An Act That Speaks For Itself
by Thomas A. Droleskey
"It won't happen! It won't happen! He'll never do such a thing! A pope won't answer to the Jews. Are you serious?"
Well, it's happened! One of the chief progenitors of the "Second" Vatican Council, a man who believes in an anathematized notion of the nature of dogmatic truth, has struck again. Nothing is safe in the hands of this destroyer of souls. Not a thing. Everything can be re-defined and finessed to suit the needs of "modern man" and to cater to the ancient enemies of the Catholic Faith, among so many others. Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI is the very personification of this description of Modernism as provided by Pope Saint Pius X in Pascendi Dominici Gregis, September 8, 1907:
It remains for Us now to say a few words about the Modernist as reformer. From all that has preceded, it is abundantly clear how great and how eager is the passion of such men for innovation. In all Catholicism there is absolutely nothing on which it does not fasten. They wish philosophy to be reformed, especially in the ecclesiastical seminaries. They wish the scholastic philosophy to be relegated to the history of philosophy and to be classed among absolute systems, and the young men to be taught modern philosophy which alone is true and suited to the times in which we live. They desire the reform of theology: rational theology is to have modern philosophy for its foundation, and positive theology is to be founded on the history of dogma. As for history, it must be written and taught only according to their methods and modern principles. Dogmas and their evolution, they affirm, are to be harmonized with science and history.
What was reported on this site last month is now an accomplished fact. Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI has indeed changed the Prayer for the Jews to be used in the Good Friday liturgies conducted under the aegis of the Motu proprio Summorum Pontificum, July 7, 2007. Spin-doctors in various camps will be doing contemporary versions of the "Rosemary Woods Stretch" to dig in their heels as they minimize or seek to justify this completely unnecessary exercise of liturgical revisionism. A master spin-doctor such as James Carville or Karl Rove should be put to good use to seek to minimize the harm to souls, both of Catholics and non-Catholics alike, done by this effort to "finesse" a supposedly "delicate" issue by re-writing one of the most ancient prayers in the liturgy of the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church in order to make its expression more acceptable to the ancient enemies of Christ the King and His Catholic Church.
Here is the news story on this betrayal of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus and the good of souls, Catholic and non-Catholic alike, that was posted three days ago in The Jerusalem Post, providing a Jewish take on the issue (and indicating that some adherents of the Talmud had been given "inside" information about the official text of the new prayer before it was released yesterday, February 5, 2008, by office of the conciliar Secretariat of State):
LONDON - Jewish leaders have welcomed Pope Benedict XVI's decision to reformulate the Catholic Church's traditional Good Friday prayers.
The removal of references to the "darkness" and "blindness" of the Jews for their refusal to recognize Jesus as the messiah was a sign the pope was "deeply committed to advancing the relationship with the Jewish Community," Rabbi David Rosen, chairman of the International Jewish Committee for Interreligious Consultations, told The Jerusalem Post.
The new text will drop all reference to the "blindness" of the Jews, Milan's Il Giornale newspaper reported on January 18. The pope has prepared a draft version of the new prayer, which will be released in time for Holy Week celebrations in March, the report said.
In July, Benedict issued a "Motu Proprio" edict permitting the use of the 1962 Latin Tridentine missal during prayers.
The Latin prayers for Good Friday ask Catholics to "pray also for the Jews that the Lord our God may take the veil from their hearts and that they also may acknowledge Our Lord Jesus Christ," and ask God not to "refuse your mercy even to the Jews; hear the prayers which we offer for the blindness of that people so that they may acknowledge the light of your truth, which is Christ, and be delivered from their darkness."
The move upset Jewish leaders, and prompted the Chief Rabbinate to write to the pope expressing their concern.
Abraham H. Foxman, US director of the Anti-Defamation League, said then he was "extremely disappointed and deeply offended" by the reintroduction of "insulting anti-Jewish language" that would "now permit Catholics to utter such hurtful and insulting words."
"This is a theological setback in the religious life of Catholics and a body blow to Catholic-Jewish relations," he said on July 6
Catholic leaders were quick to downplay the anti-Jewish aspects of the prayers, but added that the call for conversion would likely be retained. In a July 11 interview in Avvenire, an Italian-Catholic newspaper, Vatican official Archbishop Angelo Amato denied the Latin prayers were anti-Jewish.
