Home Articles Golden Oldies Speaking Schedule About Christ or Chaos Links Donations Contact Us
                               April 2, 2013

 

Modernism Repackaged As Newness

by Thomas A. Droleskey

Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who is now in his twentieth day of masquerading himself as Petrine Minister Francis, used his "homily" during the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo "Easter Mass" on Saturday, March 30, 2013, to speak of the "newness" represented by Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ's Resurrection from the dead. It would appear at first glance that there is nothing wrong with saying this as it is indeed true that Our Lord did what had never been done before: rise from the dead with a glorified body that had properties that the merely resuscitated from the dead, such as Lazarus, did not have. We are indeed promised a new life as a result of Our Lord's Easter victory over sin and death. Of this there is no question whatsoever.

Context, however, is everything. Modernists work very hard to mask their most ardent desires in the context of what appear to be orthodox expositions of a point of doctrine.

To wit, Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict once used an Easter "homily" to say he believed in the Resurrection of Our Lord while actually denying that it took place, something that he, writing as Joseph "Cardinal" Ratzinger did with other doctrines, including Original Sin, whose true meaning he deconstructed in order to state that the term is "imprecise," which is a an abject denial of Catholic doctrine:

“In the story that we are considering [Ch. 3 of Genesis], still a further characteristic of sin is described. Sin is not spoken of in general as an abstract possibility but as a deed, as the sin of a particular person, Adam, who stands at the origin of humankind and with whom the history of sin begins. The account tells us that sin begets sin, and that therefore all the sins of history are interlinked. Theology refers to this state of affairs by the certainly misleading and imprecise term ‘original sin’. What does this mean? Nothing seems to us today to be stranger or, indeed, more absurd than to insist upon original sin, since, according to our way of thinking, guilt can only be something very personal, and since God does not run a concentration camp, in which one’s relatives are imprisoned because he is a liberating God of love, who calls each one by name. What does original sin mean, then, when we interpret it correctly?" (Joseph Ratzinger, Understanding of the Story of Creation and the Fall, pp. 71, quoted in James Larson's  The Point of Departure).

 

The anti-sedevacantist author Mr. James Larson provided a commentary on the then "Cardinal" Ratzinger's referring to Original Sin as a "misleading and imprecise term":

 

 

First of all, I would suggest that we might search 2,000 years of history and never find another statement so clearly and profoundly heretical made by a member of the Church in as high a position as that occupied by Cardinal Ratzinger. What Cardinal Ratzinger here denies, of course, is the dogma of the faith that original sin is passed down from Adam to all men through generation. Cardinal Ratzinger considers such a view of sin misleading and imprecise and, in fact, ridicules it as stemming from a view of God which sees Him as the Commandant of a Consecration Camp Who imprisons one’s relatives just because of the fact that they share a common descent. In so doing, of course, he is directly contradicting Scripture and the clearly defined teaching of the Church. (James Larson, The Point of Departure; please do read Mr. Larson's superb article in its entirety as it focuses on Ratzinger's view that " since our Faith is one of ongoing relationship, and not fundamentally a matter of God’s Immutable Being (and the truth of our nature created in the image of God), virtually everything else must also be subject to re-interpretation and change.")

As was the case with many of his "general audience" talks and speeches and "homilies" and each of his three "encyclical letters," Joseph Ratzinger used his time as "Pope" Benedict XVI to gave "papal" expression to the heresies he had been publishing widely for nearly forty years prior to his "election" on Tuesday, 19, 2005. He used  his "general audience" of address of Wednesday, December 3, 2008, the Feast of Saint Francis Xavier, to make the Catholic Church's doctrine on Original Sin to be murky, something that he did early in 2011 with Purgatory (see From Sharp Focus to Fuzziness). Modernists will use words that sound familiar to Catholics to destroy their actual meaning as defined by Holy Mother Church.

Therefore, it is not being unfair to Jorge Mario Bergoglio/Francis to note that his discussion of "newness" in his "homily" on Saturday evening, March 30, 2013, was aimed a justifying the "new things" he has brought to the Petrine Ministry in a space of less than three weeks, the "new things" (new doctrines, new theology, new ecclesiology, new way of looking at the world and the Church's place in it, new liturgy, new Scriptural exegesis, new pastoral praxes) that have been ushered in by the "Second" Vatican Council and the "magisterium" of the conciliar "popes."

See for yourselves:

We stop short, we don’t understand, we don’t know what to do. Newness often makes us fearful, including the newness which God brings us, the newness which God asks of us. We are like the Apostles in the Gospel: often we would prefer to hold on to our own security, to stand in front of a tomb, to think about someone who has died, someone who ultimately lives on only as a memory, like the great historical figures from the past. We are afraid of God’s surprises. Dear brothers and sisters, we are afraid of God’s surprises! He always surprises us! The Lord is like that. . . .

On this radiant night, let us invoke the intercession of the Virgin Mary, who treasured all these events in her heart (cf. Lk 2:19,51) and ask the Lord to give us a share in his Resurrection. May he open us to the newness that transforms, to the beautiful surprises of God. May he make us men and women capable of remembering all that he has done in our own lives and in the history of our world. May he help us to feel his presence as the one who is alive and at work in our midst. And may he teach us each day, dear brothers and sisters, not to look among the dead for the Living One. Amen. ( 30 March 2013, Fake, Phony, Fraud Abomination of an Easter Vigil.)

