'In this final version I have been forced to level the charge of atheism against the Council'.
CARL HEINRICH BLOCH - THE MOCKING OF CHRIST, 1880
"Our Lord is
attacked; eternal life is endangered. We have seen the consequences in these
postconciliar years. An entirely reprehensible spirit of insubordination has
entered the Vatican, a “fertility goddess” is venerated in St. Peter's. This
belongs to a context and cannot be passed over in silence."
Interview with Don Pietro Leone
by Francesca Romana
F.R. So
your book on the last Council has at long last come out.
D.P. Deo
gratias! Before starting I should like to express again my profuse thanks in
public to New Catholic for allowing me to publish the first version of the book
in instalments on Rorate Caeli over a period of years, to your good self above
all for all the work of impagination and illustration of the text, to the
people, lay or consecrated, who proof-read the book, especially the kind and
illustrious professor, Dr. Dennis Q. McInerny, who has written a series of
excellent books on philosophy. He read what was substantially the final version
and was in complete agreement with me on the content. He stated that the
Council represents, among other things, a rejection of metaphysics altogether.
I agree. We have included some of his words on the cover. Sadly he
died a few months ago. Requiescat in Pace. Lastly I
thank the Editor of Loreto Publications for his great patience.
F.R. The
book is demanding, a long read. Modern people, even Traditional Catholics, have
less inclination to wade through a large volume like this and want summaries of
issues via the internet.
What can
you say to encourage Catholics (and non-Catholics for that matter) to read it?
Who exactly did you write this book for? What do you hope that the reader will
get from it?
D.P.
I wrote it for the Hierarchy, for Bishops and their seminaries so that the
Church in due course may set the Council aside; I wrote it for all who want to
know the Truth, to know the Catholic Faith, that all might practice the Faith
to reach Heaven. The legacy of the Council documents, constituting the most
influential corpus of texts that the Hierarchy gave us in the last century,
does not, in my considered opinion and to put it mildly, well serve the
Church's final end: man's attainment of Heaven.
F.R.
Serious-minded Catholics, it would seem to me, should have a copy of this book
on their bookshelves for there could come a time when the virtual reality of
the internet and digital systems collapse. Even secular experts in this field
predict the shutdown of the Internet and cyber-attacks. Unless a person has
been living in a cave for the last 50 years or so, it cannot be denied that the
Roman Catholic Church continues to degenerate in its institutional reality. It
no longer has the credibility of even 13 years ago. The figure and status and
authority of the Pope have been gravely compromised. Was this also an
objective of the Council to diminish the temporal and spiritual power of the
Papacy?
D.P. In the
sections on the Church in Herself and in Her relations with the outside World,
the Council demeans the Papacy by putting it on the same level as the
“Episcopal College” and by creating a legal structure for Popes to delegate
authority to Bishops' Conferences. In its documents on Ecumenism and Religious
Liberty it reduces the Papal authority further by debasing the Catholic
Religion to the level of other religions or bodies in the State. Subsequent to
the Council, many utterances of Pope Francis were not such as to inculcate
respect for the office which brings with it the greatest dignity on
earth.
F.R. There
have been a number of good books written about Vatican II and it’s tragic
consequences. What makes your book different and why should people read it?
D.P. There
have been good historical accounts and a good list of errors. But there has
been no attempt to offer a systematic analysis from the dogmatic and
metaphysical perspectives. In a world dominated ever more by the spirit of
ignorance, confusion, and folly, the book aims to set True and False one beside
the other, to show what is to be accepted and what is to be rejected. This
cannot be done in a few pages, nor in pages which can be read in a hurry. Study
and time are required, but I hope that they will be rewarded by the
understanding that they may bring.
F.R. Do you
reject the Council?
D.P. I
reject its errors as everyone is obliged to do. But no-one has the authority to
reject the Council, just as no-one has the authority to reject the Pope. Only
the Church, in the form of the Pope, has the authority to reject a Council or a
(past) Pope.
