After having terminated his analysis of the Council and its causes, Don Pietro returns to the quotation at the beginning of the book: "How does the city sit solitary that was full of people...?" attempting to understand the present state of the Church and the world in the light of his findings. He first surveys the heterodoxy and the chastisement of the Church and the World subsequent to the Council, and then the role that the devil has played in that work of devastation. F. R.
‘And the fifth angel sounded
the trumpet: and I saw a star fall from Heaven upon the earth. And there was
given to him the key of the bottomless pit. And he opened the bottomless pit:
and the smoke of the pit arose, as the smoke of a great furnace. And the sun
and the air were darkened with the smoke of the pit.’ Apc. 9.1-2.
The Patristic Commentaries on the Book of Apocalypse understand the angel here mentioned as the devil, given a key by a High Priest in order to unleash heresies and evils, so contaminating the pure air of the Faith. Father Wolfe [1] suggests that the person identified by the Fathers of the Church as a High Priest is in fact the Pope himself who gives the key of Peter to the devil for the opening of the pit. In this connection we mention the remark of Father Congar: ‘The Council destroyed what I would call the unconditionality of the system. What I understand by ‘system’ is a complete and very coherent body of ideas transmitted by the teachings of Roman Universities, codified by Canon Law, protected by the strict and quite efficient vigilance of Pius XII, with reports, admonitions , the submission of writings to Roman censors etc. - in short, a whole ‘system’. With the Council, this was broken up. Tongues were loosened. The subterraneous elements surfaced ...” [2].
We
have above seen Father Congar as protagonist of collegiality, ecumenism, and
indifferentism regarding the Jews [3].
As such he himself played an important rôle in the destruction of the
‘unconditionality of the system.’
The
heresies and evils unlocked by the key of the angel may be understood as the
Council’s abuse of its munera, an abuse which constitutes Antirealist
Subjectivism in the form of self-deifying atheism. This abuse in its turn has,
in our view, also merited chastisement and augmented the devil’s power over the
Church [4]. We shall accordingly proceed to examine:
A. The Effects of Council Teaching in terms
of Postconciliar Heterodoxy;
B. The Effects of Council Teaching in terms
of Chastisement;
C. The Effects of Council Teaching in terms of
Demonology.
A. The Effects of the Council in terms of Postconciliar
Heterodoxy
I shall send a famine in the
land, not of bread and water, but of hearing the words of the Lord. And they
shall wander from sea to sea, seeking the word of the Lord, and shall not find
it. [5]
Amos 8. 11-12
Historical
Sketch [6]
The
Council’s abuse of the munus docendi, the office of teaching, has done
notable harm to the Church and to the World in subsequent years, the most
remarkable harm being the mass apostasy of the clergy and the people.
Of
course it is impossible to ascribe to the Council all the harm inflicted on the
Church and the World subsequent to its session, but rather to the Spirit of the
World, that is of Fallen Nature, consolidated by the various philosophical,
theological and religious factors that we have presented above. This spirit was
adopted and augmented by the same Council.
Subsequent
to the Council it became crystallized into two positions which we described in
the preface to this book as Modernism and Neoconservatism, the first being the
spirit of the World in its pure form, and the second in a diluted form. Each
position had its own journal: Concilium and Communio, respectively. Bishops, periti and other intellectuals favorable to Council teaching in some way or
another adopted the former or latter positions.
The
Modernist position was adopted by periti such as Fathers
Rahner, Küng, and Schillebeecx. They were not slow to fall
into overt and formal heresy denying the dogmas of the Immaculate Conception,
the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection, Transsubstantiation, and the Assumption;
they pushed for more extreme liturgical reforms for the sake of inculturation
and pastorality.
The
Neoconservatist position was conceived as a reaction to Modernism and its journal was founded
in 1972 by Fathers Ratzinger, Henri de Lubac, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Walter
Kasper, Marc Ouellet, and Louis Bouyer. This group advocated the ‘Reform of the
Reform’ (of the Novus Ordo Missae) and the ‘Hermeneutic of Continuity’; Pope John Paul II subscribed to
it. Under the influence of Cardinal Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI), it has
continued to attract theologians to this day and represents the official
Catholic attitude towards the Council, although ‘in nearly every diocese,
chancery, and seminary’ one can witness an inclination towards Modernism.
