Mary the Mother of God, obstacle to ecumenism

Those who have studied the history of the Second Vatican Council will doubtless be familiar with the abrupt and unforeseen rejection of the Council's meticulously prepared schemata.  The European episcopal conferences, primarily those of Germany, France, and the Low countries refused the 72 documents prepared three years in advance and demanded the right to determine the orientation of the Council, to which astonishingly, Pope John agreed. What few may know is that the hasty effort marshaled by Pope John XXIII in the early months of 1963 to get new drafts approved and sent out to the Council Fathers included a schema on the Blessed Virgin Mary.

About this draft, Fr. Ralph Wiltgen, S.V.D. writes,

The proposal officially submitted by the Fulda Conference to the General Secretariat of the Council also quoted from Protestant writings. Bishop Dibelius, of the German Evangelical Church, was quoted as saying in 1962 that the Catholic Church’s teaching on Mary was one of the major impediments to union. Other German Protestant authorities, such as Hampe and Kunneth, were quoted as saying that the Council Fathers in Rome should remember that they would be erecting a new wall of division by approving a schema on Mary.
According to Father [Karl] Rahner [S.J.], whose written comments were distributed to all participants in the conference, the schema as then drafted was “a source of the greatest concern” for himself and for Fathers Grillmeier, Semmelroth, and Ratzinger, who had also examined it from a theological point of view. Were the text to be accepted as it stood, he contended, “unimaginable harm would result from an ecumenical point of view, in relation to both Orientals and Protestants.” It could not be too strongly stressed, he said, “that all the success achieved in the field of ecumenism through the Council and in connection with the Council will be rendered worthless by the by the retention of the schema as it stands.”
- Fr. Ralph Wiltgen, S.V.D., The Inside Story of Vatican II (formerly titled the Rhine Flows into the Tiber), © 2014 Tan Books

Fr. Karl Rahner, S.J., and his protege Fr. Josef Ratzinger
at the Second Vatican Council as theological advisors.

It is not this author's intent to inflame emotion against the architects of the Second Vatican Council.  However, fifty years later as seen in the light of the prophecy of Our Lady of Fatima, this effort to set her aside in the interest of man-made agreements with theological dissidents appears eminently blameworthy.
The Fatima prophecy warned that unless the Pope and all the Bishops of the world in a united act of public religion consecrated Russia to her Immaculate Heart, that country would flood the world with errors and war. 

Not only did the two Popes conducting the Council avoid the best opportunity since the prophecy was given to obey our Lady of Fatima, not a word against communism was included in the Council's sixteen constitutions, decrees, and declarations. 

It is important to understand the reasons and motivations for downplaying the Mother Of God at Vatican II. Ecumenism was one of its primary goals, as well as a new orientation towards serving the world as laid out by John XXIII in his last encyclical Pacem in terris.

The new orientation was summarized by Fr. Marie Dominique Chenu as follows:

"The text to be put forward in the council was approved by John XXIII, and by Cardinals Liénart, Garrone, Frings, Dopfner, Alfrink, Montini and Léger. It emphasized the following points: that the modern world desires the Gospel, that all civilizations contain a hidden urge towards Christ, that the human race constitutes a single fraternal whole beyond the bounds of frontiers, governments and religions, and that the Church struggles for peace, development and human dignity. The text, which was entrusted to Cardinal Lienart, was subsequently altered in some parts, without relieving it of its original anthropocentric and worldly character, but the alterations were not liked by those who had promoted the document in the first place. It was passed by two thousand five hundred Fathers on 20 October." (Iota Unum, Romano Amerio, ch. 42)

The listing of errors and assumptions listed above are too numerous to address in this brief summary. Let it suffice to say that if the 'modern world' desired the Gospel, something went terribly wrong in the decades following the council. Not only did the world (as it has always done) continue to reject the Gospel, but the Catholic Church herself entered a period of steep decline which continues unabated to this very day.

If explaining the Catholic doctrine of the Blessed Virgin Mary in a separate document seemed risky to many of the theological advisors at Vatican II who considered ecumenism to be prioritized above the Message of Fatima, then surely enough time has elapsed to recognize the results of their chosen course. There is still no union with the Oriental Churches; no agreement with the multitude of Protestant denominations and sects, and certainly no peace on earth.

To be fair to the Council Fathers, a short section of Lumen gentium, styled the Constitution on the Church does address the Blessed Virgin Mary in a salutary way, with this caveat:

"...those decrees, which have been given in the early days regarding the cult of images of Christ, the Blessed Virgin and the saints, be religiously observed.(22*) But it exhorts theologians and preachers of the divine word to abstain zealously both from all gross exaggerations as well as from petty narrow-mindedness in considering the singular dignity of the Mother of God.(23*) Following the study of Sacred Scripture, the Holy Fathers, the doctors and liturgy of the Church, and under the guidance of the Church's magisterium, let them rightly illustrate the duties and privileges of the Blessed Virgin which always look to Christ, the source of all truth, sanctity and piety. Let them assiduously keep away from whatever, either by word or deed, could lead separated brethren or any other into error regarding the true doctrine of the Church." (LG, ch. VIII)

One need not stretch their imagination too far to ponder whether the Fatima apparition was itself an occasion of scandal not only to Protestants, but to certain churchmen whose decisions are now chronicled for the world to see and judge.

