Catholic moral life, relying upon the graces Our Lady sends us to avoid the stultifying legalistic minimalism that helped to produce the current ecclesiastical crisis.
We must plant the seeds for true change, the restoration of the Church Militant on earth and thus of the Social Reign of Christ the King, by doing what we can in our own lives to fulfill Our Lady's Fatima Message as we seek all contact with the revolutionaries who have devastated the Faith.
We can plant the change for true change, that is, of a conversion of all men and their nations to the Catholic Faith, outside of which there is no salvation and without which there can be no true social order, by relying upon Our Lady just as Saint Peter did.
What are we waiting for?
Our Lady is waiting to help us.
Why do we tarry to trust in her loving care?
Why do refuse to believe that the path out of this mess runs through her Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart?
Viva Cristo Rey! Vivat Christus Rex!
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 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.
Saint Bede the Venerable, pray for us.
Pope Saint John I, pray for us.