Kasper the Ghastly Ghost

by Thomas A. Droleskey

Assuming that Catholic News Service has accurately reported on the address given by Walter Cardinal Kasper at Ushaw College, a Catholic seminary, in Dublin, Ireland, we have yet more proof of how vast the chasm between the consistent teaching of the Church on seeking the conversion of non-Catholics to the true Faith and the novelty that enshrines the errors condemned by Pope Pius XI in Mortalium Animos in 1928, namely, the novelty of ecumenism.

Here is the Catholic News Service report, written by Cindy Wooden, in its entirety:

DURHAM, England (CNS) -- While many of the doctrinal differences that divided Christians for centuries are close to being resolved, different approaches to modern ethical questions are making Christian unity appear as distant as ever, said Cardinal Walter Kasper.

"I am very sad we are not able to speak with one voice on these issues to a world that needs to hear," the cardinal said Jan. 13 at an international ecumenical conference at Ushaw College, a Catholic seminary in Durham.

The cardinal, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, received an honorary doctorate Jan. 12 from the University of Durham and delivered the keynote address Jan. 13 at the opening of an ecumenical conference organized by the university to discuss steps the Catholic Church and its dialogue partners should take at a time when full church unity seems distant.

Cardinal Kasper told conference participants that believing Christians cannot give up hope for Christian unity because church division is "a sin before God and a scandal before the world."

However, he acknowledged a sense that, after 40 years of what appeared to be major progress toward unity, ecumenical dialogue has come up against serious, unforeseen obstacles.

Differences among Catholics, Orthodox, Anglicans and Protestants over issues such as homosexual activity, abortion, euthanasia and other moral questions "are not on the top of the hierarchy of truths" -- like the belief in Jesus as savior is -- "but they are very emotional and, therefore, very divisive," the cardinal said.

Just five or six years ago, he said, Catholic bishops and leaders of some other churches seemed ready to explore concrete steps their communities could take toward organizational unity.

Since then, however, it has become clear that "both the ecumenical mood and the ecumenical situation worldwide have changed so radically as to virtually run counter to the ecumenical movement toward unity," he said.

In Europe and North America, he said, "the changed situation is evident in a new polarization and fragmentation exemplified by divergent and even conflicting verdicts on ethical problems."

He told a press conference at Ushaw that the differences in how Christian communities are dealing with ethical matters were not automatically church-dividing; "we have to see if they are differences in pastoral approaches or doctrinal differences, " he said.

While the differences hinder ecumenical dialogue, he said, the situation is further complicated by the internal divisions the issues create, such as the tensions currently felt within the Anglican Communion over the ordination of openly gay men and the blessing of homosexual unions.

In his speech to the conference, Cardinal Kasper said that at a moment of some confusion and disillusionment over the prospect of Christian unity Christians must ask themselves what the purpose of ecumenism is.

"Ecumenical unity is not to be thought of along the lines of the fusion of worldwide megacorporations," he said. Rather, Christians are called by God to be united in their faith in Jesus, in the sacraments, in the proclamation of the Gospel and in striving for holiness, he said.

By committing themselves to holiness and to unity in the fundamental truths of Christianity, he said, Christians will come closer to full unity than they ever could hope to do by planning corporate mergers.

"The fact that the unity of the church is grounded in its participation in the holy does indeed have real consequences for the concrete form of the church," he said.

Called to be holy, Cardinal Kasper said, the church also is called to be prophetic, to listen to the world, to understand its hopes and struggles and to offer guidance and hope based on the Gospel.

"The dividing lines which have unfortunately become evident on ethical issues since the latter half of the last century are therefore not secondary or irrelevant for an understanding of the nature of the church," he said.

"In touching on holiness, they touch on the essential nature of the church itself," the cardinal said.

Cardinal Kasper acknowledged that Christian communities that, for example, have ordained women to the priesthood or have decided to bless homosexual unions have done so out of a belief that they are exercising a prophetic role in society and demonstrating God's love, acceptance and call to all people.

However, he said, Christian communities must act in continuity with the faith of the Gospel and the earliest Christian communities.