He said Catholics pray first "for our own conversion... And then we pray for the conversion of all Christians and of all non-Christians. The Gospel is for all."
Rosen said the July edict had nothing to do with Jews, adding that there was some "confusion" surrounding the concept of "conversion."
"Used in the sense that Archbishop Amato uses it, it does not mean the acceptance of the Christian Faith by a non-Christian," he said.
Rosen said last week that his "sources" in the Vatican "indicate that the new text composed by Pope Benedict does not call for the Jew to accept the Christian faith but is in keeping with the 1970 prayer commonly used by the Church in the vernacular that prays for the physical and spiritual well being of the Jews."
This pope has done more than just talk about improving relations between the two faiths, he said. "He invited many of us to his predecessor's funeral; to his own coronation; and he received our IJCIC [International Jewish Committee for Interreligious Consultations] delegation before he even received Protestant groups, let alone groups from other faiths. All this is unprecedented."
The Vatican would not confirm the Il Giornale report, and has declined comment. (Pope rewrites prayer following Jewish protest.)
Contrary to what some internet reports have indicated, the Prayer for the Conversion of the Jews that has been re-written by Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI for use in the Missal of Angelo Roncalli/John XXIII is not a moot point. Not at all. Although diocesan priests in the counterfeit church of conciliarism are forbidden to offer (or to simulate) the modernized version of the Immemorial Mass of Tradition during the Paschal Triduum of the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, priests, some of whom are truly ordained and many of whom are not, in the Motu communities (Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter, Institute of Christ the King, Society of Saint Mary Vianney in Campos, Brazil, Institute of the Good Shepherd in France, the Clear Creek Monastery in Oklahoma, et al.) will be able, at least in those instances where they have regular chapels under the authority of a conciliar "bishop," to offer the Good Friday service according to the 1961 Missal. They will have to say the re-written prayer under obedience to the one they recognize as the Vicar of Christ, thereby conceding the very principle of liturgical revisionism that is at the heart of conciliarism, a principle that many of the priests in the Motu communities have opposed vigorously, at least sotto voce--and sometimes in full throat, at least in private conversations I had with some of them during my indulterer years in the 1990s (although some have done so quite publicly in various printed journals in years gone by), as one of the reasons that they want nothing to do with the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo service.
Although Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League of B'Nai Brith is not pleased with the rewritten prayer as he sees it as a call for the Jews to acknowledge Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, conciliar Vatican officials have made it known to Jewish officials that the new prayer does not call for the "conversion of the Jews to the Christian faith." Foxman doth protest too much. The prayer itself is NOT a call for the conversion of the Jews despite its title. The fact that it removes the Scriptural language of the self-blindedness of the Jews is act of terrible infidelity to the truth.
Here's a reality check, ladies and gentlemen. Joseph Ratzinger REJECTS the belief that the Jews are self-blinded, that they made a free will choice to reject the Sacred Divinity of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity made Man in Our Lady's Virginal and Immaculate womb by the power of the Holy Ghost, that it the Old Testament is obscure that it is possible to read it a way that does not refer to Our Lord Himself. This is blasphemy. Joseph Ratzinger, the man who blasphemes God regularly (calling a mountain upon which Buddhists worship their devils as "sacred"--another one of Ratzinger's "masterstrokes" that those interested in political interpretations of his actions simply ignore as being of absolutely no account to the honor and glory of the Blessed Trinity).
“It is of course possible to read the Old Testament so that it is not directed toward Christ; it does not point quite unequivocally to Christ. And if Jews cannot see the promises as being fulfilled in him, this is not just ill will on their part, but genuinely because of the obscurity of the texts and the tension in the relationship between these texts and the figure of Jesus. Jesus brings a new meaning to these texts – yet it is he who first gives them their proper coherence and relevance and significance. There are perfectly good reasons, then, for denying that the Old Testament refers to Christ and for saying, No, that is not what he said. And there are also good reasons for referring it to him – that is what the dispute between Jews and Christians is about.” (Joseph Ratzinger, God and the World, p. 209.)
