Editorial: Radicati nella fede, February 2015
Newsletter of the Catholic community of
Vocogno, Diocese of Novara, Italy
Dogmatic
but not on dogma appears to be the exact state of affairs in the Church these
past decades.
While theologians and the various pastoralists are allowed to
dabble with Christian doctrine in complete freedom – dangerously reformulating
the truths of the faith by transforming it into something else; while preaching
is allowed to run free like a river – placing in danger the entire Catholic
Creed, there is this [tendency] to become dogmatic, fixed and authoritarian on
what is not essential in the Church, for example: diocesan and parochial
pastoral organization.
Once
instead, the Church was concerned about the preservation of dogmas and truth,
including the truths of the Gospel. Once
instead, the Church was concerned about safeguarding and transmitting the
entirety of Catholic morality, by repeating the Commandments and elaborating
them for the faithful, so that they would make an effort to apply them to the
reality of their own lives.
Also
discipline, once strict in the Church, was so, in order to safeguard the
wholesome transmission of God’s Grace through the framework of the Sacraments.
She was strict in guaranteeing the conditions of receiving the Sacraments
fruitfully, but, with regard to the all the rest there was no dogmatization, or
so it seems to us. The history of the Church is the history of freedom, great
freedom, in responding to the will of God. If we think about the Saints, we
notice that they are not the same at all; the great imagination of God and the
great freedom of man in doing good are seen in their lives. At the same time, though,
in the very diverse lives of the Saints, we see a remarkable uniformity as
regards the dogmas, i.e. what they believed, the importance given to the
Sacraments, the centrality of the Mass, life conceived as a participation in
the redemptive sufferings of Our Lord, love for the Church, scrupulosity in the
works of mercy, faith in eternal life, decisiveness in praying for the living
and the dead etc. In short, they were a living catechism: we could teach
doctrine fruitfully starting with the lives of the Saints of all the different
Christian epochs, and we would always arrive at a rescript of the same catechism.
The
Saints, the Church, were uniform; that is, united, in the Faith and in the
discipline which logically develops from it, but not [necessarily] in all the
other things.
Nowadays,
to be precise, it’s not like that
anymore: you are checked on ‘all the other things’, and you have to conform to one style i.e. “
the modern Church”. If you don’t conform, you no longer belong to this Church;
and if you aren't thrown out, you live in the shadows: they know you’re there,
but do everything possible to make you invisible It’s of no importance that you are a
devout Catholic, that you safeguard the integral doctrine of the Church in its
timelessness.
This
is the new dogma. It’s the super-untouchable-dogma, which envelopes all the
timeless dogmas, by neutralizing and contaminating them in the new ideology.
The
true dogmas are the truths revealed by God we are obliged to believe in, through
the authority of God Who revealed them. The Church is their custodian. The
pastors have the grave responsibility of transmitting these, so that souls may
be saved.
The
super-dogma of modernity, by contrast, does not come from God. Men invented it.
And they claim to re-interpret everything along the lines of this affirmation: “The
Church must keep up with the times, otherwise She’ll find Herself outside
history.”
This
is a falsity that comes from way back in the past; Masonry has become its most
devastating propagator over the last few centuries; this lie has entered slowly, slowly into the
Church, and appears to have won today.
Inside
this bulletin you will find a fine article by Padre Emmanuel, where he
discusses “the mystery of iniquity” and defines Masonry as “the cesspit of all
mankind’s corruptions”. This global re-interpretation of Catholicism
modern-style, is the heart of the Masonic work to transform Catholicism into a
useless natural religion, made up of empty words about human solidarity.
“The
Church must keep up with the times, otherwise She’ll find Herself outside
history” is a lie, and they will never explain it to you, but they’ll impose it
on you with violence. They would never explain it, because if they did, their
heresy would be evident, and would reveal they weren’t from God.
From
the very beginning modernity has never been a concern of the Church. Her
concern was always being faithful to Our Lord Jesus, to Divine Revelation.
Think about what St. Paul writes in the letter to the Galatians:
“But though we, or an
angel from heaven, preach a gospel to you besides that which we have preached
to you, let him be anathema. As
we said before, so now I say again: If any one preach to you a gospel, besides
that which you have received, let him be anathema.” (Galatians, Chapt. 1 vv
8-9)
Frightening! “But though we or an angel from heaven preach a gospel to
you besides that which…” St. Paul warns
the faithful – not only about an angel from heaven, but not
even he, the great apostle, can change a single word of that gospel that he had
already preached to them.
Who are they then, these modern theologians and pastoralists? Who do they think they are – asking us to
modify the faith by re-interpreting it along the lines of the super-dogma of
modernity? Must the Church adapt to
the world of today? Can She not do today what She did in the past?
Oh, yes that’s what they are saying, you
can no longer do what the Church did in the past…you have to adapt to the
modern world. But again, they never tell you why, they never explain why.
Why shouldn't we experience the Mass like once before? Why shouldn't we receive the Sacraments
like once before? Why is it that we have to distort practices consolidated in
the Church for centuries, just to apply the dubious ecclesiastical recipes of
today? Why is the clear and simple traditional catechism no longer any good?
Why can’t the people in the churches of today not experience prayer like the
Christians of two thousand years ago? Why do we have to change the rules to
receive the Sacraments, if they come from the truth of the Gospel and safeguard
dogma?
The
modern clergy say that we must change because the men of today wouldn't understand. Yet even here they don’t explain this. They say that’s the way it
is, that it’s not up for discussion.
It
seems to us instead, that it is the modernized clergy themselves, who cannot
support the Church and Her glorious history of grace and holiness. They aren't able to support the timeless Church, because they have lost the reasons, and so
in order not to leave they have been working to change Her with the dogma of
modernity. Indeed, they have really changed Her where they were able to,
disfiguring Her and causing the greatest crisis in Christian history.
But
the Church is of God, and for this reason we continue serenely, in Tradition,
awaiting the hour of liberation.
[Rorate translation by contributor Francesca Romana]
