The Holy Ghost Does Not Contradict Himself

by Thomas A. Droleskey

 

Things in the conciliar church are spiraling out-of-control.

To wit, Archbishop Bruno Forte, who was consecrated as a bishop by the then Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger in September of 2004 despite having stated in a book that the Resurrection of Our Lord was a myth, reported about a week ago now, the international theological commission examining Limbo will not report its findings until 2007, at the earliest. What is clear, however, is that the commission will "find" that infants who die before baptism go to Heaven. Such a finding is a clear contradiction of the defined teaching of the Catholic Church. Consider this from the Council of Florence, 1441:

Regarding children, indeed, because of danger of death, which can often take place, when no help can be brought to them by another remedy than through the sacrament of baptism, through which they are snatched from the domination of the Devil and adopted among the sons of God, it advises that holy baptism ought not be deferred for forty or eighty days, or any time according to the observance of certain people.

This dogmatic pronouncement means nothing to conciliarists such as Bruno Forte or Joseph Ratzinger, who believes that some past councils have been a "waste of time" and that the doctrine of the Church can be understood in novel ways that seem to contradict past interpretations but represent, he says, merely a "re-anchoring of the truth" in a different place. This is what he wrote concerning the anti-Modernist condemnations of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries:

The text [of the Second Vatican Council] also presents the various forms of bonds that rise from the different degrees of magisterial teaching.  It affirms -- perhaps for the first time with this clarity -- that there are decisions of the Magisterium that cannot be a last word on the matter as such, but are, in a substantial fixation of the problem, above all an expression of pastoral prudence, a kind of provisional disposition.  Its nucleus remains valid, but the particulars, which the circumstances of the times have influenced, may need further ramifications.

In this regard, one may think of the declarations of Popes in the last century about religious liberty, as well as the anti-Modernist decisions at the beginning of this century, above all, the decisions of the Biblical Commission of the time.  As a cry of alarm in the face of hasty and superficial adaptations, they will remain fully justified.  A personage such as Johann Baptist Metz said, for example, that the Church's anti-Modernist decisions render the great service of preserving her from immersion in the liberal-bourgeois world.  But in the details of the determinations they contain, they become obsolete after having fulfilled their pastoral mission at the proper moment.

Benedict XVI, you see, has a view of magisterial teaching that is novel, relying upon a fellow practitioner of the New Theology, Father Johann Baptist Metz. The consistent teaching of the Church, reiterated by popes from Gregory XVI through Pius XII, never becomes obsolete. The Ordinary Magisterium of the Church clothes teaching that has been taught "always and everywhere" and believed by everyone with the charism of infallibility. The teaching of the Divine Redeemer is not subject to change. His immutable. His teaching is immutable. And no legitimate development of doctrine can in any way contradict that which has preceded it. The novelties of the Second Vatican Council concerning religious liberty--and Benedict XVI's rejection of the confessionally Catholic state--are contradictions of the Deposit of Faith. The same holds for the novelty of ecumenism. And the same holds for the Modernist approach to Biblical studies, which could lead one the aforementioned Bruno Forte to write that the Resurrection of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ was a legend. Father Johann Baptist Metz plays a major role, therefore, in the shaping of the mind of Benedict XVI about how to deconstruct and then render into irrelevance, if not contempt, the binding statements of the popes and the dogmatic councils of the past.

Indeed, Bruno Forte's contempt for the dogmatic declaration issued by the Council of Trent on the necessity of infant baptism mirrors Joseph Ratzinger's utter contempt for the entirety of the Papal Bull Cantate Domino, issued by Pope Eugene IV in 1441:

The Holy Roman Church firmly believes, professes and teaches that the matter pertaining to the law of the Old Testament, of the Mosaic Law, which are divided into ceremonies, sacred rites, sacrifices, and sacraments, because they were established to signify something in the future, although they were suited to divine worship at that time, after our Lord's coming had been signified by them, ceased, and the sacraments of the New Testament began; and that whoever, even after the passion, placed hope in these matters of the law and submitted himself to them as necessary for salvation, as if faith in Christ could not save without them, sinned mortally.  Yet it does not deny that after the passion of Christ up to the promulgation of the Gospel they could have been observed until they were believed to be in no way necessary for salvation; but after the promulgation of the Gospel it asserts that they cannot be observed without the loss of eternal salvation.  All, therefore, who after that time (the promulgation of the Gospel) observe circumcision and the Sabbath and the other requirements of the law, it declares alien to the Christian faith and not in the least fit to participate in eternal salvation, unless someday they recover from these errors. . .