The
third position expounded in the Preface as the only authentic Catholic
position, being the only one that completely corresponds to Objective Reality,
that of Traditionalism, has enjoyed less influence in postconciliar years. Cardinal Ottaviani
moved away from such a position to one of Neoconservatism. In his ‘Secret
Letter’ of 24th July 1966 to all Bishops and Superior Generals of
the world he affirmed the orthodoxy of the Council and complained about abuses
in its interpretation: ‘Since the Second Vatican Council, which was recently
and successfully brought to a close, promulgated most wise documents in both
doctrinal and disciplinary matters for the efficient promotion of the life of
the Church, the entire people of God has the grave duty of making every effort
to implement all that as been solemnly proposed or decreed in that great
assembly of Bishops under the presidence of the Supreme Pontiff’ [7].
Two
of the Council prelates present that maintained their traditionalist stance and
were to defend it in writing were Archbishop Lefebvre and Bishop de Castro
Mayer; a peritus who did likewise was Romano Amerio [8].
Two other influential Catholics not present at the Council, Abbé Georges de
Nantes and Professor Plinio Corrêa di Oliviera, made important contributions to
Traditionalism by their subsequent writings,.
Archbishop
Lefebvre, in reply and in opposition to the view of Cardinal Ottaviani
expressed in the above-cited letter, situated the heterodoxy of the
postconciliar Church in the documents themselves: ‘… [the work of the
preparatory commissions] was odiously rejected to make way for the worst
tragedy that the Church has ever endured. We have witnessed the marriage of the
Church with liberal ideas. It would be hard to deny the facts, to close one’s
eyes, not to affirm boldly that the Council has allowed those who profess the
errors and the tendencies condemned by the aforementioned Popes [Bl. Pius IX,
Leo XIII, St. Pius X, Pius XI, Pius XII] to believe legitimately that their
dctrines are now approved… we must conclude that the Council has fostered the
spreading of liberal ideas in an inconceivable way: Faith, morals, ecclesiastical
discipline: these are shaken to their foundations…’
The
Traditionalist movement continues to gain ground to this day and, since Truth
always conquers, will eventually overshadow both the other positions. Its
flagship, the Old Mass, which Pope Paul VI attempted to sink, was greatly
promoted by Pope Benedict; the second attempt to sink it, that we are
witnessing to-day, has happily overall been having the opposite effect.
*
We
examine the harm to Catholic teaching according to the thematic schema afforded
us by the chapters of the first and second parts this book, in which we
attempted to analyze individual Council texts. We append a subsection on the
effects of antirealist subjectivism, as the fundamental error underlying all
conciliar evil and error. This section thus amounts to an overview of the
development of Neo-Gnosticism, the mixture of the Faith and falsehood which was
the Council’s principal achievement.
1. The Church in Herself;
2.
The Church in Relation to Non-Catholic Christians and to the Other
Religions;
3.
The Church and the State;
4.
The Church and the World;
5.
Man in His Choice of Life;
6.
The Holy Mass;
7.
Man;
8.
Antirealist Subjectivism.
1. The Church in Herself
Council
doctrine, once it was diffused amongst the faithful, was not much disputed,
presumably because of its conformity to Fallen Nature and because of their
general ignorance of the Faith and of theology. This ignorance would in itself
and alone have furnished ample justification for a dogmatic Council. Instead
the Council’s lacunae and heterodoxy were to serve not only to deepen
their ignorance, but also to confuse them. As to the former point, we find
almost universal ignorance among the faithful of postconciliar years concerning
the Mystical Body of Christ, the Church Militant, Suffering, or Triumphant, the
Fall, Original Sin, Mortal Sin, Purgatory or Hell; concerning the Church as a
Hierarchy, One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic.
Many
faithful seem to think that the Catholic Church is merely some sort of human
society among many others, and not holy at all - the latter heresy being encouraged
by recent Pontiffs in their zeal to perpetuate the Council’s program of
‘apologizing’ for the Church’s past. Other members of the faithful seem to think
that the Church, even if She is divine, is, at least now, a promoter of
Liberty, Fraternity, and Equality: of liberal morality, fraternal liturgy, and
ecumenical equality.