"We should not imagine that we possess more of the Holy Spirit today than the church of the early church fathers and the great theologians of the Middle Ages," he said.

Cardinal Kasper also told conference participants -- some 140 scholars and bishops from 10 countries invited because of their expertise -- that he knows the Roman Catholic Church has many things to learn from other Christian communities.

The Catholic commitment to ecumenism, he said, is not based on wanting to draw all Christians into the Catholic fold, nor does it seek to create a new church, drawing on the best of each of the ecumenical partners.

This is one of the most striking examples of the contrast between Our Lord's own call to convert people (remember a chap named, say, Saul of Tarsus?) and the refusal of conciliar and postconciliar popes and cardinals and bishops and priests to seek the return of non-Catholic Christians to the true Church and their refusal to seek the confusion of non-Christians (Jews, Mohammedans, Buddhists, Hindus, etc.).

Take, for example, the last sentence in the Catholic News Report. "The Catholic commitment to ecumenism, he said, is not based on wanting to draw all Christians into the Catholic fold, nor does it seek to create a new church, drawing on the best of each of the ecumenical partners."

If Cardinal Kasper is correct, you see, then the specific and categorical invitation of all Protestants to return to the Catholic Church was mistaken. Saint Peter Canisius, for example, gave up his life mistakenly by trying to convert Protestants back to the true Faith. Saint Francis de Sales was wrong to have brought over 60,000 people back into the one Sheepfold of Christ by the beauty and attractiveness of his preaching. Saint Josaphat was wrong to have sought the conversion of the Orthodox. Pope Pius IX was wrong to have issues the following invitation in Iam Vos Omnes in 1868:

.

It is for this reason that so many who do not share “the communion and the truth of the Catholic Church” must make use of the occasion of the Council, by the means of the Catholic Church, which received in Her bosom their ancestors, proposes [further] demonstration of profound unity and of firm vital force; hear the requirements [demands] of her heart, they must engage themselves to leave this state that does not guarantee for them the security of salvation. She does not hesitate to raise to the Lord of mercy most fervent prayers to tear down of the walls of division, to dissipate the haze of errors, and lead them back within holy Mother Church, where their Ancestors found salutary pastures of life; where, in an exclusive way, is conserved and transmitted whole the doctrine of Jesus Christ and wherein is dispensed the mysteries of heavenly grace.

It is therefore by force of the right of Our supreme Apostolic ministry, entrusted to us by the same Christ the Lord, which, having to carry out with [supreme] participation all the duties of the good Shepherd and to follow and embrace with paternal love all the men of the world, we send this Letter of Ours to all the Christians from whom We are separated, with which we exhort them warmly and beseech them with insistence to hasten to return to the one fold of Christ; we desire in fact from the depths of the heart their salvation in Christ Jesus, and we fear having to render an account one day to Him, Our Judge, if, through some possibility, we have not pointed out and prepared the way for them to attain eternal salvation. In all Our prayers and supplications, with thankfulness, day and night we never omit to ask for them, with humble insistence, from the eternal Shepherd of souls the abundance of goods and heavenly graces. And since, if also, we fulfill in the earth the office of vicar, with all our heart we await with open arms the return of the wayward sons to the Catholic Church, in order to receive them with infinite fondness into the house of the Heavenly Father and to enrich them with its inexhaustible treasures. By our greatest wish for the return to the truth and the communion with the Catholic Church, upon which depends not only the salvation of all of them, but above all also of the whole Christian society: the entire world in fact cannot enjoy true peace if it is not of one fold and one shepherd.

Pope Leo XIII expressed repeatedly throughout his pontificate the same Catholic truth of seeking the return of Protestants to the true Church. Consider, for example, his exhortation in Testem Benevolentiae, January 22, 1899:

There is nothing closer to our heart than to have those who are separated from the fold of Christ return to it, but in no other way than the way pointed out by Christ.