F.R. Has
much changed since we published it here on Rorate? In a work so ambitious, as
regards extension and depth, I suppose that there is always more to add:
connections between different elements of the Council, the clarification of the
various higher principles that govern the Council...
D.P.
Indeed.
F.R. What’s
your general view of the Council Texts?
D.P.
Obscure. I spent a lot of time trying to understand what the author of any
given text was driving at, what was Catholic about it, what was not, applying
dogma and logic remorselessly, trying to express the conclusions as clearly as
possible. I often had the image before my eyes of an enormous ball of cotton,
with tangled, tightly knotted skeins, almost impossible to unravel.
F.R. But
you succeeded in the end?
D.P. It has
been 7 years, and I have by no means dealt with all the Council texts, but I
had to stop somewhere.
F.R. What
sparked off the initial idea of the book?
D.P. I knew
there was something wrong with the Council, and suspected that there was some
highest principle which governed all that was wrong with it. I wanted to
identify this highest, or formal, principle of the Council's errancy based on a
representative quantity of texts, including those which are the most famous and
heterodox.
F.R. So
what is this principle?
D.P.
After several years of work, I received the light to understand, or so it seems
to me: the Council is the repudiation of Our Blessed Lord Jesus Christ, and
His substitution by man.
F.R. I
remember this dramatic conclusion from the instalments. I must say that your
analysis is profoundly shocking.
D.P. I
applied dogmatics and logic and that was the outcome. I share this view with
three traditional priests who I consider amongst the most enlightened of our
day, although one has already died, understanding enlightenment as the Greeks
did, as the consequence of suffering.
F.R. The
book should cause a stir.
D.P. I
sincerely hope so. The issues must be known before they can be assessed.
I imagine that it may anger some people, but we must try to set emotion aside
and be objective.
F.R. Your
primary desire is that Christ be adored as is His due.
D.P. This
is my primary desire. The attack on Him is the greatest evil of the Council,
to which all the texts, when understood nel loro insieme, are,
according to my studies, streamlined. I have listed the different aspects of
this attack one after the other: Christ the King is attacked in the decree on
Religious Liberty; Christ the Saviour in that on Ecumenism; Christ the
Bridegroom of the Church in that on marriage, Christ the Bridegroom of the soul
in that on the Religious Life, and so on.
F.R. Are
you accusing the participants of the Council themselves of this attack?
D.P The
diversity of the Council members and the complexity of the Council texts is
such that no human agent could have orchestrated a conclusion of such coherence
and implacability.
F.R. So you
are speaking of the work of a preternatural power behind the whole operation?
D.P. I
argued the same conclusion regarding the fabrication of the new rite of Mass,
in my book "The Destruction of the Roman Rite".
F.R. If
this is the greatest evil, what other evils are there?
D.P.
The next greatest evil is the danger to souls.
F.R. Let us
return to the changes that you made to the book since we published the earlier
draft.
D.P. In
this final version I have been forced to level the charge of atheism against
the Council. In the previous version I made a list of many texts that
blurred the natural and supernatural orders of reality. In the meantime, I
have increased the number to 30. Thereby the Council insinuates that there
is only one order of reality. But if there is only one order of reality, then
God cannot exist, since God, by definition, is utterly transcendent to the
natural order: if He is not transcendent to it, He is not God.
F.R. So the
Council is atheistic in your view?
D.P. Not
exactly. Remember that the participants were divided into two groups, the
traditionalists and the Liberals / Modernists, so we cannot label the
Council in a global sense at all. And we cannot assume that that even the
latter group were atheists consciously. But they did subscribe to a world view,
which when carefully analysed, collapses into atheism.
F.R. If you impute atheism
to the Council after such a detailed study – how can we trust the present
hierarchy who seem totally enamoured with the Second Vatican Council and accuse
those who challenge their position as disobedient and even schismatic?