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It firmly believes, professes, and proclaims that those not living within the Catholic Church, not only pagans, but also Jews and heretics and schismatics cannot become participants in eternal life, but will depart "into everlasting fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels" [Matt. 25:41], unless before the end of life the same have been added to the flock; and that the unity of the ecclesiastical body is so strong that only to those remaining in it are the sacraments of the Church of benefit for salvation, and do fastings, almsgiving, and other functions of piety and exercises of Christian service produce eternal reward, and that no one, whatever almsgiving he has practiced, even if he has shed blood for the name of Christ, can be saved, unless he has remained in the bosom and unity of the Catholic Church.

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Must a Catholic believe this dogmatic pronouncement? Is a Catholic free to ignore or to reject it because it has "outlived" its usefulness or, worse yet, was never even truly valid? Has the Second Vatican Council's Nostra Aetate repealed this? Can the opinion of a Modernist theologian do away with this firm statement of truth, which beings by stating that the "Holy roman Church firmly believes, professes and teaches. . ."? Well, welcome to the false religion known as conciliarism, which believes it speaks in the name of the Catholic Faith and that it can sweep away dogmatic pronouncements and past papal pronouncements with an Hegelian sleight of hand.

Unfortunately for Benedict and Bruno Forte Johann Metz, The Profession of Faith issued by the First Vatican Council, among many other Church documents (including Pascendi Dominici Gregis and the Oath Against Modernism) excludes any novel interpretations of the consistent teaching of the Church (or the imposition of new liturgical "rites"):

1. Apostolic and ecclesiastical traditions and all other observances and constitutions of that same Church I most firmly accept and embrace.
2. Likewise I accept sacred scripture according to that sense which Holy Mother Church held and holds, since it is her right to judge of the true sense and interpretation of the holy scriptures; nor will I ever receive and interpret them except according to the unanimous consent of the fathers.
3. I profess also that there are seven sacraments of the new law, truly and properly so called, instituted by our Lord Jesus Christ and necessary for salvation, though each person need not receive them all. They are:

   1. baptism,
   2. confirmation,
   3. the Eucharist,
   4. penance,
   5. last anointing,
   6. order and
   7. matrimony; and they confer grace. Of these baptism, confirmation and order may not be repeated without sacrilege.
4. I likewise receive and accept the rites of the catholic church which have been received and approved in the solemn administration of all the aforesaid sacraments.
5. I embrace and accept the whole and every part of what was defined and declared by the holy council of Trent concerning original sin and justification. Likewise
6. I profess that in the mass there is offered to God a true, proper and propitiatory sacrifice for the living and the dead; and that in the most holy sacrament of the Eucharist there is truly, really and substantially the body and blood, together with the soul and divinity, of our Lord Jesus Christ; and that there takes place the conversion of the whole substance of the bread into His body, and of the whole substance of the wine into His blood, and this conversion the Catholic Church calls transubstantiation.
7. I confess that under either species alone the whole and complete Christ and the true sacrament are received.
8. I firmly hold that Purgatory exists, and that the souls detained there are helped by the suffrages of the faithful. Likewise, that the saints reigning with Christ are to be honoured and prayed to, and that they offer prayers to God on our behalf, and that their relics should be venerated.
9. I resolutely assert that images of Christ and the ever virgin mother of God, and likewise those of the other saints, are to be kept and retained, and that due honour and reverence is to be shown Them.
10. I affirm that the power of indulgences was left by Christ in the Church, and that their use is eminently beneficial to the Christian people.
11. I acknowledge the Holy, Catholic, Apostolic and Roman Church, the mother and mistress of all the churches
12. Likewise all other things which have been transmitted, defined and declared by the sacred canons and the ecumenical councils, especially the sacred Trent, I accept unhesitatingly and profess; in the same way whatever is to the contrary, and whatever heresies have been condemned, rejected and anathematised by the Church, I too condemn, reject and anathematise. This true Catholic faith, which I now freely profess and truly hold, is what I shall steadfastly maintain and confess, by the help of God, in all its completeness and purity until my dying breath, and I shall do my best to ensure that all others do the same. This is what I, the same Pius, promise, vow and swear. So help me God and these holy gospels of God.

 

There is no room for any conciliarist to claim that the past decrees of the magisterium are in any way capable of being reinterpreted. Pope Leo XIII, quoting from the First Vatican Council in Testem Benevolentiae in 1899, warned the Americanist James Cardinal Gibbons about attempting to change the meaning of the doctrines that have been handed down to us from the Apostles:

Now, Beloved Son, few words are needed to show how reprehensible is the plan that is thus conceived, if we but consider the character and origin of the doctrine which the Church hands down to us. On that point the Vatican Council says: "The doctrine of faith which God has revealed is not proposed like a theory of philosophy which is to elaborated by the human understanding, but as a divine deposit delivered to the Spouse of Christ to be be faithfully guarded and infallibly declared. . . . That sense of the sacred dogmas is to be faithfully kept which Holy Mother Church has once declared, and is not to be departed from under the specious pretext of a more profound understanding."