The "disobedience" of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre

Good and devout men of sincere faith and piety can and do disagree about the course of action selected by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. What few understand in depth is that disobedient clergy in the Church achieved a theological and liturgical coup at the Second Vatican Council making what was forbidden just a half-decade prior now the law of the Church. It is absolutely necessary to see the disobedience of these men as suddenly not only accepted, but promoted in the Church. So the "disobedience" of Monsignor Lefebvre isn't really disobedience to the Tradition and perennial magisterium of the Church, but a disobedience to the prudential judgment of two Popes who tried to bury Tradition. In the case of Paul VI, it turns out his suppression of the TLM was not only illicit, but a grave crime against the faith. John Paul II's motu proprio accusing Monsignor Lefebvre of self-excommunication was nullified by Pope Benedict XVI in 2009.

As time goes by and the Catholic Church continues to plummet downward in a death-spiral of crisis, Archbishop Lefebvre is not only justified in his actions but it becomes clearer that he more than any other single priest helped to save the Church from even worse degrees of apostasy.

[editor's update: the German Diocese of Trier is consolidating 172 parishes into 35 and the Diocese of Pittsburgh, PA is consolidating 188 parishes into 48 while 34 priests are caught in a disgusting scandal of sodomy in the Diocese of Naples, Italy.]

It is also worth noting that Pope Benedict XVI's position is that the crisis in the Church was caused by the collapse of the liturgy. This is why Catholics can so confidently rally behind the action of Archbishop Lefebvre; he, more than any individual in the Catholic Church helped preserve the sacred liturgy in all its purity, mystery, integrity, and beauty.

Its Time to Face It

Its time to face it.

According to Pope John Paul II, the Prayer Meeting of All Religions at Assisi in 1986 is the TRUE hermeneutic of the Second Vatican Council:

Assisi Prayer is a "visible illustration, an exegesis of the events, a catechesis, intelligible to all, of what is presupposed and signified by the commitment to ecumenism and to the interreligious dialogue which was recommended and provided by the Second Vatican Council."
(Christmas address of the Pope to the Cardinals and members of the Curia on 22 December, 1986, L'Osservatore Romano, 5 January 1987, page 7)

"Look at Assisi in the light of the Council!"
(Papal address in the General Audience of 22 October, 1986)

So the ultimate message of Vatican II is that all religions are legitimate ways to pray to the one God (although some are polytheist and others atheist) to achieve Vatican II's ultimate goal: peace in this present world, not the salvation of individual souls from sin and damnation.

Moreover, every single person that holds Pope John Paul II to be a real Saint currently beholding the beatific vision is compelled by sacred duty to spread his message that by His incarnation, Jesus Christ, divine Second Person of the holy Trinity united Himself to each and every man forever.

You need to engage in dialogue with all religions, encourage them to practice their hideous errors as authentic prayer to the one true God, and work for the goal that is supreme, even above salvation: peace in this present world.

"If you see me traveling the length and breadth of the whole world in my efforts to meet with people of all civilizations and religions, it is because I have faith in the seeds of wisdom which the Spirit has planted in the conscience of all these various peoples, tribes and clans; from these hidden grains will come the true resource for the future of mankind in this world of ours" (John Paul II's speech to youth in Ravenna, May 11, 1986, quoted in Tutte le encicliche dei Sommi Pontefici, ed. dall'Oglio, p.1821).

And please preach that the Third Person of the holy Trinity is the author and inspiration of all the religions in the world:

"It must first be kept in mind that every quest of the human spirit for truth and goodness, and in the last analysis for God, is inspired by the Holy Spirit. The various religions arose precisely from this primordial human openness to God. At their origins we often find founders who, with the help of God’s Spirit, achieved a deeper religious experience. Handed on to others, this experience took form in the doctrines, rites and precepts of the various religions.
In every authentic religious experience, the most characteristic expression is prayer. Because of the human spirit’s constitutive openness to God’s action of urging it to self-transcendence, we can hold that “every authentic prayer is called forth by the Holy Spirit, who is mysteriously present in the heart of every person.” (Address to the Members of the Roman Curia, 22 Dec. 1986, n. 11; L’Osservatore Romano English edition, 5 Jan. 1987, p. 7).