Let that be your judgment about the synagogue, too. For they brought the books of Moses and the prophets along with them into the synagogue, not to honor them but to outrage them with dishonor. When they say that Moses and the prophets knew not Christ and said nothing about his coming, what greater outrage could they do to those holy men than to accuse them of failing to recognize their Master, than to say that those saintly prophets are partners of their impiety? And so it is that we must hate both them and their synagogue all the more because of their offensive treatment of those holy men." (Saint John Chrysostom, Fourth Century, A.D.)
His Excellency Bishop Mark A. Pivarunas, the Superior-General of the Congregation of Mary Immaculate Queen, wrote the following about Joseph Ratzinger's blasphemy contained in God and the World:
What blasphemy! According to Ratzinger, divine revelation is obscure and there are perfectly good reasons for denying that the Old Testament refers to Christ! What he is saying in reality is that God has failed inasmuch as the divinely inspired prophecies aren't sufficiently clear enough. This is the reason that Pope St. Pius X, knowing this evil tenet of modernism, explicitly stated in the Oath Against Modernism that miracles and prophecies are the surest signs of the divine origin of the Christian religion, and that they are well adapted to all eras and all men. (Adsum, December 2007.)
The actual "revised" prayer itself is blasphemous as it sees fit to remove any reference to the self-blindedness of the Jews and a call for their conversion NOW, not after all of the "nations" have entered the Church! The Sacred Liturgy is not to be used for political reasons to engage in an apparent "battle of wits" with various leaders of Judeo-Masonic organizations. It is meant to reflect the integrity of the Faith, not the personal predilections of a Modernist who undeniably and unquestionably denies the very essence of the nature of the immutability of dogmatic truth.
Those eager to defend Ratzinger at every turn, however, will throw aside the linguistic meaning of the prayer in order to "prove" their positions before men, thereby casting aside all love of the integrity of the Sacred Liturgy in the same manner that they held their tongues so shamefully when Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI dared to spit on God by calling Mount Hiei "sacred." What Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI has done is to set up another Hegelian dialectic so familiar to students of conciliarism, wherein words can be construed in any number of ways so as to satisfy the demands of various constituencies. Arguments still persist, do they not, over the word "subsist" in Lumen Gentium, November 21, 1964? All manner of fruitless arguments will be made about the what the new prayer really means.
Here is the revised" prayer for use by the Motu communities:
Oremus et pro Iudaeis. Ut Deus et Dominus noster illuminet corda eorum, ut agnoscant Iesum Christum salvatorem omnium hominum.
Oremus.
Flectamus genua.
Levate.
Omnipotens sempiterne Deus, qui vis ut omnes homines salvi fiant et ad agnitionem veritatis veniant, concede propitius, ut plenitudine gentium in Ecclesiam Tuam intrante omnis Israel salvus fiat. Per Christum Dominum nostrum. Amen.
Let us pray, and also for the Jews.
May our God and Lord enlighten their hearts, so that they may acknowledge Jesus Christ, saviour of all men.
Let us pray.
Let us kneel.
Arise.
Almighty and everlasting God, who desirest that all men be saved and come to the knowledge of truth, mercifully grant that, as the fullness of the Gentiles enters into Thy Church, all Israel may be saved. Through Christ Our Lord. Amen.
Heated augments will be undertaken to "prove" the opposite of what a conciliar Vatican official has assured Rabbi David Rosen, that the new prayer cited above does indeed call for the conversion of the Jews, proving once again that ambiguity and uncertainty is the modus vivendi of conciliarspeak, that is, the novel, Modernist language of obscurity that has been employed by the counterfeit church of conciliarism from the onset of its "opening to the world" during the false pontificate of Angelo Roncalli/John XXIII. As mentioned before, this prayer speaks of a conversion at the end of time. It does not pray for the conversion of Jews now nor does it petition God to remove their self-blindedness. This prayer is an abject act of infidelity to the Catholic Faith.
Arguments about the "meaning" of the new prayer are, although certainly quite important, distractions from the central point that should remain clear in our minds: the fact that Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI has seen fit to use a central tool of conciliarism, liturgical revisionism, to cater to the ancient enemies of the Catholic Faith, which in and of itself is proof positive that the entirety of conciliarism's liturgical revolution has been connected from its outset to the promotion of false ecumenism. Even though nothing will satisfy the likes of Abraham Foxman save for an outright denial of the Sacred Divinity of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, the mere undertaking of the "revision" is an indication that the timelessness of the Mass must yield to the contingencies of time in the minds of the conciliarists, that the integrity of the perennial expression of the Faith must yield to the supposedly pressing demands of our "times."