D.P. In my view, not many
members of the Hierarchy and the Church Herself have much detailed knowledge of
the Council. We can trust many of the Hierarchy for their good will, but when
they preach the novel Council teaching as something true and good, we can beg
leave to differ, and when they call us disobedient and schismatic for doing so,
we can present them with the Catholic Faith itself as our witness, as it has
been handed down over the centuries in its integrity.
F.R. How can this be
reconciled with the promise of Our Lord that the gates of hell shall not
prevail against the Church?
D.P. As long as there is
a Pope and validly baptised Catholics who have not fallen into Schism, Heresy,
or Apostasy, the Church will continue to exist, which is in any case
dogmatically assured, even if many members of the Hierachy continue to mislead
the faithful.
F.R. Did
you have to modify or re-write anythig else, any other sections?
D.P. All
the sections, sooner or later. The ones that required most work were those on
Collegiality, Ecumenism, and Religious Liberty. I found myself re-writing the
chapter on Ecumenism twice and sections of it three times; I was re-writing
sections on Collegiality and Religious Liberty almost up to publication. These
three themes are as obscure as they are dangerous. Much work is needed to
clarify and understand them. When analysed to a certain depth, one can see,
though, that they are simply a re-iteration of past heresies: Collegiality of
Episcopalism; Ecumenism of Panchristianism; Religious Liberty of Secularism and
Indifferentism. It was not easy to understand and to express this clearly.
F.R. People
often point to the obscurity of the texts and say they are ambiguous and only
need to be understood correctly to be acceptable.
D.P. That
is what I call the "Oracular Theory": an oracle is infallible but is
obscurely expressed. But the Magisterium is not an oracle. It is infallible but
it is clear, and indeed either maintains the same clarity over time or
increases it. The Council by contrast, in virtue of its obscurantism,
represents not progress but retrogression in this regard, a sure indication of
its inauthenticity. Moreover, if any-one reads the texts, he would see that
it is not a question of ambiguity, but rather, as I wrote in the introduction
to the book, a question of the insinuation, or even entailment, of heresy.
F.R. Can
you explain this in more detail to our readers? Can you give us some examples?
D.P. Of
course. If the Council says the Church of Christ "subsists" in the
Catholic Church, this insinuates that the Church of Christ is not identical to
the Catholic Church, as was always taught previously (or is no longer so,
if per impossibile dogma could change). Otherwise, why change
the definition? If, again, the Council says there are "other
churches", this entails that the Catholic Church is not One,
which is a defined dogma that every practicing Catholic professes every Sunday
at Mass.
F.R. Pope
Benedict promoted the "Hermeneutic of Continuity", and this has been
taken up by the Hierarchy of our day. Is that the same as saying that the texts
are ambiguous and just need to be interpreted aright?
D.P. Yes.
The Hermeneutic of Continuity - a further theme I added to the book - is itself
a doctrine condemned in the past but now re-proposed under a different name.
The term refers to Hermes the messenger of the gods of Greek mythology. The
gods were devious, but Hermes was truthful – but not in this case. The
Hermeneutic in question is just a form of “Dogmatic Evolution” - a heresy
condemned in Pascendi.
F.R. What
does that mean in simple terms?
D.P. The
Catholic Church teaches that the Faith is the adequate expression of the
ultimate, objective, and immutable Truth. This, then, is the “Traditionalist”
view; “Modernists” deny this view; “Neoconservatives” accept it but say that
the expression of the Truth can change over time. This is partly true and
partly false. It can change materially: in its depth and clarity;
but it cannot change substantially so as to become a novel
doctrine. The First Vatican Council states this clearly, referring to the
Commonitorium of St. Vincent de Lérins.
When the
Neoconservatives claim that the expression of the Faith can change over time,
they mean that it can do so not only materially, but also substantially so
as to become a novel doctrine - which contradicts the First Vatican Council. In
the final analysis, both the Modernist and the Neoconservatist positions rely
on the heresy of Dogmatic Evolution: in the former case it is the truth,
in the latter case it is the expression of the truth that is
purported to change.
F.R. Is a
promoter of the Hermeneutic of Continuity intentionally deceitful?