What apostolic or patristic authority any conciliarist cite to justify the specious contention that dogmas once defined lose their substance once they have fulfilled the meaning of the historical context in which they were declared? None, that's what. None whatsoever. The only "authority" conciliarists can cite for their novel approach of substituting Modernist thought for authentic Catholic doctrine is Georg Hegel's dialectical principle, the belief that truth contains within itself the seeds of its own contradiction, producing a clash between itself and its antithesis that results in the creation of a new idea, a synthesis. The "new synthesis" of the moment is going to be, sooner or later, that unbaptized infants go straight to Heaven. So much for the Roman Catechism, issued following the Council of Trent:

The faithful are earnestly to be exhorted, to take care that their children be brought to the church, as soon as it can be done with safety, to receive solemn baptism: infants, unless baptized, cannot enter heaven, and hence we may well conceive how deep the enormity of their guilt, who, through negligence, suffer them to remain without the grace of the sacrament, longer than necessity may require; particularly at an age so tender as to be exposed to numberless dangers of death.

The appointment of a commission to study the "abolition" of Limbo is founded in Benedict's embrace of the error of universal salvation that was propagated by his late mentor, Father Hans Urs von Balthasar. This belief, which was analyzed by Father Regis Scanlon, O.F.M., Cap, in a March, 2000, article in New Oxford Review (and can be found in its entirety at: The Inflated Reputation of Hans Urs von Balthasar), is a novelty that flies in the face of the constant teaching of the Church, exemplified in the writings of canonized saints, candidates for sainthood, and a few other Catholics over the centuries. A few excerpts, collected by Mr. Mike Malone and that appears at the following website address (http://www.romancatholicism.org/jansenism/fathers-fewness.htm), will suffice to illustrate this point:

Be one of the small number who find the way to life, and enter by the narrow gate into Heaven. Take care not to follow the majority and the common herd, so many of whom are lost. Do not be deceived; there are only two roads: one that leads to life and is narrow; the other that leads to death and is wide. There is no middle way. St. Louis Marie de Montfort

 How many souls turn away from the road to glory, and go to hell!   St. Francis Xavier

There are many who arrive at the faith, but few who are led into the heavenly kingdom. Behold how many are gathered here for today's Feast-Day: we fill the church from wall to wall. Yet who knows how few they are who shall be numbered in that chosen company of the Elect? Pope St. Gregory the Great

 The greater number of men still say to God: Lord we will not serve Thee; we would rather be slaves of the devil, and condemned to Hell, than be Thy servants. Alas! The greatest number, my Jesus - we may say nearly all - not only do not love Thee, but offend Thee and despise Thee. How many countries there are in which there are scarcely any Catholics, and all the rest either infidels or heretics! And all of them are certainly on the way to being lost. St. Alphonsus Maria Liguori

A multitude of souls fall into the depths of Hell, and it is of the faith that all who die in mortal sin are condemned for ever and ever. According to statistics, approximately 80,000 persons die every day. How many of these will die in mortal sin, and how many will be condemned! For, as their lives have been, so also will be their end. St. Anthony Mary Claret

As a man lives, so shall he die. St. Augustine

Ah! A great many persons live constantly in the state of damnation! St. Vincent de Paul

I had the greatest sorrow for the many souls that condemned themselves to Hell, especially those Lutherans. [...] I saw souls falling into hell like snowflakes. St. Teresa of Avila

The Lord called the world a "field" and all the faithful who draw near to him "wheat." All through the field, and around the threshing-floor, there is both wheat and chaff. But the greater part is chaff; the lesser part is wheat, for which is prepared a barn not a fire. [...] The good also are many, but in comparison with the wicked the good are few. Many are the grains of wheat, but compared with the chaff, the grains are few. St. Augustine

The more the wicked abound, so much the more must we suffer with them in patience; for on the threshing floor few are the grains carried into the barns, but high are the piles of chaff burned with fire. Pope St. Gregory the Great

What do you think? How many of the inhabitants of this city may perhaps be saved? What I am about to tell you is very terrible, yet I will not conceal it from you. Out of this thickly populated city with its thousands of inhabitants not one hundred people will be saved. I even doubt whether there will be as many as that! St. John Chrysostom

Taking into account the behaviour of mankind, only a small part of the human race will be saved. Lucy of Fatima

So many people are going to die, and almost all of them are going to Hell! So many people falling into hell! Jacinta of Fatima

Countless hosts have fallen into Hell. Venerable Mary of Agreda

The perverse are hard to be corrected, and the number of fools is infinite. Ecclesiastes 1:15

The greater part of men choose to be damned rather than to love Almighty God. St. Alphonsus Maria Liguori