I tremble to even paste these quotes because of what they suggest - no, what they proclaim:

"We experienced an eloquent manifestation of this truth at the World Day of Prayer for Peace on 27 October 1986 in Assisi, and on other similar occasions of great spiritual intensity.
The Holy Spirit is not only present in other religions through authentic expressions of prayer. “The Spirit’s presence and activity”, as I wrote in the Encyclical Letter Redemptoris missio, “affect not only individuals but also society and history, peoples, cultures and religions.” (n. 28).
JOHN PAUL II GENERAL AUDIENCE Wednesday 9 September 1998

This "Saint" whom many proclaim as a "John Paul the Great" (Fr. Mitch Pacwa, S.J.) and others want honored with the title "Doctor of the Catholic Church" (Fr. John T. Zuhlsdorf) either needs to be followed as an example of heroic virtue, exceptional sanctity, and prophetic significance or denounced as a promulgator of strange and alien doctrines condemned by St. Pius X in Pascendi gregis.

God help me. I never wanted to come to any such conclusion.

John Paul II the Revolutionary?

“The real revolution there happened under John Paul II, not Francis, which hasn’t really yet been understood,” said [Archbishop Vincenzo] Paglia.

Apologists for recently canonized Pope John Paul II scrambled to defend the late Pontiff for the apparent exploitation of the Pontifical Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family that bears his name. A closer look at the rationale utilized by the current leadership of the Institute may raise eyebrows. However, the stunned reaction might not be at the audacity of their claims, but the coherence of their explanations.

Let’s unpack this.

Archbishop Paglia taps into one of Pope John Paul II’s most ubiquitous themes: consciousness, or “awareness” of the Church:

The Institute “couldn’t just stay like it was,” Paglia said, because of changes “both in the awareness of the Church and also the social, cultural and anthropological conditions of the world.”

About which awareness Pope John Paul II taught in his inaugural and programmatic encyclical:

   "Entrusting myself fully to the Spirit of truth, therefore, I am entering into the rich inheritance of the recent pontificates. This inheritance has struck deep roots in the awareness of the Church in an utterly new way, quite unknown previously, thanks to the Second Vatican Council..."   Redemptor hominis

It couldn't stay like it was because in the Wojtylian universe, all things are evolving. Who could forget the way the international media leaped upon his address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences on 22 October 1996 when he affirmed

“…some new findings lead us toward the recognition of evolution as more than an hypothesis.  In fact it is remarkable that this theory has had progressively greater influence on the spirit of researchers, following a series of discoveries in different scholarly disciplines. The convergence in the results of these independent studies—which was neither planned nor sought—constitutes in itself a significant argument in favor of the theory.”

Surely this is at least ‘an’ explanation of the Pope’s reliance on the novel theory of a “living Tradition” from which he found the missionary Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre wanting in his ‘deficient’ understanding of Tradition (see: motu proprio Ecclesia Dei Adflicta).

Next, Archbishop Paglia explains that John Paul II’s revolution “hasn’t really yet been understood.”

This is evident in the two ways to perceive the pontificate of Karol Wojtyla. The overwhelmingly popular vision of John Paul II is the crusading evangelist, traversing the globe to proclaim the Gospel of Christ to all men while collaborating with world leaders to bring down the Iron Curtain. The other way is to actually examine his words and deeds against the backdrop of Catholic Tradition, which yields some unwelcome if not disturbing conclusions.

The dominant theme of John Paul II’s long pontificate was that by His incarnation, Christ has united Himself to each man forever. He found this novel understanding of the Gospel in Vatican II’s Gaudium et spes (Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World) #22, which is erstwhile known as “the mystery of man.” Through this mystery – completely unknown in Catholic Tradition before 1965 – Christ "reveals man to man himself.” This revelation is that each and every man is formally, ontologically, and eternally united to the Second Person of the Holy Trinity. Thus, Archbishop Paglia can also wink,

“You have to remember that before [Familiaris Consortio], it wasn’t that the divorced and remarried just couldn’t get Communion, it was they were practically excommunicated and expelled. They were outsiders. After John Paul, everybody was inside the house … I can’t just send them out on the terrace!”

“Everybody was inside the house” of course refers to the new ecclesiology of Vatican II’s Lumen gentium where the Church and mankind are dangerously conflated in ambiguous language. This idea is buttressed by the Pope's doctrine of universal union of each man with Christ via the Incarnation.

Now, if everybody is inside the house, who can be excluded from the supper table? Thus, Pope Francis is announced as the authoritative interlocutor of this revolution of John Paul II’s that hasn’t really been understood yet:

He [Paglia] said that Pope St. John Paul II began the “revolution” in the Church for Communion for the divorced and remarried, and that Pope Francis is carrying this on as the saint’s “best interpreter.”