Indeed, Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI noted in his letter to the conciliar "bishops" that accompanied Summorum Pontificum, July 7, 2008, indicated full well that it was his hope that the Novus Ordo service (ordinary form of the "one" Roman Rite) and the Missal of John XXIII (extraordinary form of the "one" Roman Rite, which leaves the Anglican Use Missal out in Limbo, I suppose, except for the fact that Limbo's existence is doubted by the conciliarists) would profit from their liturgical coexistence. In other words the the hermeneutics of the dialectic between the two forms of the "one" Roman Rite will improve the "ordinary" form while introducing elements from the "ordinary" form into the "extraordinary" form:
For that matter, the two Forms of the usage of the Roman Rite can be mutually enriching: new Saints and some of the new Prefaces can and should be inserted in the old Missal. The "Ecclesia Dei" Commission, in contact with various bodies devoted to the usus antiquior, will study the practical possibilities in this regard. The celebration of the Mass according to the Missal of Paul VI will be able to demonstrate, more powerfully than has been the case hitherto, the sacrality which attracts many people to the former usage. The most sure guarantee that the Missal of Paul VI can unite parish communities and be loved by them consists in its being celebrated with great reverence in harmony with the liturgical directives. This will bring out the spiritual richness and the theological depth of this Missal.
This passage from Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI's letter to the conciliar "bishops" that accompanied Summorum Pontificum seven months ago provided "papal" impetus to the "Pontifical" Commission Ecclesia Dei's longstanding desire to "mix and match" parts of the various Missals (1961, 1965, 1969) in the offering of the formerly-called "indult" Masses. Indeed, it was the corrupt Society of Saint John's intention to do precisely this, mix and match parts of various Missals (save for the Novus Ordo) that made it the darling of some of the priests who worked for the Ecclesia Dei Commission. The downfall of the Society of Saint John, which has reinvented itself with "episcopal" protection in the country of Paraguay, was only a temporary stumbling block to the sort of experiments within the 1961 Missal deemed by Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI to be within the realm of possibility. Ratzinger himself has now started the ball rolling in this regard by "reforming" the modernized version of the Immemorial Mass of Tradition so as to make the Good Friday Prayer for the Jews within it acceptable to "conservative" Catholics and Talmudic Jews at the same time. There will be more to come as the years progress.
Father Anthony Cekada pointed out in a post on the National Catholic Reporter website that the changing of the Good Friday Prayer for the Jews in the 1961 Missal opens up a number of other avenues of "change" for the quintessential man of change, Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI:
[National Catholic Reporter Vatican correspondent] John Allen is right in stating that once you start editing the old rite, it's impossible to know where to stop.
If the prayer for the Jews at the Good Friday service has to be changed, what about the Good Friday Matins (Tenebrae) readings that those who use the 1962 Breviary (Fraternity of St. Peter, Institute of Christ the King, etc. will be chanting? Passages like the following (from St. Augustine) will send Abe Foxman straight to ER:
"But O ye, his own Jewish people, ye in full truth did kill him. And how did ye kill him? With the sword of the tongue. For like a sword ye whet your tongue. And when did ye strike the blow, but when ye cried out : Crucify him, crucify him?"
For a translation of the whole text, see: Divine Office for Good Friday
That's just the tip of the iceberg. In a short study I published several years ago (Problems with the Prayers of the Modern Mass; TAN Books 1991), I demonstrated that on several points ("negative theology," detachment from the world, ecumenism, etc.) the doctrine of the old prayers was substantially different from that of the new.
In the dispute with Abp. Lefebvre (who ordained me) during the 1970s, Paul VI's Secretary of State, Archbishop Benelli, said that the old Mass was no longer acceptable because it represented "a different ecclesiology."
Perhaps some people are only now starting to realize that.