D.P. I
would not say so, but rather that he is motivated by piety both to the past and
present Magisterium: he wants to reconcile the two and avoid schism. He is
following the highest intances of the Church.
F.R. Your
style is rather different than that of the Council.
D.P. I try
to be scientific, which is necessary for rebutting heresy and fallacy. I
consciously add a lot from Tradition: the Fathers of the Church, St. Cyprian
for example. The wisdom of the ancients cannot be erased. It is the mark of a
Revolution to attempt to do so. The New Rite was a liturgical revolution; the
Council a doctrinal one. The same goes for literary Tradition: Homer and the
Greek tragedians for instance. What they say has great relevance for
understanding the human condition - and the Council as well - as I have tried
to show. I have added references to modern literature, from which we also have
much to learn.
F.R. There
is a cultured aspect to your writing.
D.P. This
is the legacy of my family, my upbringing, education, and then choice. To
understand, we must understand in a context. Revolutionaries are not interested
in contexts. They want to erase the past, I repeat, and trample on what is
true, good, holy, and beautiful, they want to set up their Abgoetter in
the place of God. They have done so for too long: it is high time that they
were ousted.
F.R.
Indeed!
D.P. Our
Lord is attacked; eternal life is endangered. We have seen the consequences in
these postconciliar years. An entirely reprehensible spirit of insubordination
has entered the Vatican, a “fertility goddess” is venerated in St. Peter's.
This belongs to a context and cannot be passed over in silence.
F.R. You
speak of the True and the Good: this is a feature of the book. You place it in
the context of Aristotelian-Scholastic Metaphysics. You start the whole book
with an Introduction about the nature of Truth itself.
D.P. It is
this which is the fundamental point of all that I have written here. I said
that I use dogmatics and logic as tools for analysing the documents, for it is
the Truth, both supernatural and natural, which is relevant, opinions are
irrelevant. As to logic / metaphysics, I presented over 100 metaphysical
errors. People ask me sometimes: But what is the degree of obedience we owe to
the Council? My answer is: First we must see if what it teaches is true or
false, because no obedience is due to falsehood.
F.R. Do I
understand that this is your last word on Modernism? Do you plan to write any
more on these subjects?
D.P. No, I
have no such plans. An analysis of the Council suffices for understanding the
contemporary state of the Institutional Church and of the World as well. My
Superior is giving me a charge which, if all proceeds as hoped, will not leave
much time for writing. Such time as may remain I hope to use to present
Catholic doctrine, pure and simple. Ignorance of the Faith is almost universal.
It has been suppressed, together with the metaphysical principles which
elucidate it. I will give only one example from the Council and with that we
can close this interview, if you don't mind. It has suppressed the metaphysical
principle of Finality. What is the purpose of the Church? What is the purpose
of Her duties towards non-Catholic Christians, the other Religions, the State,
the World? What is the purpose of the priest? of the Mass? of marriage? What is
the purpose of life?
We do not
know the purpose; there is no-one to tell us. We are in the dark. We wander in
the darkness of our modern cities, from which the True, the Good and the
Beautiful have been banished, and all that raises the heart to God. We are
engulfed in the noise and the crashing, screaming traffic of this chaotic,
urban Kosmopolis. We wander like street-children, lost, abandoned
in the vast, labyrinthine, cement undergrounds of our cities. We have no
compass, we have no guide, no nourishment, no comfort. We sit down in dust and
ashes, we lean against the wall of the underground, we look around us. We stand
up again and walk on, although we have nowhere to go.
Dear
Reader, I send you my priestly blessing. May Our Blessed Lord, Creator,
Redeemer, Adorable King and Truth Incarnate, guard and guide us on the way of
perfection over the land of the Shadow of Death, until dawn shall break for us
at last in the Heavenly Homeland. Amen.
To purchase the book: https://loretopubs.org/index.php?q=eclipse&security_hash=150282c575f90be72970e2607bd97992&dispatch=search_results.index