In the vision of an evolving cosmos in which each man is united to Christ forever, the very idea of church is in flux.  How can we mere laymen ever hope to apprehend such exalted ideas without Pope Francis pulling away the veil that the consciousness of the Church was not ready for prior to his Pontificate?

Nor are we to set aside Pope Wojtyla’s bizarre understanding of each religion being a vehicle for union with God and inspired by the Holy Spirit:

It must first be kept in mind that every quest of the human spirit for truth and goodness, and in the last analysis for God, is inspired by the Holy Spirit. The various religions arose precisely from this primordial human openness to God. At their origins we often find founders who, with the help of God’s Spirit, achieved a deeper religious experience. Handed on to others, this experience took form in the doctrines, rites and precepts of the various religions. In every authentic religious experience, the most characteristic expression is prayer. Because of the human spirit’s constitutive openness to God’s action of urging it to self-transcendence, we can hold that “every authentic prayer is called forth by the Holy Spirit, who is mysteriously present in the heart of every person” (Address to the Members of the Roman Curia, 22 Dec. 1986, n. 11; L’Osservatore Romano English edition, 5 Jan. 1987, p. 7).

Perhaps it is overlooked by Pope John Paul II that St. Pius X condemned this idea 80 years earlier:

“Here it is well to note at once that, given this doctrine of experience united with the other doctrine of symbolism, every religion, even that of paganism, must be held to be true. What is to prevent such experiences from being met within every religion? In fact that they are to be found is asserted by not a few. And with what right will Modernists deny the truth of an experience affirmed by a follower of Islam? With what right can they claim true experiences for Catholics alone? Indeed Modernists do not deny but actually admit, some confusedly, others in the most open manner, that all religions are true."    Pascendi Dominici gregis

This vision of all men, in all religions united eternally with Christ in an evolving cosmos has of course, certain implications about which the Pope draws very specific conclusions:

Assisi Prayer is a "visible illustration, an exegesis of the events, a catechesis, intelligible to all, of what is presupposed and signified by the commitment to ecumenism and to the interreligious dialogue which was recommended and provided by the Second Vatican Council."
(Christmas address of the Pope to the Cardinals and members of the Curia on 22 December, 1986, L'Osservatore Romano, 5 January 1987, page 7)

But can we draw such a conclusion as Archbishop Paglia’s based simply on the general themes of Pope John Paul II’s theology and praxis? Has he really done anything revolutionary in the field of Catholic doctrine pertaining to the sacrament of matrimony? If you ask those who studied his novel ‘Theology of the Body’, the answer will be a profound yes:

George Weigel has described Theology of the Body as "one of the boldest reconfigurations of Catholic theology in centuries." He goes on to say it is a "kind of theological time bomb set to go off with dramatic consequences, sometime in the third millennium of the Church." Weigel believes that it has barely begun to "shape the Church's theology, preaching, and religious education" but when it does "it will compel a dramatic development of thinking about virtually every major theme in the Creed."  [Weigel, George (October 1999). Witness to Hope (First ed.). Harper Perennial. pp. 336, 343, 853. ISBN 0-06-018793-X.]

Those taking offense at Pope Francis’ teaching in Amoris laetitia because of a perceived opposition to the doctrine laid down by John Paul II in Familiaris consortio should take a deep breath and a long look at the late Pope’s entire body of doctrine. While others trifle with rearranging the furniture inside the house, John Paul II set in motion the wholesale replacement of the entire foundation. 

Teilhard's Cosmic Christ: Not the Christ of Catholic Faith

"Christ saves. But must we not hasten to add that Christ, too, is saved by Evolution?" (Pere Teilhard de Chardin, Le Christique, 1955)

The Cosmic Christ of Teilhard de Chardin is an evolving being. He is currently advancing to the status of a super-Christ in whom all souls, all creatures, and all matter will be united in a single organism. This is called Point Omega. The cosmic Christ is not concerned with sin, redemption, or salvation as the church understands these things. He is concerned with the consciousness of mankind.

Allegedly (so the theory purports) man is now consciously aware of his stage of development in the evolutionary process, and is uniquely postured to manipulate the evolutionary process through social and political reform and “progressivism” in religion, philosophy, and ethical norms. The consciousness desired is that all men obtain the awareness that they are already formally, ontologically (simply by their being and existing) united to the Cosmic Christ whether they know it or not or want it.

Pope John Paul II taught that each man was united to Christ forever by the Incarnation. When the Incarnation of the God-man is viewed as a stage in evolutionary development, we see the choicest human being ever in the person of Jesus Christ - and His incarnation effects a change in the nature of all mankind. All that is lacking is the consciousness of this formal union with the God-man. Therefore missionary evangelism is abolished and ecumenical and inter-religious dialogue is ordered. This is intended to arouse within each man the consciousness of his union with the cosmic Christ.