Father Cekada is entirely correct. All efforts to claim that the Immemorial Mass of Tradition and the Novus Ordo Missae represent the same ecclesiology are specious to the point of being laughable. The men who planned and implemented the liturgical revolution told us in no uncertain terms that they meant to overthrow the Roman Rite of antiquity, which they hated because it was founded in and expressed an ecclesiology that clearly and unequivocally communicated to the world that the Catholic Church is the one and only true Church and that the sacerdotal, hierarchical priesthood of the ordained priest was different both in degree and kind from the ordinary priesthood that the lay faithful exercise as a result of the Sacrament of Baptism. (The ordinary priesthood of the lay faithful means that we in the laity help to sanctify the world by means of our prayers and sacrifices and mortifications and penances and humiliations if we unite them to the Cross of the Divine Redeemer. Those of us who are totally consecrated to the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary surrender any claim on whatever merit we earn for our prayers and sufferings and indulgenced acts and good works, giving them to our Immaculate Queen and Mother to be disposed of as she sees fit for the honor and glory of the Blessed Trinity and for the good of the sanctification and salvation of souls.)
Look at the words of the revolutionaries themselves. These words put the lie to Joseph Ratzinger's claim that there was no "breach" of Tradition represented by the Novus Ordo Missae, a position that even he himself rejected rather forcefully when he was the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the [Conciliar] Faith. Look at these words to understand that it is indeed necessary for there to be further "revisions" in the 1961 Missal if it is to "coexist" in the counterfeit church of conciliarism with the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo service:
Let it be candidly said: the Roman Rite which we have known hitherto no longer exists. It is destroyed. (Father Joseph Gelineau, who worked with Annibale Bugnini's Consilium, Quoted and footnoted in the work of a Father John Mole, who believed that the Mass of the Roman Rite had been "truncated," not destroyed. Assault on the Roman Rite)
Certainly we will preserve the basic elements, the bread, the wine, but all else will be changed according to local tradition: words, gestures, colors, vestments, chants, architecture, decor. The problem of liturgical reform is immense. (Archbishop Karol Wojtyla, 1965, Quoted and footnoted in Assault on the Roman Rite. This has also been noted on this site in the past, having been provided me by a reader who had access to the 1980 French book in which the quote is found.)
We must strip from our Catholic prayers and from the Catholic liturgy everything which can be the shadow of a stumbling block for our separated brethren that is for the Protestants." (Annibale Bugnini, L'Osservatore Romano, March 19, 1965.)
"[T]he intention of Pope Paul VI with regard to what is commonly called the Mass, was to reform the Catholic liturgy in such a way that it should coincide with the Protestant liturgy.... [T]here was with Pope Paul VI an ecumenical intention to remove, or at least to correct, or at least to relax, what was too Catholic in the traditional sense, in the Mass, and I, repeat, to get the Catholic Mass closer to the Calvinist mass" (Dec. 19, 1993), Apropos, #17, pp. 8f; quoted in Christian Order, October, 1994. (Jean Guitton, a close friend of Giovanni Montini/Paul VI. The quotation and citations are found in Christopher A. Ferrara and Thomas E. Woods, Jr., The Great Facade, The Remnant Publishing Company, 2002, p. 317.)
The same awareness of the present state of the world also influenced the use of texts from very ancient tradition. It seemed that this cherished treasure would not be harmed if some phrases were changed so that the style of language would be more in accord with the language of modern theology and would faithfully reflect the actual state of the Church's discipline. Thus there have been changes of some expressions bearing on the evaluation and use of the good things of the earth and of allusions to a particular form of outward penance belonging to another age in the history of the Church. (General Instruction to the Roman Missal, Paragraph 15. Here is an admission that the texts of ancient tradition were being changed so that they "would be more in accord with the language of modern theology." What is modern theology, you ask? Modernism, thank you. How can anyone claim that tradition was preserved when the revolutionaries admit that they changed it in light of "modern theology" and the "actual state of the Church's discipline," no less to disparage, as I have noted in other articles and in my own G.I.R.M. Warfare, practices of "outward penance" that are said, quite arrogantly, "to belong to a different age in the history of the Church"?)
With the release of his new book, "A Challenging Reform: Realizing the Vision of the Liturgical Renewal, 1963-1975," edited by Mark Francis, John Page and Keith Pecklers, and published by The Liturgical Press, Archbishop Marini presents the case for the perennial validity of the council's liturgical reforms. He also challenges those who would, some 40 years later, attempt to undermine those reforms, in opposition not only to Vatican II but to the expressed wishes of Pope Paul VI himself.