The number of the damned is incalculable. St. Veronica Giuliani

What is the number of those who love Thee, O God? How few they are! The Elect are much fewer than the damned! Alas! The greater portion of mankind lives in sin unto the devil, and not unto Jesus Christ. O Saviour of the world, I thank Thee for having called and permitted us to live in the true faith which the Holy Roman Catholic Church teaches. [...] But alas, O my Jesus! How small is the number of those who live in this holy faith! Oh, God! The greater number of men lie buried in the darkness of infidelity and heresy. Thou hast humbled Thyself to death, to the death of the cross, for the salvation of men, and these ungrateful men are unwilling even to know Thee. Ah, I pray Thee, O omnipotent God, O sovereign and infinite Good, make all men know and love Thee! St. Alphonsus Maria Liguori

I see around me a multitude of those who, blindly persevering in error, despise the true God; but I am a Christian nevertheless, and I follow the instruction of the Apostles. If this deserves chastisement, reward it; for I am determined to suffer every torture rather then become the slave of the devil. Others may do as they please since they are [...] reckless of the future life which is to be obtained only by sufferings. Scripture tells us that "narrow is the way that leads to life" [...] because it is one of affliction and of persecutions suffered for the sake of justice; but it is wide enough for those who walk upon it, because their faith and the hope of an eternal reward make it so for them. [...] On the contrary, the road of vice is in reality narrow, and it leads to an eternal precipice. St. Leo of Patara

I was watching souls going down into the abyss as thick and fast as snowflakes falling in the winter mist. Blessed Benedict Joseph Labre

The majority of men shall not see God, excepting those who live justly, purified by righteousness and by every other virtue. St. Justin the Martyr

The majority of souls appear before the Judgement empty-handed. They did nothing good for eternity. Venerable Mary of Agreda

All infidels and heretics are surely on the way to being lost. What an obligation we owe God! for causing us to be born not only after the coming of Jesus Christ, but also in countries where the true faith reigns! I thank Thee, O Lord, for this. Woe to me if, after so many transgressions, it had been my fate to live in the midst of infidels or heretics! St. Alphonsus Maria Liguori

Brethren, the just man shall scarcely be saved. What, then, will become of the sinner? St. Arsenius

If the just man shall scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly man and the sinner appear? I St. Peter 1:18

I fear that Last Day, that day of tribulation and anguish, of calamity and misery, of mist and darkness, that Day on which, if the just have reason to fear, how much more should I: an impious, wretched, and ungrateful sinner! Blessed Sebastian Valfre

The Ark, which in the midst of the Flood was a symbol of the Church, was wide below and narrow above; and, at the summit, measured only a single cubit. [...] It was wide where the animals were, narrow where men lived: for the Holy Church is indeed wide in the number of those who are carnal-minded, narrow in the number of those who are spiritual. Pope St. Gregory the Great

In the Great Deluge in the days of Noah, nearly all mankind perished, eight persons alone being saved in the Ark. In our days a deluge, not of water but of sins, continually inundates the earth, and out of this deluge very few escape. Scarcely anyone is saved. St. Alphonsus Maria Liguori

Out of one hundred thousand sinners who continue in sin until death, scarcely one will be saved. St. Jerome

Get out of the filth of the horrible torrent of this world, the torrent of thorns that is whirling you into the abyss of eternal perdition. [...] This torrent is the world, which resembles an impetuous torrent, full of garbage and evil odours, making a lot of noise but flowing swiftly passed, dragging the majority of men into the pit of perdition. St. John Eudes

Oh how much are the worldlings deceived that rejoice in the time of weeping, and make their place of imprisonment a palace of pleasure; that consider the examples of the saints as follies, and their end as dishonourable; that think to go to Heaven by the wide way that leadeth only to perdition! St. John Southwell

Nor should we think that it is enough for salvation that we are no worse off than the mass of the careless and indifferent, or that in out faith we are, like so many others, uninstructed. St. Bede the Venerable

We owe God a deep regret of gratitude for the purely gratuitous gift of the true faith with which he has favoured us. How many are the infidels, heretics and schismatics who do not enjoy comparable happiness? The earth is full of them and they are all lost! St. Alphonsus Maria Liguori

One day, St. Macarius found a skull and asked it whose head it had been. "A pagan's!" it replied. "And where is your soul?" he asked. "In Hell!" came the reply. Macarius then asked the skull if its place was very deep in Hell. "As far down as the earth is lower than Heaven!" "And are there any other souls lodged even lower?" "Yes! The souls of the Jews!" "And even lower than the Jews?" "Yes! The souls of bad Christians who were redeemed with the blood of Christ and held their privilege so cheaply!" Blessed James of Voragine

St. Teresa, as the Roman Rota attests, never fell into any mortal sin; but still Our Lord showed her the place prepared for her in Hell; not because she deserved Hell, but because, had she not risen from the state of lukewarmness in which she lived, she would in the end have lost the grace of God and been damned. St. Alphonsus Maria Liguori