Pope Francis appears to echo not only the universalism of John Paul II but the Teilhardian theory of Omega Point:

83. ...all creatures are moving forward with us and through us towards a common point of arrival, which is God, in that transcendent fullness where the risen Christ embraces and illumines all things. Human beings, endowed with intelligence and love, and drawn by the fullness of Christ, are called to lead all creatures back to their Creator."
Pope Francis, Laudato si

These ideas have been long condemned, particularly during the period when modern philosophy first infiltrated the Catholic Church during the turn of the last century:

Therefore the religious sentiment, which through the agency of vital immanence emerges from the lurking places of the subconsciousness, is the germ of all religion, and the explanation of everything that has been or ever will be in any religion. The sentiment, which was at first only rudimentary and almost formless, gradually matured, under the influence of that mysterious principle from which it originated, with the progress of human life, of which, as has been said, it is a form. This, then, is the origin of all religion, even supernatural religion; it is only a development of this religious sentiment. Nor is the Catholic religion an exception; it is quite on a level with the rest; for it was engendered, by the process of vital immanence, in the consciousness of Christ, who was a man of the choicest nature, whose like has never been, nor will be. - Those who hear these audacious, these sacrilegious assertions, are simply shocked! And yet, Venerable Brethren, these are not merely the foolish babblings of infidels. There are many Catholics, yea, and priests too, who say these things openly; and they boast that they are going to reform the Church by these ravings! There is no question now of the old error, by which a sort of right to the supernatural order was claimed for the human nature. We have gone far beyond that: we have reached the point when it is affirmed that our most holy religion, in the man Christ as in us, emanated from nature spontaneously and entirely. Than this there is surely nothing more destructive of the whole supernatural order.

Pope St. Pius X, ON THE DOCTRINES OF THE MODERNISTS 

This brings us to Fr. Henri de Lubac’s definition of “living Tradition” invoked by John Paul II in the excommunication of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre in 1988:

The advocates of the new theology follow the same current when, with Blondel, they define the truth as the mind's correspondence with infinitely variable and progressive life. And since truth is life and Tradition should transmit the truth, de Lubac concludes at the existence of a living Tradition. According to him, then, the ulterior beliefs of the Church need not necessarily be logically bound to what she has always explicitly believed from the earliest centuries."
Father Dominic Bourmaud, One Hundred Years of Modernism, Angelus Press, 2006, pages 248-249

The tree of Modernism grew up in the following way: Fr. George Tyrell, S.J. had for a pupil in England young Teilhard de Chardin. Tyrell was excommunicated by St. Pius X for the heresy of Modernism condemned in Pascendi gregis. Teilhard was also ordained a Jesuit and was suppressed by his order to avoid the censorship of Rome. He was not allowed to teach or publish until his death in 1955. Fr. Henri de Lubac, S.J. defended Teilhard's theories very publicly until he too was suppressed by the Jesuits. His book Surnaturel was suppressed by his Superior General because of its heterodox teaching on the relationship between the natural and supernatural orders. De Lubac's (and by way of association, Teilhard's) theories are condemned in Pope Pius XII's encyclical Humani generis. When Pius XII died, John XXIII made de Lubac a peritus or theological expert at the Second Vatican Council. The theological coup de etat was completed when John Paul II made Henri de Lubac a Cardinal. It is believed that the theory of the "mystery of man" as mentioned in Gaudium et spes #22 is de Lubac's. It forms the foundation of John Paul II's doctrine of a Christ united to every man forever by the Incarnation.

The theory of Evolution as championed by Tyrell, Teilhard, de Lubac, Pope Paul VI, John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and now Pope Francis is incompatible with Catholic dogma.

We’ll give Saint Pius X the last word on Teilhard’s 'theology-fiction’and de Lubac's 'living Tradition':

"To finish with this whole question of faith and its shoots, it remains to be seen, Venerable Brethren, what the Modernists have to say about their development. First of all they lay down the general principle that in a living religion everything is subject to change, and must change, and in this way they pass to what may be said to be, among the chief of their doctrines, that of Evolution. To the laws of evolution everything is subject - dogma, Church, worship, the Books we revere as sacred, even faith itself, and the penalty of disobedience is death.
... Consequently, the formulae too, which we call dogmas, must be subject to these vicissitudes, and are, therefore, liable to change. Thus the way is open to the intrinsic evolution of dogma. An immense collection of sophisms this, that ruins and destroys all religion. Dogma is not only able, but ought to evolve and to be changed. This is strongly affirmed by the Modernists, and as clearly flows from their principles."
Pope St. Pius X, ON THE DOCTRINES OF THE MODERNISTS

The Modern World of 1965 is Fading Away

The concession to such an epoch as "the modern world" characterized by dozens of expressions found in the the Second Vatican Council's 16 documents wedded it to a specific era thereby limiting its value for enduring application. It is the only council ever to address its own time as a separate epoch. The first 20 ecumenical councils speak to all and forever. Vatican II used many expressions such as "today", "nowadays", and even in the very title of its documents! Nostra aetate means "in our time" and the unfortunate document Gaudium et Spes is styled "Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World." Therefore as a complete anomaly in Church history, Vatican II is the only council that deliberately avoided dealing with dogma and attached an expiration date to its teaching. The Modern World (so-called) in 2065 will certainly be different from the "modern world" of 1965.