As to the hierarchy of the
Church, we have already mentioned that collegiality was to engender further
fragmentation in terms of ‘synodality’[9].
Furthermore, Pope Paul VI [10],
in opposition to the dispositions and anathema of the Council of Trent [11]
abolished the hierarchical grades of ascension towards the priesthood from the
tonsure (the entry into the clerical state), through the four minor orders of
porter, lector, exorcist, and acolyte; and through the first major order which
is that of the subdiaconate. In fact he left only the diaconate untouched,
which the New Code of Canon Law was later to define (in contrast to past
teaching) as the entry into the clerical state [12].
The tenets of the new Church,
Faith, and Religion that we have just outlined in the previous subsection, have
become the new criteria for Catholicity, or in other words ‘acceptance of the
Council’ has substituted the Four Notes of One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic
as the sole guarantee of Church membership: this we have seen in the
negotiations with the Fraternity of St. Pius X and with ‘traditionalists’ in
general; this we have also seen in the attempts to restrict the use of the
Roman Rite in the motu proprio ‘Traditionis Custodes’ and in the
subsequent ‘clarifications’ with their appeal to ‘Ecclesial Communion’ [13]
- meaning nothing other than conformity to conciliar heterodoxy.
1. 2. The Church in Relation to non-Catholic
Christians, and to the Other Religions
Ecumenical
gatherings, which, as we observed above, constitute perhaps the most eloquent
of all expressions of the Council’s ideology, have become an important feature
of the postconciliar Church: at the Papal level (particularly at Assisi), and
at the diocesan and even parochial level [14];
words such as ‘heresy’, ‘schismatic’, ‘apostate’, ‘dogma’, ‘infallible’, and
‘excommunication’ are no longer in common use [15].
We consider that the gravest
abuse to which Council heterodoxy has led has been the veneration of a
‘fertility goddess’ in the Basilica of St. Peter, Rome. As an act of idolatry
this act may be traced back to:
- - the Council’s openness to other religions as expressed in Nostrae Aetatis;
r- -its recommendation of religious gatherings with non-Catholics in Unitatis Redintegratio;
- - its promotion
of inculturation in Sacrosanctum
Concilium [16], Gaudium et Spes [17],
and Ad Gentes [18].
The vision manifest in these
documents was to be concretized in the initiatives of Pope John Paul II to
visit places of pagan worship and receive on his person the marks of other
Religions, and to host in the Basilica of Assisi representatives of other Religions,
invited to perform acts of idolatry such as the strangulation of a cock on the
altar of St. Clara, and the veneration of ‘The Buddha’ on a tabernacle. Such
co-operation with idolatry was the forerunner of the formal idolatry of the said
‘fertility goddess’ under the later Pope. The personal participation of Supreme
Pontiffs in all these events, especially that of receiving the marks of other
religions and in venerating the said ‘goddess’ will have had a deleterious
effect on the entire Mystical Body of which he was (or is) the visible Head. We
here mention a universal upsurge of idolatry, occultism, sacrilege, and
impiety, especially that of ‘Communion in the hand.’
The act of idolatry towards
the ‘fertility’ goddess in the Vatican may be criticized on the following
counts:
a)
It is opposed to Catholic marital teaching in representing the greatness
of woman as fertility [19]
rather than Sacred Virginity in the first place and motherhood within marriage
in the second;
b)
It is opposed to Catholic mariology in symbolizing the greatness of
womanhood by a fictitious 'fertility goddess' rather than by the Blessed Mother
of God, symbol and paradigm both of Sacred Virginity and of motherhood within
marriage;
c)
It is an offence against the Blessed Mother of God in venerating such a
figure rather than her, especially since the figure is depicted as naked,
unchaste, and immodest, whereas the Blessed Virgin is the very paradigm of
chastity and modesty;
d)
It is an offence against the Church in occurring in the Church's most
important place of cult, St. Peter's Rome;
e)
It desecrates the said place of cult;
f)
It is an offence against Our Lord Jesus Christ in occurring in His Real
Presence;
g)
It is a offence against the One God in offending against the First
Commandment.