They who are to be saved as Saints, and wish to be saved as imperfect souls, shall not be saved. Pope St. Gregory the Great

They who are enlightened to walk in the way of perfection, and through lukewarmness wish to tread the ordinary path, shall be abandoned. Blessed Angela of Foligno

If you want to be certain of being in the number of the Elect, strive to be one of the few, not one of the many. And if you would be quite sure of your salvation, strive to be among the fewest of the few; that is to say, do not follow the great majority of mankind, but follow those who enter upon the narrow way, who renounce the world, who give themselves to prayer, and who never relax their efforts by day or night, so that they may attain everlasting blessedness. St. Anselm

Live with the few if you want to reign with the few. St. John Climacus

Many begin well, but there are few who persevere. St. Jerome

The saints are few, but we must live with the few if we would be saved with the few. O God, too few indeed they are; yet among those few I wish to be! St. Alphonsus Maria Liguori

Those who are saved are in the minority. St. Thomas Aquinas

If you wish to imitate the multitude, then you shall not be among the few who shall enter in by the narrow gate. St. Augustine

There are few, not many, who enter in at the narrow gate and find the strait way to eternal life. Origen

The path to Heaven is narrow, rough and full of wearisome and trying ascents, nor can it be trodden without great toil; and therefore wrong is their way, gross their error, and assured their ruin who, after the testimony of so many thousands of saints, will not learn where to settle their footing. St. Robert Southwell

So that you will better appreciate the meaning of Our Lord's words, and perceive more clearly how few the Elect are, note that Christ did not say that those who walked in the path to Heaven are few in number, but that there were few who found that narrow way. It is as though the Saviour intended to say: The path leading to Heaven is so narrow and so rough, so overgrown, so dark and difficult to discern, that there are many who never find it their whole life long. And those who do find it are constantly exposed to the danger of deviating from it, of mistaking their way, and unwittingly wandering away from it, because it is so irregular and overgrown. St. Jerome

It is granted to few to recognise the true Church amid the darkness of so many schisms and heresies, and to fewer still so to love the truth which they have seen as to fly to its embrace. St. Robert Bellarmine

Ah! How very small is the kingdom of Jesus Christ! So many nations have never had the faith! St. Peter Julian Eymard

We were so fortunate to be born in the bosom of the Roman Church, in Christian and Catholic kingdoms, a grace that has not been granted to the greater part of men, who are born among idolaters, Mohammedans, or heretics. [...] How thankful we ought to be, then, to Jesus Christ for the gift of faith! What would have become of us if we had been born in Asia, in Africa, in America, or in the midsts of heretics and schismatics? He who does not believe is lost. He who does not believe shall be condemned. And thus, probably, we also would have been lost. St. Alphonsus Maria Liguori

So vast a number of miserable souls perish, and so comparatively few are saved! St. Philip Neri

For thus it shall be in the midst of the earth, in the midst of the people, as though a few olives that remain should be shaken out of the olive tree, or grapes when the vintage is ended. Isaias 24:13

The number of the saved is as few as the number of grapes left after the vineyard-pickers have passed. St. John Mary Vianney

That those who walk in the way of salvation are the smaller number is due to the vice and depraved habits imbibed in youth and nourished in childhood. By these means Lucifer has hurled into Hell so great a number of souls, and continues thus to hurl them into Hell every day, casting so many nations from abyss to abyss of darkness and errors, such as are contained in the heresies and false sects of the infidels. Venerable Mary of Agreda

Yes, indeed, many will be damned; few will be saved. St. Benedict Joseph of Labre

I do not speak rashly, but as I feel and think. I do not think that many priests are saved, but that those who perish are far more numerous. St. John Chrysostom

A great number of Christians are lost. St. Leonard of Port Maurice (see also Saint Leonard's full commentary on the matter, The Little Number of Those Who are Saved, published on this site in April)

Bad confessions damned the majority of Christians. St. Teresa of Avila

Christ's flock is called "little" (Luke 12:32) in comparison with the greater number of the reprobates. St. Bede the Venerable

The greater number of Christians today are damned. The destiny of those dying on one day is that very few - not as many as ten - went strait to Heaven; many remained in Purgatory; and those cast into Hell were as numerous as snowflakes in mid-winter. Blessed Anna Maria Taigi

The common opinion is that the greater part of adults is lost. St. Alphonsus Maria Liguori

Among adults there are few saved because of sins of the flesh. [...] With the exception of those who die in childhood, most men will be damned. St. Regimius or Rheims

It is as though Jesus said: "O My Father, I am indeed going to clothe myself with human flesh, but the greater part of the world will set no value on my blood!" St. Isidore of Seville