From Dietrich Vonhildebrand's classic Trojan Horse in the City of God. 

Great Principle or Human Folly?

Pope Francis promulgated an Apostolic Letter motu proprio (of his own initiative) on September 3rd, 2017, in which he revises a clause in Canon Law to more clearly delineate the powers to determine liturgical legislation and norms between the Pope and the episcopal conferences. Paragraph one reads

The great principle, established by the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, according to which liturgical prayer be accommodated to the comprehension of the people so that it might be understood, required the weighty task of introducing the vernacular language into the liturgy and of preparing and approving the versions of the liturgical books, a charge that was entrusted to the Bishops.

But is it truly a "great principle" (magnum principium)? Is this principle based on truth or speculative theories?
My analysis:
Fr. Josef Jungmann's Corruption Theory is a fruit the Ressourcement movement and thinking. Jungmann's theory that the primitive liturgy was corrupted between the Constantinian and Baroque periods is dependent on upon certain historical conclusions that are not settled. In addition to his Corruption Theory his Pastoral Liturgy Theory also presupposes the Ressourcement ethic of anthropocentric liturgy centered in the EXPERIENCES OF THE FAITHFUL. This reliance on experience is condemned by St. Pius X in Pascendi gregis #7 and #14. His system also relies heavily upon modern philosophy (after all, he's a Jesuit) and a pseudo-historicism that is rejected in #30 of the same encyclical.
Fr. Jungmann is certainly an important voice in the Liturgical Movement and a luminary in contemporary liturgical scholarship. But his personal conclusions are not something Catholics are required to accept and much less rely upon as though this is the only cogent explanation for liturgical development.
The overestimation of a pristine liturgical norm that was lost after the Edict of Milan and was only meaningfully recovered with Paul VI's fabricated liturgy is based on the Documentary Hypothesis which since its peak in popular acceptance in the 1970s has been in steady decline since.
Jungmann's theories are dependent upon an ahistorical or even antihistorical understanding of liturgy and the role of the Popes in preserving it.
Lastly, the experiment in liturgy begun in 1963 after the signing of Sacrosanctum concillium has yielded none of the results promised by its theorists, chief among whom were Fr. Jungmann, Dom Beauduin, and of course Annibale Bugnini. In fact Cardinal Ratzinger concludes the Roman liturgy has collapsed:

"I am convinced that the ecclesial crisis in which we find ourselves today depends in great part upon the collapse of the liturgy, which at times is actually being conceived of etsi Deus non daretur: as though in the liturgy it did not matter any more whether God exists and whether He speaks to us and listens to us.
...But if in the liturgy the communion of faith no longer appears, nor the universal unity of the Church and of her history, nor the mystery of the living Christ, where is it that the Church still appears in her spiritual substance?"

And is it true that that these reforms were undertaken because the Catholic faithful did not understand the mystery of the holy sacrifice of the Mass because it was in Latin? In 1960, 75% of American Catholics attended Mass at least weekly. Today that figure hovers around 25%. Of that 25%, almost none are aware that the Mass is a propitiatory sacrifice the Son offers to the Father as the Divine Victim immolated in an unbloody manner on the altar at the hands of the sacerdotal priest in persona Christi. So what has this great reform-to-improve-comprehension actually produced?  And why would the Pope want to double down on such a dismal failure, if not for ideological reasons?

As far as the vernacular, the dogmatic Council of Trent (1545-1563) infallibly condemned liturgy in the vernacular only (Session 22, Canon IX). So what is really going on here? And what will the further balkanization of the Catholic Church do to its universality in creed and prayer?

"The vulgar languages are in continual change; often words do not have today the same meaning that they had yesterday, or at best have one meaning for one person and another for someone else. About these terms we can truly say with Sallust, "Vera vocabula rerum amisimus" (Catil., c. 52). We have lost the right words in these cases. However, the Latin language is not only the most organic and logical language that has ever existed, but, for the very fact that it is no longer spoken by the people, it is now fixed, precise, and unequivocal, and presents us with well defined technical terms which have already been consecrated by the Church as the fruit of long discussions and solemn definitions, terms which it would be dangerous to ignore."

- The Memoirs of Antonio Cardinal Bacci

The Slow Death of the Novus Ordo in the West

As the numbers of vocations continue to dwindle in the West, where priests are recruited from Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroon, India, Vietnam, and the Philippines, the entire experiment of anthropocentric religion in Catholic guise is on the verge of collapse.