In 1965, as the council was drawing to a close, Paul VI declared that the "new way of doing things will have to be different; it will have to prevent and shake up the passivity of the people present at Mass.
"Before," he continued, "it was enough to assist; now it is necessary to take part. Before, being there was enough, now attention and activity are required."
And that is the proverbial rub, as Archbishop [Piero] Marini [a chief acolyte of Bugnini's and the master of ceremonies for Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II and Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI until just recently] points out in his new book and in a subsequent interview conducted in December by John Allen, senior correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter.
The resistance, he insists, is not so much against the vernacular or a few ritual changes, but against the ecclesiology on which those changes are based.
Worship involves the whole Church. The Mass is not something performed by the clergy, but is an action of the entire congregation. Like an orchestra leader, the priest-presider cannot presume to play all of the instruments himself, but must strive to bring them into a general harmony. (Father Richard McBrien, commenting quite favorably, of course, on a book written by "Archbishop" Piero Marini in defense of the liturgical revolution. It is interesting to note that one of the editors, Dr. John Page, was the executive secretary of the International Commission on English in the Liturgy--ICEL--between 1980 and 2002. Dr. Page told me in an interview I conducted with him in his offices in Washington, D.C., in October of 1993 for The Wanderer that it was the duty of ICEL to bring "the liturgy into the Twenty-first Century, to "push the envelope" forward in behalf of the "liturgical renewal.")
Any honest observer can see that the Novus Ordo was the product of revolutionary minds. Men who hated the Immemorial Mass of Tradition and the Catholic Faith that it expressed and protected by its Christocentricity and its fixed rites meant to make of what purported to be their version of the Mass an exercise in community self-congratulations. The Novus Ordo service and the Immemorial Mass of Tradition do indeed represent divergent, not convergent, ecclesiologies.
True, the 1961 Missal (frequently referred to as the "1962 Missal" as the insertion of the name of Saint Joseph into the Canon of the Mass, the first change in the Canon of the Mass since the time of Pope Gregory the Great, who rearranged words in the Hanc Igitur at the end the Sixth Century) was full of changes made at the behest of Annibale Bugnini and approved by Angelo Roncalli/John XXIII who dared to suppress the feast of Saint Philomena the Wonderworker. (See: His Excellency Bishop Daniel L. Dolan, Pre-Vatican II Liturgical Changes: Road to the New Mass.) The fact that this modernized Missal can be subjected to even further revisions some forty-seven years after its initial issuance goes to show that nothing is stable, nothing is permanent about the Faith and its liturgical expression in the minds of those who are intent on salvaging a doctrinal and liturgical revolution that has devastated so many millions upon millions of souls and given such offense to God Himself.
To subject the modernized version of the Immemorial Mass of Tradition to even revisions to placate the ancient enemies of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, who, like Communists, are never fully placated or appeased, should be proof enough of the apostasy of the present moment. Imagine Pope Saint Pius X desiring to appease the blatant Christophobe named Abraham Foxman of the Masonic Anti-Defamation League of the B'Nai Brith organization. Imagine that, if you will, and remember what the sainted pontiff told the founder of Zionism, Theodore Herzl, on January 25, 1904:
HERZL: Yesterday I was with the Pope [Pius X]. . . . I arrived ten minutes ahead of time, and without having to wait I was conducted through a number of small reception rooms to the Pope. He received me standing and held out his hand, which I did not kiss. Lippay had told me I had to do it, but I didn’t. I believe this spoiled my chances with him, for everyone who visits him kneels and at least kisses his hand. This hand kiss had worried me a great deal and I was glad when it was out of the way.
He seated himself in an armchair, a throne for minor affairs, and invited me to sit by his side. He smiled in kindly anticipation. I began:
HERZL: I thank Your Holiness for the favor of granting me this audience. [I begged him to excuse my miserable Italian, but he said:
POPE: No, Signor Commander, you speak very well.
HERZL: [He is an honest, rough-hewn village priest, to whom Christianity has remained a living thing even in the Vatican. I briefly laid my request before him. But annoyed perhaps by my refusal to kiss his hand, he answered in a stern categorical manner.
