Rorate
Caeli is delighted to publish in installments, Don Pietro Leone’s latest work
of anti-modernism: ‘The Council and the Eclipse of God.’
Not
content to rehash the three or four best-known sticking points of the Council,
such as Collegiality, Ecumenism and Subsisit,
the author with remorseless logic, offers a penetrating analysis, both
metaphysical and theological of its entire distorted vision of the Faith, Truth
and Reality, so exposing it as a diabolical attack on Holy Mother Church
Herself and one of the greatest evils of the 20th century.
In the first installment, the author takes a step back and proposes to the reader how to view the Council.
F.R.
THE COUNCIL AND THE ECLIPSE OF GOD
Beatissimae Vergini Mariae humillime dedicatum,
Aleph. How doth the city sit solitary that was
full of people! How is the mistress of the Gentiles become a widow, the princes
of provinces made tributaries! Beth.
Weeping she hath wept in the night and has tears on her cheeks: there is none
to comfort her among all them that were dear to her, all her friends have
despised her and have become her enemies… Mem.
All they that pass by the way have clapped their hands at her: they have hissed
and wagged their heads at the daughter of Jerusalem, saying: Is this the city
of perfect rest, the joy of all the earth?
(Lamentations 1-2)
Protestation
of Author
The Author submits this work
to the judgment of the Church, renouncing and recanting in advance all that She
may deem not to be in accordance with the Holy Catholic Faith.
Bibliographical
Note
We have relied on the
following excellent works: ‘Pope John’s Council’ [1],
‘The Second Vatican Council and Religious Liberty’ [2],
‘Il Concilio Vaticano II una storia mai
scritta’ [3], ‘Sinossi degli errori imputati al concilio Vaticano
II’ [4].
The last has been particularly useful for indicating the principal heterodox
texts, together with the reasons for their heterodoxy; the others for providing
the historical context and uncovering many of the deeper issues at stake. We
have used the translation of the Council documents by Father Austin Flannery OP
[5].
Preface
The hierarchy and the clergy
of the last decades almost unanimously present the Council teachings as a new
vision of the Catholic Faith and of its practice. This alone would be
sufficient utterly to discredit it, when we recall that the Catholic Faith is
in fact immutable [6].
However, the damage that this Council has done, and continues to do to souls, urgently requires a throroughgoing critique of this new vision: in order to
show how it is opposed to the true Faith, and to set it aside[7]
as soon as possible.
This Preface will consist of
the following sections:
- How to View the Council;
- The Historical
Background;
- The Council’s
opposition to the Catholic Faith.
- How to view the Council
We shall begin by presenting,
and then evaluating, the three basic views which are held of the Council [8].
- Three Views
The texts of the Second
Vatican Council are syncretist, as being the product of two opposing factions
of Council members: the ‘Traditionalists’ [9],
intent on declaring the Church’s Traditional teaching and the ‘Modernists’
intent on declaring novelty. The novelty as expressed in the texts nowhere amounts
to formal heresy (or at least not yet demonstrably so), but is heterodox, by
which we mean that it typically has a heretical tendency: it is ambiguous in
such a way as to favor heresy[10].
There are three principal
views that have been taken of the Council as a whole: i) the Modernist view;
ii) the Traditionalist view; and iii) a further view adopted subsequent to the
Council, namely the ‘Neo-Conservative’ view. In the simplest possible terms,
the Modernists reject Tradition and embrace novelty; the Traditionalists
embrace Tradition and reject novelty; the Neo-Conservatives embrace both
Tradition and novelty.
In order to expound these
three views in greater detail, we shall show how the proponents of each of them
understand the novel texts. The Modernists understand them in a heretical
sense; the Neo-Conservatives according to the ‘Hermeneutic of Continuity’; and
the Traditionalists according to the ‘Remote Rule of Faith’.
a) The Modernists understand the novel texts, then, in a heretical sense.
To give an example, they interpret in a heretical sense conciliar texts that
cast doubt on the dogma (known as the
dogma): ‘No salvation outside the Church’ [11].