The fog of Modernism is such, however, that what has been lost in the haze of the mind of such men as Walter Cardinal Kasper is the authentic patrimony of the Catholic Church to seek the conversion of souls to her bosom. Also lost in the mind of Cardinal Kasper is the fact that perfect unity does exist in the Catholic Church. The fact that there are non-Catholics who profess the Holy Name of Our Divine Redeemer does not make the unity of the true Church less than perfect as those non-Catholics are not part of the Catholic Church. They do not participate in the unity of the Church. They do not, as Pope Pius IX noted, share "the communion and the truth of the Catholic Church." They must be exhorted to "return to the one fold of Christ." Protestants, who do not have access to the sacraments instituted by Our Lord and who are dissenters from the Received Teaching that He deposited solely to the Catholic Church, are not assured of their salvation. Indeed, Pope Pius IX condemned as erroneous the following propositions in The Syllabus of Errors that are at least implicitly denied in the entire approach of  the conciliarist novelty of ecumenism:

15. Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true. -- Allocution "Maxima quidem," June 9, 1862; Damnatio "Multiplices inter," June 10, 1851.

16. Man may, in the observance of any religion whatever, find the way of eternal salvation, and arrive at eternal salvation. -- Encyclical "Qui pluribus," Nov. 9, 1846.

17. Good hope at least is to be entertained of the eternal salvation of all those who are not at all in the true Church of Christ. -- Encyclical "Quanto conficiamur," Aug. 10, 1863, etc.

18. Protestantism is nothing more than another form of the same true Christian religion, in which form it is given to please God equally as in the Catholic Church. -- Encyclical "Noscitis," Dec. 8, 1849.

There are a number of other glaring errors in Cardinal Kasper's Ushaw College address of a week ago.

Apart from the claptrap about the claim that the "unity" Our Lord desires for the Church has yet to be fulfilled, Kasper erred grievously when he states that "ethical divisions" are a stumbling block to the realization of the goals of ecumenism. He also erred when calling such sins that cry out to Heaven for vengeance as abortion and unnatural perversity against the Sixth and Ninth Commandments as "not top of the line issues" that could be separated from "fundamental" matters of belief. There is a simple reason why preborn children are being killed under cover of law around the world and why perversity is being promoted in every aspect of our culture: the overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King that was begun with Martin Luther and institutionalized under the anti-Incarnational ethos of Judeo-Masonry. The way to ameliorate the problems of Modernity, which are primary results of the Protestant Revolt and the influence of Judeo-Masonry, is to seek the conversion of all men and of their nations to the true Faith.

Pope Pius XI spoke directly to the spread of moral evils as the direct consequence of the Protestant Revolt. Writing in Casti Connubii in 1930, he noted that "private judgment" on Faith and morals leads to moral anarchy and decay, both personally and socially:

On this account, in order that no falsification or corruption of the divine law but a true genuine knowledge of it may enlighten the minds of men and guide their conduct, it is necessary that a filial and humble obedience towards the Church should be combined with devotedness to God and the desire of submitting to Him. For Christ Himself made the Church the teacher of truth in those things also which concern the right regulation of moral conduct, even though some knowledge of the same is not beyond human reason. For just as God, in the case of the natural truths of religion and morals, added revelation to the light of reason so that what is right and true, "in the present state also of the human race may be known readily with real certainty without any admixture of error," so for the same purpose he has constituted the Church the guardian and the teacher of the whole of the truth concerning religion and moral conduct; to her therefore should the faithful show obedience and subject their minds and hearts so as to be kept unharmed and free from error and moral corruption, and so that they shall not deprive themselves of that assistance given by God with such liberal bounty, they ought to show this due obedience not only when the Church defines something with solemn judgment, but also, in proper proportion, when by the constitutions and decrees of the Holy See, opinions are prescribed and condemned as dangerous or distorted.

Wherefore, let the faithful also be on their guard against the overrated independence of private judgment and that false autonomy of human reason. For it is quite foreign to everyone bearing the name of a Christian to trust his own mental powers with such pride as to agree only with those things which he can examine from their inner nature, and to imagine that the Church, sent by God to teach and guide all nations, is not conversant with present affairs and circumstances; or even that they must obey only in those matters which she has decreed by solemn definition as though her other decisions might be presumed to be false or putting forward insufficient motive for truth and honesty. Quite to the contrary, a characteristic of all true followers of Christ, lettered or unlettered, is to suffer themselves to be guided and led in all things that touch upon faith or morals by the Holy Church of God through its Supreme Pastor the Roman Pontiff, who is himself guided by Jesus Christ Our Lord.