How many among these uncivilized peoples do not yet know God, and are sunk in the darkest idolatry, superstition and ignorance! [...] Poor souls! These are they in whom Christ saw, in all the horror of His imminent Passion, the uselessness of His agony for so many souls! St. Francis Xavier Cabrini

Nothing afflicts the heart of Jesus so much as to see all His sufferings of no avail to so many. St. John Mary Vianney

O Jesus! [...] Remember the sadness that Thou didst experience when, contemplating in the light of Thy divinity the predestination of those who would be saved by the merits of Thy sacred passion, thou didst see at the same time the great multitude of reprobates who would be damned for their sins, and Thou didst complain bitterly of those hopeless, lost, and unfortunate sinners. St. Bridget of Sweden

The greater part of men will set no value on the blood of Christ, and will go on offending Him. St. Isidore of Seville

Take care not to resemble the multitude whose knowledge of God's will only condemns them to more severe punishment. Blessed John of Avila

If you wish to imitate the multitude, you shall then not be among the few who shall enter in by the narrow way. St. Augustine

The multitude was put forth. St. Matthew 9:25

How few the Elect are may be understood from the multitude being cast out. St. Hilary of Poitiers

Notwithstanding assurances that God did not create any man for Hell, and that He wishes all men to be saved, it remains equally true that only few will be saved; that only few will go to Heaven; and that the greater part of mankind will be lost forever. St. John Neumann

Meditate on the horrors of Hell which will last for eternity because of one easily-committed mortal sin. Try hard to be among the few who are chosen. Think of the eternal flames of Hell, and how few there are that are saved. St. Benedict Joseph Labre

Ah, how many souls lose Heaven and are cast into Hell! St. Francis Xavier

Taking into account the present development of humanity, only a limited number of the human race will be saved [...] many will be lost. Lucy of Fatima

All persons desire to be saved, but the greater part, because they will not adopt the means of being saved, fall into sin and are lost. [...] In fact, the Elect are much fewer than the damned, for the reprobate are much more numerous than the Elect. St. Alphonsus Maria Liguori

Shall we all be saved? Shall we go to Heaven? Alas, my children, we do not know at all! But I tremble when I see so many souls lost these days. See, they fall into Hell as leaves fall from the trees at the approach of winter. St. John Mary Vianney

Behold how many there are who are called, and how few who are chosen! And behold, if you have no care for yourself, your perdition is more certain than your amendment, especially since the way that leads to eternal life is so narrow. St. John of the Cross

Throughout many generations, few are chosen. Origen

It is certain that few are saved. St. Augustine

There are a select few who are saved. St. Thomas Aquinas

The number of the elect is so small - so small - that, were we to know how small it is, we would faint away with grief: one here and there, scattered up and down the world! St. Louis Marie de Montfort

And they [...] shall be so few that they shall easily be counted, and a child shall write them down. Isaias 10:19

Oh, Jesus, Divine Redeemer of souls, behold how great is the multitude of those who still sleep in the darkness of error! Reckon up the number of those who stray to the edge of the precipice. Consider the throngs of the poor, the hungry, the ignorant, and the feeble who groan in their abandoned condition. Oh Lord, our sins darken our understanding, and hide from us the blessing of loving Thee as Thou dost merit. Enlighten our minds with a ray of Thy divine light. Thou art the Friend, the Redeemer, and the Father of the one who turns penitent to Thy Sacred Heart. Amen. Pope St. Pius X

Each of us must reckon with our own sins and be conscious of making as good and as a full confession as we can each and every time that we enter a confessional. We must pay heed to these telling words of Saint Paul, contained in his Epistle to the Philippians:

Wherefore, my dearly beloved, (as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but much more now in my absence,) with fear and trembling work out your salvation. For it is God who worketh in you, both to will and to accomplish, according to his good will. And do ye all things without murmurings and hesitations; That you may be blameless, and sincere children of God, without reproof, in the midst of crooked and perverse generation; among whom you shine as lights in the world. (Philippians 2: 12-15)

The efforts of the conciliarists convince Catholics and non-Catholics alike that the Holy Ghost can contradict Himself continue unabated. Indeed, they are multiplying faster than any one person can turn out commentaries about such betrayals of the Holy Faith. Nevertheless, it is still necessary now and again to point out the obvious: that a synthetic religion, the result of Benedict's much-vaunted "synthesis of Faith" has been created and seeks to take the place of authentic Catholic doctrine in the minds and the hearts of believing Catholics. It cannot be that all of the saints and blesseds quoted above are wrong and that Hans Urs von Balthasar and Joseph Ratzinger and Bruno Forte and Johann Baptist Metz, et al. are correct. The Holy Ghost cannot contradict Himself.