 

This would at first glance to be perfectly acceptable. However, there is a double-meaning here. Bergoglio/Francis was explaining that the "newness" of the past fifty years has "transformed" the old and is thus part of "God's surprises" for as we learn not to hold on to that in which we had taken "false security," namely, the immutable teaching and immoral liturgy of the Catholic Church. He was also justifying the "newness" that he has in store for Catholics and non-Catholics alike before he returns to Buenos Aires, Argentina at some point so that he can pick up his newspapers personally while taking the bus to his day job.

Too much of  a stretch, you say?

I think not:

In recorded interviews with George Stephanopoulos on the ABC News program “This Week” and Bob Schieffer on “Face the Nation” on CBS, Cardinal Dolan, the archbishop of New York and one of the leading voices of the Catholic Church in the United States, did not suggest any changes in church teaching. He defined marriage as “one man, one woman, forever, to bring about new life,” but, he told Mr. Stephanopoulos, “we’ve got to do better to see that our defense of marriage is not reduced to an attack on gay people.”

“And I admit, we haven’t been too good at that,” the cardinal continued. “We try our darnedest to make sure we’re not an anti-anybody.”

Speaking just days after the Supreme Court heard arguments in two same-sex marriage cases, Mr. Stephanopoulos asked Cardinal Dolan what he could say to gay men and lesbians who felt excluded from the church.

“Well, the first thing I’d say to them is: ‘I love you, too. And God loves you. And you are made in God’s image and likeness. And — and we — we want your happiness. But — and you’re entitled to friendship,’ ” Cardinal Dolan said. “But we also know that God has told us that the way to happiness, that — especially when it comes to sexual love — that is intended only for a man and woman in marriage, where children can come about naturally.”

He gave a similar answer on “Face the Nation” when Mr. Schieffer questioned him about whether the church would embrace more liberal teachings as public opinion shifts.

The cardinal acknowledged that the church had a problem staying relevant: “How to remain faithful to what we believe are God-given, revealed, settled, unchanging principles without losing our people, who more and more question them.”

“I think what we can’t tamper with what God has revealed,” he added. But, he said, “we can try to do better in the way we present them with more credibility and in a more compelling way.”

During Easter Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan, Cardinal Dolan hinted at more sweeping changes. And he hailed a rebirth of the church as Pope Francis celebrated his first Easter Mass in St. Peter’s Square.

“The church, with a capital C, is undergoing renewal, repair, resurrection,” he said. “I kind of think we’re seeing it today in a particularly fresh and new way with our beloved new Holy Father.” (Dolan Says the Catholic Church Should Be More Welcoming to Gay People.)

 

With "bishops" and "presbyters" and men and women "religious" aplenty who are open full-fledged members or simply "fellow travelers" of those steeped in perverse sins and against nature, one wonders how much "more welcoming" the counterfeit church of conciliarism can be in recognizing this terrible abnormality as a natural part of human society and an ordinary means of human self-identification.

How many more "gay friendly" parishes such as Most Holy Redeemer in San Francisco, California, or Saint Joan of Arc in Minneapolis, Minnesota, or Saint Francis Xavier in the Greenwich Village section of the Borough of Manhattan in the City of New York, New York does the "happy" non-cardinal and all around apostate believe there should be?

How much more teaching of the lavender agenda in the name of "diversity" and "tolerance" in conciliar schools and colleges and universities and seminaries does Timothy Michael Dolan want?

How many more "Gay Pride Weeks" does he want to be held on the campuses of conciliar universities and colleges?

How many more "gay friendly" people does he want to see employed in conciliar chancery offices and in the headquarters of the so-called United States Conference of "Catholic Bishops"?

And you think that I am reading too much into Jorge Mario Bergoglio's "homily" of March 30, 2013?

Think again.

By way of contrast, here is an excerpt from Father Louis Campbell's Easter Sunday sermon that he delivered at Saint Jude Shrine in Stafford, Texas:

The sad thing is that those who once had the light are returning to the darkness of the false religions. The Vatican under the new administration still demonstrates its obeisance to the Jewish Masonic organization, B’nai B’rith, and a list of other Jewish organizations that were received enthusiastically by Francis I at his installation. And the true Church of Jesus Christ, the Light of the world, faces the greatest challenge in all of its history. (Father Louis Campbell, "Guided by the Light of Christ," March 31, 2013.)

 

Innovators always want to throw out the "old" in favor of "newness." This is how our true popes have dealt with that desire:

[The Ancient Doctors] knew the capacity of innovators in the art of deception. In order not to shock the ears of Catholics, they 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 which 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 Saint 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 which 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." (Pope Pius VI, Auctorem Fidei, August 28, 1794.)