Additionally, Pope Leo XIII, writing in Satis Cognitum in 1896, explained that there are no "secondary" issues related to the Faith. Indeed, everyone must be of one mind and heart with Our Lord as He has revealed Himself through His true Church, which He created upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope:

Agreement and union of minds is the necessary foundation of this perfect concord amongst men, from which concurrence of wills and similarity of action are the natural results. Wherefore, in His divine wisdom, He ordained in His Church Unity of Faith; a virtue which is the first of those bonds which unite man to God, and whence we receive the name of the faithful - "one Lord, one faith, one baptism" (Eph. iv., 5). That is, as there is one Lord and one baptism, so should all Christians, without exception, have but one faith. And so the Apostle St. Paul not merely begs, but entreats and implores Christians to be all of the same mind, and to avoid difference of opinions: "I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all speak the same thing, and that there be no schisms amongst you, and that you be perfect in the same mind and in the same judgment" (I Cor. i., 10). Such passages certainly need no interpreter; they speak clearly enough for themselves. Besides, all who profess Christianity allow that there can be but one faith. It is of the greatest importance and indeed of absolute necessity, as to which many are deceived, that the nature and character of this unity should be recognized. And, as We have already stated, this is not to be ascertained by conjecture, but by the certain knowledge of what was done; that is by seeking for and ascertaining what kind of unity in faith has been commanded by Jesus Christ.

The heavenly doctrine of Christ, although for the most part committed to writing by divine inspiration, could not unite the minds of men if left to the human intellect alone. It would, for this very reason, be subject to various and contradictory interpretations. This is so, not only because of the nature of the doctrine itself and of the mysteries it involves, but also because of the divergencies of the human mind and of the disturbing element of conflicting passions. From a variety of interpretations a variety of beliefs is necessarily begotten; hence come controversies, dissensions and wranglings such as have arisen in the past, even in the first ages of the Church. Irenaeus writes of heretics as follows: "Admitting the sacred Scriptures they distort the interpretations" (Lib. iii., cap. 12, n. 12). And Augustine: "Heresies have arisen, and certain perverse views ensnaring souls and precipitating them into the abyss only when the Scriptures, good in themselves, are not properly understood" (In Evang. Joan., tract xviii., cap. 5, n. 1). Besides Holy Writ it was absolutely necessary to insure this union of men's minds - to effect and preserve unity of ideas - that there should be another principle. This the wisdom of God requires: for He could not have willed that the faith should be one if He did not provide means sufficient for the preservation of this unity; and this Holy Writ clearly sets forth as We shall presently point out. Assuredly the infinite power of God is not bound by anything, all things obey it as so many passive instruments. In regard to this external principle, therefore, we must inquire which one of all the means in His power Christ did actually adopt. For this purpose it is necessary to recall in thought the institution of Christianity.

We are mindful only of what is witnessed to by Holy Writ and what is otherwise well known. Christ proves His own divinity and the divine origin of His mission by miracles; He teaches the multitudes heavenly doctrine by word of mouth; and He absolutely commands that the assent of faith should be given to His teaching, promising eternal rewards to those who believe and eternal punishment to those who do not. "If I do not the works of my Father, believe Me not" John x., 37). "If I had not done among them the works than no other man had done, they would not have sin" (Ibid. xv., 24). "But if I do (the works) though you will not believe Me, believe the works" (Ibid. x., 38). Whatsoever He commands, He commands by the same authority. He requires the assent of the mind to all truths without exception. It was thus the duty of all who heard Jesus Christ, if they wished for eternal salvation, not merely to accept His doctrine as a whole, but to assent with their entire mind to all and every point of it, since it is unlawful to withhold faith from God even in regard to one single point. . . .