They understand such texts, in other words, as a denial of the dogma: that is
to say as stating that it is possible to be saved outside the Church. They
manifest this understanding either in words, actions, or omissions (e.g. by no
longer teaching ‘the dogma’ and no longer engaging in missionary work of a
supernatural character or in evangelisation). We observe that, as far as
it is possible to judge, a large part of the contemporary hierarchy and clergy
are Modernist, understanding novel conciliar texts in a heretical sense.
b) The Neo-Conservatives, by contrast, as we have said above, embrace both
Tradition and Novelty. They do not understand the novel texts in a heretical
sense like the Modernists, but rather according to the ‘hermeneutic of
continuity’, that is to say in the light of Tradition, and more precisely as
continuous with Tradition. Their stance is what we might describe as
‘pacifist’, and imbued with piety and docility towards the Church, towards what
She has always taught and towards what She taught in recent times in the last
Ecumenical (in the sense of universal) Council.
c) The Traditionalists, finally, understand the novel texts not according
to the ‘Hermeneutic of Continuity’ but according to the ‘Remote Rule of Faith’.
The Remote Rule of Faith signifies Tradition, and in understanding the Council
in the light of Tradition they resemble the Neo-Conservatives; but they differ
from them in not necessarily interpreting the texts as continuous with Tradition. The light of Tradition may show a text
to be continuous with Tradition or discontinuous with it; or again it may show that
a given text is ambiguous and favors heresy.
In this last case, which is in
fact the case of the novel texts, Traditionalists will reject the said texts.
They do this, we repeat, not because the texts are necessarily heretical in
themselves, but because they are of a heretical tendency: they are ambiguous in
such a way as to favor heresy.
- Evaluation of the Three Views
a) Modernists reject
Tradition and embrace Heresy. In rejecting Tradition they reject Faith itself,
since Tradition is nothing other than Faith as it has been taught with every
greater clarity and depth over the centuries. Modernism is therefore a
heretical position both negatively in rejecting the Faith, and positively in
embracing heresy: consequently it is not a position tenable for Catholics. The
difference between Modernist Heretics and past Heretics is that the former
pretend to be Catholic and members of the Church while the latter did not. May
Modernists have the courage to face the Truth and to convert, or at least
publically to admit that they are not members of the Catholic Church.
And yet perhaps they may rely
on their cherished theory (condemned by St. Pius X in Pascendi 13) that Truth changes, and claim that they do not reject
traditional teaching in respect of the past, but only in respect of the present
and future, on the basis that it was true in the past but is true no longer.
This claim would however be false because, as we have already stated, Faith is
immutable: the object of Faith is Truth, Supernatural Truth. This Truth is
nothing else than God Himself in His intimate nature, together with His plan of
Salvation for the world. Since the object of Faith is Truth, that Truth,
indeed, which is God Himself, it is itself immutable. If one attempts to change
the Faith, one is, therefore, left with falsehood.
b) Neo-Conservatives, by contrast, even if they have succeeded up
till now in interpreting the conciliar ambiguities in accordance with
Tradition, also sustain an untenable position: untenable inasmuch as it is both
obscurantist and obstructionist.
It is obscurantist in suggesting that the novel texts stand in continuity
with Tradition. For to say that the texts should be interpreted in continuity
with Tradition entails that they are in fact so, whereas, by contrast and as we
have pointed out, they are novel, and furthermore favor heresy.
It is obstructionist in the following way: it deflects attention away from
the Council’s major problem which is its heretical tendency, and focuses it
instead on a minor problem which is its ambiguities as such. The Council’s
heretical tendency is its major problem because it obstructs the Church’s goal
which is the salvation and sanctification of souls; the Council’s ambiguities,
by contrast, are only a minor problem, because interpreting them correctly
serves at best to defend the Council Popes and Bishops from heresy, a purely
academic affair.
If part of the regular
consignment of buns to a boys’ school were poisonous and the Headmaster did not
stop the consignment, but rather spent his time defending those responsible
from blame, one would be inclined to say that he had got his priorities wrong,
and that if he refused to stop the consignment, then at least some
investigation should be made about which buns were dangerous, in order to save
the boys from harm.
c) Traditionalists, as explained above, embrace the Council’s
Traditional texts, they assess the novelties in the light of Tradition and
reject them on account of their heretical tendency. In rejecting them for this
reason they are but following the practice of past Councils, which attached to
such texts ‘theological censures’ such as propositio
haeresim sapiens (proposition that tastes, is suspect, of heresy) or propositio captiosa (captious
proposition, a proposition that is deliberately ambiguous) [12].