The new religion of man focused on this present world and getting along with everyone is failing in spectacular fashion. Looking at just the demographics of priests, the collapse will come absolutely unforced, by the mere power of math and statistics. The average age of a Catholic priest in the United States in 1970 was 35. These men would have begun their priestly formation well before the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) when vocations were abundantly plentiful under Pastor Angelicus, Pope Pius XII. Today, the average age of a Catholic priest in the USA is 64. The demographics of Catholics themselves are also cascading downward in a breathtaking manner: birthrates in Europe, Canada, the US and even South America have fallen below the replacement rate.

CBS News Report: Catholic Church feels squeeze of priest shortage

Quite apart from any malicious strategy applied by the Church's enemies from without, the collapse of the Western Church appears to be an inside job. The elevation by Pope John XXIII of theologians suppressed under Pope Pius XII is where the enemies of the true faith were able to come out in the light of day. Pope Angelo Roncalli not only rehabilitated the neoModernist theologians, he tied the hands of every orthodox prelate by announcing that Vatican II (and the orientation it introduced) would condemn no errors (the "medicine of mercy" hermeneutic). So at once we had a condemned theology and no mechanism whereby to oppose it.

Paul VI went further by reforming the Holy Office into the Confraternity of the Doctrine of the Faith, abrogating the Oath Against Modernism, and dissolving the Index of Forbidden Books. His most grievous damage of course was done by suppressing the Missal of St. Pius V and promulgating Fr. Annibale Bugnini's man-made Forma Normativa as the Novus Ordo Missae. Pope John Paul II reformed the code of Canon Law in 1983 which included the abrogation of 141 canons dealing with the beatification and canonization process, dissolving the function of "devil's advocate" in the office of the Promotor Fidei. This effectively denuded any attempts to investigate the worthiness of candidates for Sainthood, and in just 25 years John Paul II beatified one-third of all the Blesseds in Church history.

The practice of making it nearly impossible to condemn any errors or apply any canonical standards to contemporary teaching was made even more self-destructive for Catholics by urging the twin-headed spectacle of pan-christian ecumenism and inter-religious dialogue. Stripped of all means of determining truth and error and sent blindly into endless 'dialogue' with the practitioners of all religions produced a predictable result. What once was the only way to obtain eternal salvation eroded into just one of many ways of praying, believing, of seeing man and the world.

According to Pope Benedict XVI however, the real cause of the crisis in the Catholic Church is the collapse of the sacred liturgy, and in particular, the Mass. The form of the Mass handed down from the earliest Christian centuries and attributed to the Apostles was universally suppressed in 1970, giving the faithful the idea that it was somehow now no longer needed, ineffective, or even worse, something evil that should be shunned and avoided. While indults were permitted for the Tridentine Mass between 1984 and 2006, few Bishops allowed it. By the time Pope Benedict XVI liberated it from the control of hostile prelates in 2007, it had been suppressed for 37 years, effectively wiping out all memory of centuries of liturgical Tradition. To add to the stigma, Pope Paul VI and John Paul II unjustly censored the most fruitful missionary bishop of the 20th century for the 'crime' of forming priests for the Traditional liturgy.

Now its all about the demographics. An aging priesthood offering only the man-made Mass of Paul VI on behalf of an aging population of Catholics who contracepted and aborted themselves into fewer and smaller families has amply demonstrated the folly and hubris of the Second Vatican Council's reformers. The experiment of anthropocentric religion has failed, and the price of adopting its theories and reforming the Church thereby is the collapse of Catholicism in the West. Soon there will simply be almost no priests left to baptize, absolve, and confect the Eucharist.

All is not lost. Those who rebuilt the edifice of Catholic Tradition while covered by the shadow of stigma as "schismatics" and "excommunicates" are enjoying a profound resurgence of health and vitality. The seminaries that form priests for the Traditional Latin Mass are bursting at the seams with new vocations. Again, simply by the math, at some point in the not-too-distant future, they will overtake the aging, graying, and rapidly diminishing Vatican II priests and become the majority. If Christ does not return in the next two or three decades, the conciliar priests will simply die off, fade away into history, and be remembered as those who drove a healthy, vibrant Catholic Church into near-irreversible decline only to be rescued by the very priests they ostracized, marginalized, and oppressed. And with these young priests practicing Tradition come the young families with lots of Catholic babies.

There is a divine lesson to be learned here for those who have eyes to see, ears to hear, and can master elementary math.