These firings, therefore, with all diligence and care having been formulated by us, we define that it be permitted to no one to bring forward, or to write, or to compose, or to think, or to teach a different faith. Whosoever shall presume to compose a different faith, or to propose, or teach, or hand to those wishing to be converted to the knowledge of the truth, from the Gentiles or Jews, or from any heresy, any different Creed; or to introduce a new voice or invention of speech to subvert these things which now have been determined by us, all these, if they be Bishops or clerics let them be deposed, the Bishops from the Episcopate, the clerics from the clergy; but if they be monks or laymen: let them be anathematized. (Constantinople III).

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

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

But for the other painful causes We are concerned about, you should recall that certain societies and assemblages seem to draw up a battle line together with the followers of every false religion and cult. They feign piety for religion; but they are driven by a passion for promoting novelties and sedition everywhere. They preach liberty of every sort; they stir up disturbances in sacred and civil affairs, and pluck authority to pieces.(Pope Gregory XVI, Mirari Vos, August 15, 1832.)

Would that they had but displayed less zeal and energy in propagating it! But such is their activity and such their unwearying labor on behalf of their cause, that one cannot but be pained to see them waste such energy in endeavoring to ruin the Church when they might have been of such service to her had their efforts been better directed. Their artifices to delude men's minds are of two kinds, the first to remove obstacles from their path, the second to devise and apply actively and patiently every resource that can serve their purpose. They recognize that the three chief difficulties which stand in their way are the scholastic method of philosophy, the authority and tradition of the Fathers, and the magisterium of the Church, and on these they wage unrelenting war. Against scholastic philosophy and theology they use the weapons of ridicule and contempt. Whether it is ignorance or fear, or both, that inspires this conduct in them, certain it is that the passion for novelty is always united in them with hatred of scholasticism, and there is no surer sign that a man is tending to Modernism than when he begins to show his dislike for the scholastic method. Let the Modernists and their admirers remember the proposition condemned by Pius IX: "The method and principles which have served the ancient doctors of scholasticism when treating of theology no longer correspond with the exigencies of our time or the progress of science." They exercise all their ingenuity in an effort to weaken the force and falsify the character of tradition, so as to rob it of all its weight and authority. But for Catholics nothing will remove the authority of the second Council of Nicea, where it condemns those "who dare, after the impious fashion of heretics, to deride the ecclesiastical traditions, to invent novelties of some kind...or endeavor by malice or craft to overthrow any one of the legitimate traditions of the Catholic Church"; nor that of the declaration of the fourth Council of Constantinople: "We therefore profess to preserve and guard the rules bequeathed to the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, by the Holy and most illustrious Apostles, by the orthodox Councils, both general and local, and by everyone of those divine interpreters, the Fathers and Doctors of the Church." Wherefore the Roman Pontiffs, Pius IV and Pius IX, ordered the insertion in the profession of faith of the following declaration: "I most firmly admit and embrace the apostolic and ecclesiastical traditions and other observances and constitutions of the Church.'' (Pope Saint Pius X, Pascendi Dominici Gregis, September 8, 1907.)

 

Any questions?

Good, now I can get to sleep as you understand that there are many ways to repackage Modernism, including by making references to "newness."

We must remember that the forces we are not fighting earthly powers. Saint Paul warns us to fight these forces of darkness in our own lives lest we be overcome by them:

 

Put you on the armour of God, that you may be able to stand against the deceits of the devil. For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood; but against principalities and power, against the rulers of the world of this darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the high places. Therefore take unto you the armour of God, that you may be able to resist in the evil day, and to stand in all things perfect. Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of justice, And your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace: (Ephesians 6: 11-15.)

W need to make many acts of reparation for the crimes against the integrity of the Holy Faith that have been and continue to be committed by likes of Jorge Mario Bergoglio and stooges such as Timothy Michael Dolan and the former universal public face of apostasy, Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, as we continue to make reparation for our own many sins as the consecrated slaves of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, praying as many Rosaries as our state-in-life permits.

Look at it this way: the mess has gotten so bad and has spread so very fast, particularly in recent years, that the restoration of the Church Militant on earth can be done only by the direct intervention of God as a result of the Triumph of His Most Blessed Mother's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart. As the "election" of Jorge Mario Bergoglio/Francis indicates, there is not a conciliar "cardinal" who possesses the Catholic Faith in the fullness of Its Holy Integrity, which means that they do not have the Catholic Faith as to fall  from the Faith in one thing is to fall from It in Its entirety.

Take heart! This is the time that God has willed for eternity for us to be alive and to save our souls. We celebrate the glories of the Easter Octave and Season.

Take heart! We are Catholics. This will pass. May we bear the cross of the present moment with joy and gratitude that we have, despite our own sins and infidelities and blindness, come to recognize the true state of Holy Mother Church in this time of apostasy and betrayal as we continue to denounce the conciliarism and its apologists, including Jorge Bergoglio and Timmy Dolan, to be nothing other than precursors of Antichrist himself.

Isn't it time to pray a Rosary now?

Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us now and at the hour of our death.

Viva Cristo Rey! Vivat Christus Rex!

Our Lady 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 Francis of Paola, pray us (he is not commemorated liturgically this year, however we can remember to intercede with him today nevertheless)

See also: A Litany of Saints

 

 




© Copyright 2013, Thomas A. Droleskey. All rights reserved.