POPE: We are unable to favor this movement [of Zionism]. We cannot prevent the Jews from going to Jerusalem—but we could never sanction it. The ground of Jerusalem, if it were not always sacred, has been sanctified by the life of Jesus Christ. As the head of the Church I cannot answer you otherwise. The Jews have not recognized our Lord, therefore we cannot recognize the Jewish people.
HERZL: [The conflict between Rome and Jerusalem, represented by the one and the other of us, was once again under way. At the outset I tried to be conciliatory. I said my little piece. . . . It didn’t greatly impress him. Jerusalem was not to be placed in Jewish hands.] And its present status, Holy Father?
POPE: I know, it is disagreeable to see the Turks in possession of our Holy Places. We simply have to put up with it. But to sanction the Jewish wish to occupy these sites, that we cannot do.
HERZL: [I said that we based our movement solely on the sufferings of the Jews, and wished to put aside all religious issues].
POPE: Yes, but we, but I as the head of the Catholic Church, cannot do this. One of two things will likely happen. Either the Jews will retain their ancient faith and continue to await the Messiah whom we believe has already appeared—in which case they are denying the divinity of Jesus and we cannot assist them. Or else they will go there with no religion whatever, and then we can have nothing at all to do with them. The Jewish faith was the foundation of our own, but it has been superceded by the teachings of Christ, and we cannot admit that it still enjoys any validity. The Jews who should have been the first to acknowledge Jesus Christ have not done so to this day.
HERZL: [It was on the tip of my tongue to remark, “It happens in every family: no one believes in his own relative.” But, instead, I said:] Terror and persecution were not precisely the best means for converting the Jews. [His reply had an element of grandeur in its simplicity:]
POPE: Our Lord came without power. He came in peace. He persecuted no one. He was abandoned even by his apostles. It was only later that he attained stature. It took three centuries for the Church to evolve. The Jews therefore had plenty of time in which to accept his divinity without duress or pressure. But they chose not to do so, and they have not done it yet.
HERZL: But, Holy Father, the Jews are in a terrible plight. I do not know if Your Holiness is aware of the full extent of their tragedy. We need a land for these harried people.
POPE: Must it be Jerusalem?
HERZL: We are not asking for Jerusalem, but for Palestine—for only the secular land.
POPE: We cannot be in favor of it.
[Editor Lowenthal interjects here] Here unrelenting replacement theology is plainly upheld as the norm of the Roman Catholic Church. Further, this confession, along with the whole tone of the Pope in his meeting with Herzl, indicates the perpetuation of a doctrinal emphasis that has resulted in centuries of degrading behavior toward the Jews. However, this response has the “grandeur” of total avoidance of that which Herzl had intimated, namely that the abusive reputation of Roman Catholicism toward the Jews was unlikely to foster conversion. Further, if, “It took three centuries for the Church to evolve,” it was that very same period of time that it took for the Church to consolidate and launch its thrust of anti-Semitism through the following centuries.
HERZL: Does Your Holiness know the situation of the Jews?
POPE: Yes, from my days in Mantua, where there are Jews. I have always been in friendly relations with Jews. Only the other evening two Jews were here to see me. There are other bonds than those of religion: social intercourse, for example, and philanthropy. Such bonds we do not refuse to maintain with the Jews. Indeed we also pray for them, that their spirit see the light. This very day the Church is celebrating the feast of an unbeliever who became converted in a miraculous manner—on the road to Damascus. And so if you come to Palestine and settle your people there, we will be ready with churches and priests to baptize all of you.
HERZL: [At this point Conte Lippay had himself announced. The Pope bade him be admitted. The Conte kneeled, kissed his hand, and joined in the conversation by telling of our “miraculous” meeting in the Bauer beerhall at Venice. The miracle was that he had originally intended to stay overnight in Padua, and instead, it turned out that he was given to hear me express the wish to kiss the Holy Father’s foot. At this the Pope made no movement, for I hadn’t even kissed his hand. Lippay proceeded to tell how I had expiated on the noble qualities of Jesus Christ. The Pope listened, and now and then took a pinch of snuff and sneezed into a big red cotton handkerchief. It is these peasant touches which I like about him best and which most of all compel my respect. Lippay, it would appear, wanted to account for his introducing me, and perhaps ward off a word of reproach. But the Pope said:
POPE: On the contrary, I am glad you brought me the Signor Commendatore.