And so we again witness a
diabolical act of mockery, this time even more violent than before, as:
1.
Sacred Virginity is mocked;
2.
Marriage is mocked;
3.
The Bishops are mocked;
4.
The Pope is mocked;
5.
The Church is mocked;
6.
The Blessed Virgin Mary is mocked;
7.
Our Lord Jesus Christ is mocked;
8.
The one God is mocked.
2.
3. The Church and the State
The same skepticism regarding
the Catholic Faith that lies behind the document Dignitatis Humanae accounts for the indecorous precipitation of
contemporary Churchmen into the Council’s enterprise to separate Church and
State. They renounce their duty to condemn moral evil in the political sphere,
such as the State enforcement of the ‘Gender’ theory in education; they
renounce their duty to limit the errors diffused by the non-Catholic Christian
confessions and by the world religions. Rather they actively adopt immoral
state initiatives (such as the promotion of the same ‘Gender’ theory [20])
and encourage false cults (as by allowing the building of mosques or even by
allowing churches to be transformed into them). Christ the King, the very
formal principle and symbol of any authentic Catholic political teaching, is
passed over in silence.
One of the Council’s most significant
and grave acts of renunciation of its duty to condemn moral evil came, as we
recounted above, with its conciliatory response to Communism. This approach was
to be perpetuated in the Vatican’s Ostpolitik
involving the betrayal of the heroic Cardinal Mindszenty [21],
and in its current policy regarding China involving the betrayal of the
Underground Catholic Church.
3.
4. The Church and the World
As we observed above, the
Faith teaches that the Church and the World stand in diametrical opposition one
to the other; in postconcilar times we note that the distinction between the
two is no longer made and that the term ‘World’ in the traditional senses that
we already elucidated, is no longer in current use.
So much for the Church and the
World in the spiritual domain; as for the political domain we have in recent
years witnessed the Vatican busily promoting the ‘New World Order’ condemned by
St. Pius X in his encyclical on the Sillon,
the realization of which Order would represent the final dissolution of the
Catholic Church into the World. We recall that this is an aim of the
Freemasonry [22], and
in that connection note the comment on Pope Francis’ encyclical Fratelli Tutti by the Spanish
Freemasonry: ‘The latest encyclical of Pope Francis shows how far the current
Catholic Church is from its former positions. In Fratelli Tutti, the Pope embraces the Universal Brotherhood, the
great principle of Modern Freemasonry.’
If the Catholic Church were per impossibile [23]
to be dissolved into the World, it would constitute the visible society of
those who already invisibly belong to Satan in this world by mortal sin and
enmity to Catholicism: an ‘Anti-Church’ of which Satan would be the invisible
head and the Antichrist the visible.
[1] see his masterly 'Novena of Conferences on Our Lady of
Revelation '
[2] Jean Puyo interrroge le Père Congar, p. 220
[3] we shall see in chapter 10, II.5, on our subsection on
the periti, how great a part he
claimed in the redaction of the Council documents
[4] for the sake of completion, we add to this treatment
of the effects of the Council the economic and visible effects. In his book ‘Pope John’s Council’, Michael
Davies (pjc, p. 258) counts the cost of the Council for
the Holy See, placing it in material terms at £3,430,000 (in the then currency, and excluding
the contributions of National hierarchies), together with several hundred million lire
for the two coffee-bars installed in St. Peter’s alone and half-a-million cups of coffee that
they dispensed. ‘On a more positive note’, he adds, ‘some very attractive
commemorative stamps were issued by the Vatican Post Office.’ In visible terms, by contrast, he
considers that the greatest cost was to the unity of the Church: to the Church
as a whole, to the parish, and to the liturgy. He quotes the words of Pope Paul VI in the
General Audience of 31st March 1976 regarding the same pluralism.
[5] the author, growing up in postconciliar years in a
practicing, Catholic family, himself wandered from the seas of Europe to the
seas of America in search of the Truth, and did not find it.