Let all those, therefore, who detest the wide-spread irreligion of our times, and acknowledge and confess Jesus Christ to be the Son of God and the Saviour of the human race, but who have wandered away from the Spouse, listen to Our voice. Let them not refuse to obey Our paternal charity. Those who acknowledge Christ must acknowledge Him wholly and entirely. "The Head and the body are Christ wholly and entirely. The Head is the only-begotten son of God, the body is His Church; the bridegroom and the bride, two in one flesh. All who dissent from the Scriptures concerning Christ, although they may be found in all places in which the Church is found, are not in the Church; and again all those who agree with the Scriptures concerning the Head, and do not communicate in the unity of the Church, are not in the Church" (S. Augustinus, Contra Donatistas Epistola, sive De Unit. Eccl., cap. iv., n. 7).

And with the same yearning Our soul goes out to those whom the foul breath of irreligion has not entirely corrupted, and who at least seek to have the true God, the Creator of Heaven and earth, as their Father. Let such as these take counsel with themselves, and realize that they can in no wise be counted among the children of God, unless they take Christ Jesus as their Brother, and at the same time the Church as their mother. We lovingly address to all the words of St. Augustine: "Let us love the Lord our God; let us love His Church; the Lord as our Father, the Church as our Mother. Let no one say, I go in deed to idols, I consult fortune-tellers and soothsayers; but I leave not the Church of God: I am a Catholic. Clinging to thy Mother, thou offendest thy Father. Another, too, says: 'Far be it from me; I do not consult fortune-telling, I seek not soothsaying, I seek not profane divinations, I go not to the worship of devils, I serve not stones: but I am on the side of Donatus.' What doth it profit thee not to offend the Father, who avenges an offense against the Mother? What doth it profit to confess the Lord, to honour God, to preach Him, to acknowledge His Son, and to confess that He sits on the right hand of the Father, if you blaspheme His Church? . . . If you had a beneficent friend, whom you honoured daily - and even once calumniated his spouse, would you ever enter his house? Hold fast, therefore, O dearly beloved, hold fast altogether God as your Father, and the Church as your Mother" (Enarratio in Psal. Lxxxviii., sermo ii., n. 14).

"Ethical divisions" are not a "stumbling block" to ecumenism. They are the logical result of the forces let loose in the Sixteenth Century and thereafter. To assert, as Cardinal Kasper does, that these "ethical divisions" are not "top of the line" is to minimize the horror of the promotion in civil society of the very thing that caused Our Lord to suffer unspeakably in His Sacred Humanity during His Passion and Death, sin, and to ignore that the Actual Sins of men today wound the Mystical Body of Christ and thus contribute to disorder in the souls of men and in the lives of their nations. There is no ecumenical, inter-denominational or non-denominational way to address any problem in the world. We must always view ourselves and the events of the world through the eyes of the true Faith, Catholicism. Any other method is from the devil, who does not want human beings to be nourished by the Eucharist and to have their Mortal Sins, if any, committed after baptism absolved by an alter Christus in the Sacrament of Penance.

Cardinal Kasper's fallacious distinction between "fundamental" and "non-fundamental" truths was also condemned in no uncertain terms by Pope Pius XI in Mortalium Animos in 1928:

Besides this, in connection with things which must be believed, it is nowise licit to use that distinction which some have seen fit to introduce between those articles of faith which are fundamental and those which are not fundamental, as they say, as if the former are to be accepted by all, while the latter may be left to the free assent of the faithful: for the supernatural virtue of faith has a formal cause, namely the authority of God revealing, and this is patient of no such distinction. For this reason it is that all who are truly Christ's believe, for example, the Conception of the Mother of God without stain of original sin with the same faith as they believe the mystery of the August Trinity, and the Incarnation of our Lord just as they do the infallible teaching authority of the Roman Pontiff, according to the sense in which it was defined by the Ecumenical Council of the Vatican. Are these truths not equally certain, or not equally to be believed, because the Church has solemnly sanctioned and defined them, some in one age and some in another, even in those times immediately before our own? Has not God revealed them all? For the teaching authority of the Church, which in the divine wisdom was constituted on earth in order that revealed doctrines might remain intact for ever, and that they might be brought with ease and security to the knowledge of men, and which is daily exercised through the Roman Pontiff and the Bishops who are in communion with him, has also the office of defining, when it sees fit, any truth with solemn rites and decrees, whenever this is necessary either to oppose the errors or the attacks of heretics, or more clearly and in greater detail to stamp the minds of the faithful with the articles of sacred doctrine which have been explained. But in the use of this extraordinary teaching authority no newly invented matter is brought in, nor is anything new added to the number of those truths which are at least implicitly contained in the deposit of Revelation, divinely handed down to the Church: only those which are made clear which perhaps may still seem obscure to some, or that which some have previously called into question is declared to be of faith.