Our Lord instituted the Catholic Church as the one and only means of salvation, entrusting to her the mission to seek with urgency the conversion of all men in all places at all times to her maternal bosom. This mission has been abandoned by the conciliar church, which teaches that the Church of Christ "subsists" in the Catholic Church but that there are other "Christian churches" with "elements of unity and truth" that are effective means of salvation for their adherents. This is a denial of the Divine Constitution of the Church. This is one of the fundamental heresies of conciliarism and its rotten ethos. We must, as His Excellency Bishop Mark A. Pivarunas noted at the now concluded Fatima Conference on Friday, October 13, 2006, cleave to the fullness of the authentic Catholic Faith and recognize that the conciliar church teaches matters things that are indeed abject contradictions of dogmatically teaching, something that is impossible for the Catholic Church to do.

Pope Pius XI noted this fact in Mortalium Animos, January 6, 1928:

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, 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.

The Catholic Church cannot be contaminated with the errors being promoted by the conciliarists. Such men have fallen from the Faith, dropping poison into the minds and hearts as Catholics as they do so. Pope Leo XIII's Satis Cognitum, December 8, 1896, explained this very point:

The Church, founded on these principles and mindful of her office, has done nothing with greater zeal and endeavour than she has displayed in guarding the integrity of the faith. Hence she regarded as rebels and expelled from the ranks of her children all who held beliefs on any point of doctrine different from her own. The Arians, the Montanists, the Novatians, the Quartodecimans, the Eutychians, did not certainly reject all Catholic doctrine: they abandoned only a certain portion of it. Still who does not know that they were declared heretics and banished from the bosom of the Church? In like manner were condemned all authors of heretical tenets who followed them in subsequent ages. "There can be nothing more dangerous than those heretics who admit nearly the whole cycle of doctrine, and yet by one word, as with a drop of poison, infect the real and simple faith taught by our Lord and handed down by Apostolic tradition" (Auctor Tract. de Fide Orthodoxa contra Arianos).

The practice of the Church has always been the same, as is shown by the unanimous teaching of the Fathers, who were wont to hold as outside Catholic communion, and alien to the Church, whoever would recede in the least degree from any point of doctrine proposed by her authoritative Magisterium. Epiphanius, Augustine, Theodore :, drew up a long list of the heresies of their times. St. Augustine notes that other heresies may spring up, to a single one of which, should any one give his assent, he is by the very fact cut off from Catholic unity. "No one who merely disbelieves in all (these heresies) can for that reason regard himself as a Catholic or call himself one. For there may be or may arise some other heresies, which are not set out in this work of ours, and, if any one holds to one single one of these he is not a Catholic" (S. Augustinus, De Haeresibus, n. 88).

There is quite an irony in all of this: traditionalists, both sedevacantists and non-sedevacantists, who seek refuge outside of the conciliar structures (which structures include, obviously, all "indult" offerings of the Immemorial Mass of Tradition), are said by many conciliarists to be "outside" of the "Church" and they they imperil their salvation by doing so. If Protestants have effective means of salvation and even non-Christians are saved as a result of "God's universal salvific will," then how is it that people who do not dissent from one whit of anything contained in the Deposit Faith imperil their salvation by adhering to that which has been taught always and everywhere and believed by everyone prior to the advent of conciliarism? I guess there is "universal salvation" for almost all, save the small number of Catholics who recognize conciliarism as the embodiment of the great apostasy.

To contend that unbaptized children can go to Heaven is just one of many defections from the Faith that is of the essence of the conciliarist spirit, which also eschews the Social Reign of Christ the King as it was exemplified by Saint Hedwig, whose feast we celebrate today, and her husband, Duke Henry I of Silesia. The time for Christendom has passed, never to return--or so the conciliarists contend.

We know, however, that Christendom will return as the fruit of the Triumph of Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart, in which we must take confident refuge at all times Our Lord will help us to weather the storms of the present moment. She stands by our own individual crosses as she continues to stand by her Divine Son's Holy Cross as the one Sacrifice of Calvary He offered on Good Friday is re-presented in an unbloody manner at the hands of an alter Christus. She will not fail us. She will help us to flee from conciliarism and recognize the conciliar church as the truly schismatic church that imperils the salvation of souls as it contaminates the Received Teaching of her Divine Son. She will help us to seek out shepherds who maintain the Faith in all of its holy purity and who are unafraid to run the risk of popular rejection and ridicule for doing so. She will have her triumph over the apostasies of the present moment, and that triumph will be glorious beyond all telling. All we need to do is to keep faithful to her Fatima Message in the midst of our daily lives, praying the Rosary with fervor and offering everything in our lives to God through her Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart as her consecrated slaves.