Far from being doctrinally
obscurantist or morally obstructionist, the Traditionalist is motivated solely
by the desire to teach and to sanctify, in accordance with the mandate of Our
Blessed Lord: he desires that the Faith should be stated as clearly as possible
because it is the light in which we see the path that leads to Heaven.
The Traditionalist view is
controversial first in regard to the
hierarchy, because:
-
it calls into question the declarations of all the
hierarchy of the world united in a Council;
-
it brands a
large part of the hierarchy and clergy in the two succeeding generations as
heterodox;
- it entails that
from the time of the Council till the present day the hierarchy has been
directing the Church along the wrong course.
And yet, controversial as it
may be, this view is not problematic theologically. The Council declarations
were not dogmatic, neither in the theological form of the texts nor in the
Pope’s intention [13], and a
large part of the hierarchy and the clergy has fallen into heterodoxy in the
past, in the Arian crisis, when almost the entire Church had lost its doctrinal
orientation.
The Traditionalist view is
also controversial in regard to the Holy
Spirit, in suggesting that He did not assist the entire Episcopacy of the
world united to the Pope. To this we should reply by saying that in fact the
Holy Spirit can assist the Church in one of two ways: either positively, in
deepening and clarifying the Church doctrine; or negatively, in preventing the
Church falling into formal heresy: which is the way He seems to have assisted
the Second Vatican Council [14].
The Traditionalist view is
controversial finally in a moral sense
in being critical of the Council and of the joint pronouncements of all the
Bishops in the world, including the Pope. Does this not exhibit a lack
of those virtues of piety and docility that characterize the Neo-Conservatives?
No, we practice piety and docility towards the hierarchy if we respect their
ecclesiastical dignity and if we follow those teachings of theirs which conform
to the Faith; but if they teach another doctrine, we are obliged to reject it [15].
More fully, Faith is necessary
for salvation; in the doctrinal domain it is the very raison d’être of the hierarchy to impart it: this is their
competence and their duty. If, by contrast, their teaching is heterodox, then
they both exceed their competence and fail in their duty, and we are obliged to
reject that teaching. It is salutary to criticize heterodoxy so that others may
preserve their Faith intact. The purpose of this, as we have just said, is that
they may attain their eternal salvation.
*
We conclude the section with
the following argument:
1) The Council contains
hereticizing texts;
2) The person who dies a
formal heretic is condemned to Hell; therefore
3) The Council endangers the
salvation of souls and should be set aside.
Should any-one doubt the first
premise, let him read the present book; should any-one doubt the second he is
not Catholic. Does the Church not teach us infallibly: ‘If any-one wants to be
saved, let him above all hold the Catholic Faith…’ [16]
? As to the conclusion, it refers to the whole Council, not just to the
hereticizing texts, because, although the Council also contains traditional
texts, a layman without expert knowledge is not equipped to distinguish the
orthodox texts from the heterodox ones.
[1] Michael Davies, Augustine Publishing Company, 1977
(hereinafter referred to as ‘MD pjc’)
[2] Michael Davies, The Neumann Press, 1999 (hereinafter
referred to as ‘MD rl’)
[3] Professor Roberto de Mattei, Lindau, 2010 (hereinafter
referred to as ‘RdM’)
[4] Canonicus, editrice ichthys, 2012
[5] Vatican Council II, Costello New York, 1996
[6] we shall later demonstrate this dogmatically and
metaphysically
[7] per scartarla quanto
prima
[8] we wrote a preliminary essay on this subject (‘How to
regard the Second Vatican Council’) on the site Rorate Caeli
[9] we use this term simply in the sense here stated; not
in the pejorative sense as of a group of persons nostalgically clinging onto an
outmoded vision of the Faith.
[10] ‘Heresy’ and ‘heterodox’ come from the Greek. Heresy
means ‘choice’ or taking for oneself; heterodox means ‘other-doctrine’.
[11] ‘One and only is the universal Church of the faithful,
outside which no-one is saved’, extra
quam nullus omnino salvatur, Fourth Lateran Council (1215)
[12] we shall later
see the relevance of the latter term, ‘captiousness’, to the historical reality
of the Council.
[13] as we shall shortly see
[14] we treat this question more amply in our preliminary article on the
Council, referred to above
[15] St Thomas Aquinas states (III Sent. d.25, q
[16] Quicumque vult salvus
esse, ante omnia opus est ut teneat catholicam fidem, Symbolum Quicumque