So, Venerable Brethren, it is clear why this Apostolic See has never allowed its subjects to take part in the assemblies of non-Catholics: for the union of Christians can only be promoted by promoting the return to the one true Church of Christ of those who are separated from it, for in the past they have unhappily left it. To the one true Church of Christ, we say, which is visible to all, and which is to remain, according to the will of its Author, exactly the same as He instituted it. During the lapse of centuries, the mystical Spouse of Christ has never been contaminated, nor can she ever in the future be contaminated, as Cyprian bears witness: "The Bride of Christ cannot be made false to her Spouse: she is incorrupt and modest. She knows but one dwelling, she guards the sanctity of the nuptial chamber chastely and modestly."The same holy Martyr with good reason marveled exceedingly that anyone could believe that "this unity in the Church which arises from a divine foundation, and which is knit together by heavenly sacraments, could be rent and torn asunder by the force of contrary wills." For since the mystical body of Christ, in the same manner as His physical body, is one, compacted and fitly joined together,[23] it were foolish and out of place to say that the mystical body is made up of members which are disunited and scattered abroad: whosoever therefore is not united with the body is no member of it, neither is he in communion with Christ its head.

Cardinal Kasper is a quintessential Modernist. There are elements of truth to be found, albeit quite similar to a search for the hidden characters in the old Highlights magazine for children, in his remarks. He is correct when stating that we do not have "more" of the Holy Ghost that the Church did in the Middle Ages. However, he has absolutely no understanding of what that means! Furthermore, as a Modernist, though, Kasper is prone to contradict himself, which he did in the Ushaw address of January 13, 2006, by stating that "ethical" issues were not "top of the line" in ecumenical discussions, only later to state that they are not "secondary or irrelevant for an understanding of the nature of the church." He is, obviously, confused, in that he does not see how he has contradicted himself and he does not see that that the Catholic Church is alone the sole repository of the Deposit Faith and has thus been entrusted with the singular responsibility of explicating infallibly all that is contained therein, including all of the precepts of the Divine positive law and the natural law. Such confusion is the product of Modernity in the world and Modernism in the Church.

The Diabolical Disorientation that produces the confusion abroad in the Church in her human elements today, which include Pope Benedict XVI's embrace of the multiple errors of the late Hans Urs von Balthasar's promotion of "Universal Salvation" and his canonization of the late Protestant syncretist heretic named Roger Schutz and his own refusal to seek to convert non-Catholics to the Church, will be overcome only when some pope actually consecrates Russia to Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart with all of the world's bishops. The haze of Hegelianism (the belief that all ideas are in constant motion and are evolving in the direction of a new truths) will be burned away. Modernism will be suppressed. The authentic patrimony of the Church, including the restoration of the Immemorial Mass of Tradition and the Social Reign of Christ the King, will be restored.

Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint Marius and Companions, pray for us.

Saint Canute, pray for us.

Saints Fabian and Sebastian, pray for us.

Saint Agnes, pray for us.

Saint Vincent the Deacon, pray for us.

Saint Anastasius, pray for us.

Saint Peter Canisius, pray for us.

Saint Josaphat, pray for us.

Saint Philomena, pray for us.

Blessed Jacinta, pray for us.

Blessed Francisco, pray for us.

Sister Lucia, pray for us.