Rorate Caeli

THE COUNCIL AND THE ECLIPSE OF GOD by Don Pietro Leone : Chapter 9 – Theological Analysis – part 3: Conclusion to the Council’s Attack on the Person of Our Lord Jesus Christ.


The two attacks on Our Blessed Lord, the first in the Council and the second in the New Order of the Mass, in virtue of the Divine excellence of their object and of their immeasurable spiritual damage to souls , must rank as the two greatest evils of the last century.’        Don Pietro Leone



'ECCE HOMO' by Mantegna



Conclusion to Subsection (b): The Attack on Our Lord Jesus Christ

 

We proceed to set forth in schematic form the various aspects under which the Council attacks Our Blessed Lord Jesus Christ that we have been considering in this subsection on supernatural theology [1]:


 

1.     Christ in His Divinity, as ontological Truth in general;

2.     Christ as the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity, as logical Truth;

3.     Christ as the object of the Faith, as specifically supernatural ontological Truth;

4.     Christ as the meaning of life, as moral Truth;

5.     Christ the King, as Lord of the State and of the World;

6.     Christ Crucified, as rendered present in the Mass;

7.     Christ the Savior, as Redeemer of all mankind, in relation to other Christians, to other religions, and to the World;

8.     Christ as the One High Priest, as principle agent in the sacramental priesthood;

9.     Christ as the Head of the Church, His Mystical Body;

10.                      Christ as the Head and the Spouse of the Church, in marriage;

11.                      Christ as the Spouse of the soul, in religious life;

12.                      Christ as the Church, in His Mystical Body.

 

Our Lord is once again arraigned before the Council, once again put on trial and condemned. We may compare this series of events under the aspects that follow, proceeding first to give the aspect, and then the way it was instantiated during the earthly life of Our Lord and during the Second Vatican Council respectively.

 

            a) The Identity of the Judges Representing the People of God:

 

            i)  the Elders and the High Priests,

            ii) the Bishops;

 

             b)The Body to which they Belong:

 

              i) the Synagogue,

             ii) the Church;

 

           c) Their Preference of Man to God:

 

             i) in favoring Barabbas [2] to Christ,

             ii) in elevating man to Christ’s place in their anthropology and Christology [3];

 

           d) Their Preference of the State to God:

 

i)       in crying out: ‘We have no King but Caesar’,

ii)    in elevating man to Christ’s place as King of the Universe;

 

             e) The Appearance of Christ before the Council:

 

i)                   in the flesh;

ii)                in Truth, ontological, logical, moral; as King; as Savior; as High Priest; as Spouse of the Church and of the soul; as Head of the Mystical Body; as the Mystical Body.

 

            f) The Condemnation of Christ:

 

            i) in the flesh;

          ii)  by the repudiation of the doctrines that concern Him.

 

            g) The Mockery of Christ the King:

 

       i)    in the flesh as a false King by the purple cloak, the crown of thorns, the reed, and the salutations;

      ii)   in the teaching on Religious Liberty effectively denying His authority over the world.

 


Ego propter te flagellavi Aegyptum cum primogenitis suis: et tu me flagellatum tradidistis.

Popule meus, quid feci tibi? Aut in quo contristavi te? Responde mihi!

 

Ego eduxi te de Aegypto, demerso Pharaone in Mare rubrum: et tu me tradidisti principibus sacerdotum.

Popule meus, quid feci tibi? Aut in quo contristavi te? Responde mihi!

 

Ego ante te aperui mare: et tu aperuisti lancea latus meum.

Popule meus, quid feci tibi? Aut in quo contristavi te? Responde mihi! [4]...

 


Here then is the formal cause of the Council heterodoxy and its gravest evil: namely the attack on Our Lord Jesus Christ under the aspects that we have listed above. One of its aspects, as we remarked, was the attack on Christ Crucified, which the Liturgical Commission was soon afterwards to elaborate and to translate into action in the New Order of Mass, where Our Lord was this time to be attacked not only doctrinally, but also physically: in His Divinity and in His Humanity - in His Real Presence as the Christus totus.

 

These two attacks on Our Blessed Lord, the first in the Council and the second in the New Order of the Mass, in virtue of the Divine excellence of their object and of the immeasurable spiritual damage to souls to which they were to lead, must rank as the two greatest evils of the last century: greater than the two World Wars and greater than the Communist régimes of Russia and of China together, with all their attendant evils. 

 

II The Council’s Substitution of the God of Revelation with Man

 

The Council repudiates Christ: it puts the principle of doubt in place of Christ the Truth; it puts man in place of Christ under various other aspects. As to the last point, it puts: 

 

    a) Man himself:


       - in place of Christ the King, in the State and the World;

       -  in place of Christ Crucified, in the Mass;

 

    b) The principle of humanitarianism:


        -   in place of Christ the Savior in relations to those outside the Church;

        -  in place of Christ the High Priest, in the priesthood;            

-                     -   in place of Christ as the Spouse of the soul, in the religious life; 

 

    cThe principle of a merely human association:


        - in place of Christ as the Head of the Church;

        - in place of the Church Herself;

-        

  d)     The principle of a merely human interpersonal love:


        -    in place of Christ as the Head and the Spouse of the Church, in marriage.

 

      In a word, Truth is abandoned and God is replaced with man.

_______________________________

[1] Now if we are correct in saying that the formal object of the Faith is Christ, then all heterodoxy will constitute an attack on Him in some way or other. Why then have we singled out the Council’s attack on Christ as worthy of mention in our critique of its teaching? Because the Council’s attack is no indirect and impersonal attack on Him as a heresy would be about the sevenfold number of the sacraments or the existence of Hell for example, but a direct and personal attack on Him in the following ways: i) as Truth (cf. points 1-4); ii) as Jesus Christ according to the very etymology of the Holy Names, for Jesus means Savior (cf. point 7), and Christ means the Anointed One, that is Priest (cf. points 6 & 8), Prophet, and King (cf. point 5); iii) as Head of the Church (cf. points 9 & 10); iv) as Spouse of the Church and of the soul (cf. points 10 & 11).    

[2] etymologically ‘the son of the father’, that is Fallen Man, the son of the father who is the devil (cf. St. Alphonsus The Passion and Death of Jesus Christ, TAN books).   

[3] In attacking Christ and in deifying man, the Council in effect substitutes man for God, or more precisely for the God-Man; for no man, while yet encompassed by the flesh, could claim to be God in a purely spiritual sense.

[4] Improperia from the liturgy of Good Friday. ‘I scourged Egypt with its firstborn for thee: and thou handedst me over to be scourged. My people, what did I do to thee? Or in what did I make thee sad? Answer me! I led thee out of Egypt and immersed Pharaoh in the Red Sea: and thou handedst me over to the High Priests. My people, what did I do to thee? Or in what did I make thee sad? Answer me! I opened the sea before thee: and thou opened with a lance My side. My people, what did I do to thee? Or in what did I make thee sad? Answer me! ...