[6] see Infiltration, Dr. Taylor Marshall, Sophia
Institute Press, 2019, p. 144-6
[7] Lettre à nos frères prêtres, which contains both this Secret Letter and the reply of Monsignor
Lefebvre referred to in the following paragraph, see article by Dr. John
Pepino.
[8] in Iota Unum
[9] We may distinguish three forms of synodality; 1) that
exercised by a synod convoked by the Pope for advisory purposes (CIC 1983, can.
334) where ‘a group of bishops who
have been chosen from different regions of the world and meet at fixed times to
foster closer unity between the Roman Pontiff and bishops, to assist the Roman
Pontiff with their counsel in the preservation and growth of faith and morals
and in the observance and strengthening of ecclesiastical discipline, and to
consider questions pertaining to the activity of the Church in the world’(CIC
1983, can. 342); 2) the synodality of permanent synods of a patriarchal or
archiepiscopal church who have not just advisory, but also legal power within
their individual churches (Code of Canon Law of the Eastern churches, chapters
3 &4); 3) the synodality, as yet undefined, of miscellaneous sections of
the Church, consisting of both clerics and laity, which lends a certain
pre-eminence to the laity, to whom the clerics should are supposed to listen.
(We gave an example above.) Synodality in all these three senses represents a
development of the concept of collegiality and a further erosion of the
principle of the hierarchy of the Church.
[10] Ministeria quaedam,
1972
[11] ‘From the very beginning of the Church, the names of
the following orders, and the ministrations proper to each one of them, are
known to have been in use: that is, those of subdeacon, acolyte, exorcist,
lector, and porter; though these were not of equal rank: for the subdiaconate
is classed amongst the greater orders by the Fathers and the sacred Councils,
wherein also we very often read of the other inferior orders.’ S.23, ch.2; ‘If
any-one says that besides the priesthood there are in the Catholic Church no
other orders, both major and minor, by which as by certain grades, there is an
advance to the priesthood: Anathema Sit.’ S.23, can.2. We note that the new
functions of ‘lector’ and ‘acolyte’ are not comparable to the minor orders,
being conceived no longer as sacramental, but solely as ministerial.
[12] ‘Through the reception of the diaconate a
person becomes a cleric…’ (CIC 1983, can. 266.1).
[13] a French friend and confrère of the author, asked by
the local Bishop to concelebrate with the diocesan clergy on Maundy Thursday on
this basis, rightly replied: What Ecclesial communion can I have with priests
who deny the Real Presence and other dogmas of the Faith?
[14] the heavenly powers seem by contrast to have other ‘sensibilities’: the
gatherings at Assisi were followed by an earthquake damaging the priceless affreschi
of Giotto and one of the author’s penitents reported to him last week that the
upper Basilica which hosted the said gatherings has now been converted into a
museum. Ecumenical gatherings in churches meanwhile, at least in the city where
the author began his ministry, are invested with a solemnity higher than any
other celebration. In that same city the occurrence of the 500 years
anniversary of Luther’s ‘Reform’ offered the occasion for such euphoric,
bizarre, and outlandish excesses. For the Church to fête anniversaries of
Martin Luther is as absurd as for Jews to fête anniversaries of Adolf Hitler.
[15] if they are used at all, they are met with frowns or unease, with
perspiration on the brow, or with the exchange of conspiratorial glances - ‘Let
us exchange a conspiratorial glance.’
[16] see above
[17] 44
[18] 10 & 22
[19] so
corresponding to the spirit of eroticism that we have identified of the
Council’s treatment of marriage in Gaudium
et Spes, a spirit which was subsequently to be divinized by ‘Theology of
the Body’
[20] in Amoris
Laetitia,op.cit. See our section on marriage above
[21] after being warmly encouraged in his resistance to
Communism by Pope Pius XII and welcomed to Rome by Pope Paul VI, he was induced
by the Vatican to leave Hungary on the assurance that he could retain his
authority as
Archbishop of Esztergom and Primate of Hungary, only to be informed that the
Pope had stripped him of these titles (on the 25th anniversary of
his arrest by the Communists). MD pjc p.143
[22] cf. ch.10, II. 3
[23] although impossible (because of the Church’s
indefectibility)