HERZL: [As to the real business, he repeated what he had told me, until he dismissed us:]
POPE: Not possible!
HERZL: [Lippay stayed on his knees for an unconscionable time and never seemed to tire of kissing his hand. It was apparent that this was what the Pope liked. But on taking leave, I contented myself with shaking his hand warmly and bowing deeply. The audience lasted about twenty-five minutes. While spending the last hour in the Raphael gallery, I saw a picture of an Emperor kneeling before a seated Pope and receiving the crown from his hands. That’s how Rome wants it.] (Marvin Lowenthal, Diaries of Theodore Herzl, pp. 427- 430.)
Does anyone want to claim that Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI believes in the same Faith as Pope Saint Pius X, who said that Judaism had been superseded by Catholicism? Yes, I suppose that there are, although there has never been even one occasion when he has publicly said this in front of Talmudic Jews (and his famous press conference after the issuance of Dominus Iesus in 200 is full of double-speak and contradiction about whether Jews need to recognize Our Lord). It cannot be that Joseph Ratzinger, who believes that the Old Testament is so obscure that it can be read in a way that does not point unequivocally to Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and Pope Saint Pius X are both correct. Pope Saint Pius X would never betrayed the Catholic Faith by breaking the integrity of the liturgy in order to appease the ancient enemies of the Catholic Faith by rewriting a prayer at the behest of open supporters of one objective moral evil after another.
Let the polemicists seeking to defend the "orthodoxy" of Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI's awkward, ambiguous composition for the 1961 Missal's Good Friday service believe what they want. The text of the revised prayer does NOT seek the urgent conversion of Jews now. It is thoroughly consistent with what Father Raniero Cantalamessa, O.F.M., Cap, the "Preacher to the Papal Household," said on September 30, 2005, without ever once being contradicted by Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI:
If Jews one day come (as Paul hopes) to a more positive judgment of Jesus, this must occur through an inner process, as the end of a search of their own (something that in part is occurring). We Christians cannot be the ones who seek to convert them. We have lost the right to do so by the way in which this was done in the past. First the wounds must be healed through dialogue and reconciliation. (Zenit, September 30, 2005.)
The new prayer is thoroughly consistent with the spirit of Father Cantalamessa's remarks in 2005. It is thoroughly consistent with the infidelities of conciliarism that have reaffirmed Talmudic Jews in their false religion.
The plain fact of the matter is that false ecumenism rules the day in the counterfeit church of conciliarism to such an extent that the only "safe" language to use when dealing with the enemies of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and His Catholic Church that He founded upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope, is ambiguous and obscure language. There can be no direct, unambiguous calls for the unconditional conversion of anyone to the Catholic Faith in the world of conciliarism. (Israel will "enter the Church" after the fullness of the Gentiles have done so?!)
We have entered into the season of prayer, penance, fasting, almsgiving, mortification and reparation that is Lent. Unless we are genuine mystics, which I don't think that too many of us are, we have absolutely no idea of not only how our many sins caused Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ to suffer once in time during His Passion and Death but have caused His Mystical Body, the Church Militant here on earth, to undergo her own Passion, Death and Burial in the past nearly fifty years. While we must note and denounce the apostasies of the moment as we pray for the conversion of those who are responsible for their propagation and proliferation over the course of time, we must also recognize that the key to the restoration of the Church Militant on earth starts with the restoration of right order within our own immortal souls, especially by our voluntary embrace of penances during this holy season of Lent and by our praying as many Rosaries each day as our states-in-life permit,
The era of apostasy and betrayal will pass. Our Lady will manifest the Triumph of her Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart. May it be our privilege to offer unto the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus our efforts at interior spiritual reform through that same Immaculate Heart of Mary so that at least a few seeds will be planted in the souls of others for the day when all men around the world will be members of the Catholic Church and exclaim with hearts beating as one with the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary:
Vivat Christus Rex! Viva Cristo Rey!
Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us.
Saint Joseph, pray for us.
Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.
Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.
Saint 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 Titus, pray for us.
Saint Dorothy, pray for us.
See also: A Litany of Saints