We need not be in Limbo about the outcome of the crisis facing us at present. No, we must kneel with confidence before Our Lady and her chaste spouse, our dear Saint Joseph, the Patron of the Universal Church, as we maintain the Faith of our fathers and endure the sufferings of this time in salvation history as Catholics who maintain the supernatural virtues of Faith, Hope, and Charity with a lively and unfailing confidence as we cooperate with the graces won for us by the shedding of every single drop of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ's Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross to live in such a way that we will be ready at all times to have a happy, holy death. May we be Our Lady's fervent clients as we lift high her Divine Son's Holy Cross and remind one and all that the Holy Ghost does not contradict Himself, that Catholicism is incompatible with conciliarism.

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 Beloved, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Hedwig, pray for us.

Saint Teresa of Avila, pray for us.

Pope Saint Callistus, pray for us.

Saint Edward the Confessor, pray for us.

Saint John Mary Vianney, pray for us.

Saint Vincent de Paul, pray for us.

Saint Therese Lisieux, pray for us.

Saint Martin of Tours, pray for us.

Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque, pray for us.

Saint Athanasius, pray for us.

Saint Alphonsus de Liguori, pray for us.

Saint Dominic, pray for us.

Saint Basil, pray for us.

Saint Augustine, pray for us.

Saint Thomas Aquinas, pray for us.

Saint Vincent Ferrer, pray for us.

Saint Sebastian, pray for us.

Saint Tarcisius, pray for us.

Saint Lucy, pray for us.

Saint Agnes, pray for us.

Saint Agatha, pray for us.

Saint Bridget of Sweden, pray for us.

Saint Catherine of Sweden, pray for us.

Saint Philomena, pray for us.

Saint John Bosco, pray for us.

Saint Teresa of Avila, pray for us.

Saint Bernadette Soubirous, pray for us.

Pope Saint Pius X, pray for us.

Pope Saint Pius V, pray for us.

Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich, pray for us.

Blessed Pauline Jaricot, pray for us.

Blessed Miguel Augustin Pro, pray for us.

Blessed Francisco, pray for us.

Blessed Jacinta, pray for us.

 

The Longer Version of the Saint Michael the Archangel Prayer, composed by Pope Leo XIII, 1888

O glorious Archangel Saint Michael, Prince of the heavenly host, be our defense in the terrible warfare which we carry on against principalities and powers, against the rulers of this world of darkness, spirits of evil.  Come to the aid of man, whom God created immortal, made in His own image and likeness, and redeemed at a great price from the tyranny of the devil.  Fight this day the battle of our Lord, together with  the holy angels, as already thou hast fought the leader of the proud angels, Lucifer, and his apostate host, who were powerless to resist thee, nor was there place for them any longer in heaven.  That cruel, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil or Satan who seduces the whole world, was cast into the abyss with his angels.  Behold this primeval enemy and slayer of men has taken courage.  Transformed into an angel of light, he wanders about with all the multitude of wicked spirits, invading the earth in order to blot out the Name of God and of His Christ, to seize upon, slay, and cast into eternal perdition, souls destined for the crown of eternal glory.  That wicked dragon pours out. as a most impure flood, the venom of his malice on men of depraved mind and corrupt heart, the spirit of lying, of impiety, of blasphemy, and the pestilent breath of impurity, and of every vice and iniquity.  These most crafty enemies have filled and inebriated with gall and bitterness the Church, the spouse of the Immaculate Lamb, and have laid impious hands on Her most sacred possessions. In the Holy Place itself, where has been set up the See of the most holy Peter and the Chair of Truth for the light of the world, they have raised the throne of their abominable impiety with the iniquitous design that when the Pastor has been struck the sheep may be scattered.  Arise then, O invincible Prince, bring help against the attacks of the lost spirits to the people of God, and give them the victory.  They venerate thee as their protector and patron; in thee holy Church glories as her defense against the malicious powers of hell; to thee has God entrusted the souls of men to be established in heavenly beatitude.  Oh, pray to the God of peace that He may put Satan under our feet, so far conquered that he may no longer be able to hold men in captivity and harm the Church.  Offer our prayers in the sight of the Most High, so that they may quickly conciliate the mercies of the Lord; and beating down the dragon, the ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan, do thou again make him captive in the abyss, that he may no longer seduce the nations.  Amen.

Verse: Behold the Cross of the Lord; be scattered ye hostile powers.

Response: The Lion of the Tribe of Juda has conquered the root of David.

Verse: Let Thy mercies be upon us, O Lord.

Response: As we have hoped in Thee.

Verse: O Lord hear my prayer.

Response: And let my cry come unto Thee.

Verse: Let us pray.  O God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, we call upon Thy holy Name, and as suppliants, we implore Thy clemency, that by the intercession of Mary, ever Virgin, immaculate and our Mother, and of the glorious Archangel Saint Michael, Thou wouldst deign to help us against Satan and all other unclean spirits, who wander about the world for the injury of the human race and the ruin of our souls. 

Response:  Amen.