SodoModernism and the crisis in the Church

I don’t intend to write a long article here, but I wish to define a coalition among the enemies of the Church who operate from within her to destroy the foundations of Catholic dogma. These are the theological Modernists and the Sodomitical clerics.  The Modernists rejected Scholastic theology in favor of modern philosophy. The partisans of Modernism see the world in perpetual evolution, the faith in perpetual development, and the essence of ‘being’ as the essence of ‘becoming.’ In this world view, the Scriptures are merely products of their epochs, as are the ecumenical councils and the landmark Papal encyclicals. Man must find religion within himself, and this religion is within all men via the evolutionary processes.

The sodomite clergy, boasting an unknown but substantial percentage among the ordained, have entered the priesthood under false pretenses. Their ordinaries are culpable for their infiltration into the Church’s hierarchy. These men are incapable in most cases of holding the Catholic Faith at all, much less to function in persona Christi as pastors and spiritual fathers. Yet the Modernists have allied themselves with the sodomites in a conspiracy of convenience: both are bent on promoting change within the Church.

The Modernists follow their prophet Teilhard de Chardin, whose grotesque subjugation of Catholic religion to Evolutionism leads to a convergence of all religions into a supra-religion, a melding of consciousness that culminates at a fictional ‘Point Omega.’ The sodomitical priests are desperate to have their perversion not only tolerated but accepted in the Church as a legitimate ‘development of doctrine.’ This requires revolutionary change in faith and morals. In a mutually supporting alliance, these two factions have joined forces to effect a revolution within the Catholic Church over the past 50 years.

Catholic priests add their blessing to pro-homosexual efforts within the Church.

To the Modernists, everything must be new: Pope John XXIII declared a New Pentecost was underway. Pope Paul VI hailed a New Advent. Pope John Paul II inaugurated a New Evangelisation that was to effect the fruition of a [mythical] New Springtime in the Church. The sodomites, seizing the occasion of so much novelty in the Church, the crowning innovation being the Missal of Pope Paul VI, went to work at promoting everything that seemed associated with “change” and “reform” in the Church.

Pope John Paul II made it the supreme cause of his pontificate to advance the reforms of Vatican II, which in his own words culminated at the Prayer Meeting of All Religions for Peace at Assisi in 1986. No wonder then that the priesthood filled up with abusers and sodomites during his reign. It may be said without exaggeration that the ‘gay’ clergy were secretly some of his most zealous supporters when it came to advancing all the change within the Church.

And so we have a foundation-shaking crisis within the Church: her bedrock dogmas and doctrines are assailed from within by Modernism, and the apostles of this false Catholicism are priests: those who are committing the sin against nature, those are disposed towards it; and those that who are sympathetic to them.

We pray and work then for a champion who will reject the New Theology and the corrupted priesthood. We pray and work for a recovery of soundness, stability, and a real continuity with the perennial magisterium of the Catholic Church. We hate no one; we eschew all revolution and sophistry, and live our lives as devoutly as we can with the assistance of God’s bountiful graces, which He distributes as He wills.

But we also take up the arms of prayer and theology to combat these toxic errors and these false apostles in the Church. The preaching of our Lord’s holy cross must be at the center of our efforts of restoration.  The preaching of Christ crucified, the divine kerygma, is hated by the SodoModernists. Yet it is the way souls are freed from bondage to sin and error. May the Holy Ghost impart to each of us the light to see not only the crisis but the arms He provides to combat it. And may we persevere out of obedience to God and love for poor sinners. The way back will certainly be long and arduous; but no way ‘forward’ is possible without continuity with the work our Triune God has already established and blessed throughout the centuries. SodoModernism is doomed to fail, but we must do our part to fight against it.

Source of Modern Theological Errors

If you look at St. Pius X's encyclical Pascendi Dominici gregis paragraphs 44-55 you will see a very specific, detailed, comprehensive plan to root out Modernism from all Catholic institutions and societies. These policies were more or less sustained under Benedict XV and to a lesser extent under Pius XI. When Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli was elected Pope in 1939, he returned to the program introduced by St. Pius X but much had transpired between 1914 and 1939.

The interwar years were the period where the Modernists developed their underground networks and clandestine publishing enterprise. This is the primary way spirits like Teilhard de Chardin were countenanced, because under Pius XII he was forbidden to publish and teach. Pacelli was also very vigilant against the Nouvelle Theologie and the Ressourcement movements and with Cardinal Ottaviani as the Prefect for the Holy Office, suppressed the works of conciliar luminaries such as Henri de Lubac, Hans Urs Von Balthasar, Karl Rahner, and even Josef Ratzinger who was suspected of heresy.

We see these errors confronted in 1950 with the sky-splitting encyclical Humani generis featuring the subtitle, CONCERNING SOME FALSE OPINIONS THREATENING TO UNDERMINE THE FOUNDATIONS OF CATHOLIC DOCTRINE. Sound familiar? It should. It deals directly with the same level of threats treated in St. Pius X's Pascendi.

It is often portrayed as having a decisive influence from Fr. Reginald Garrigou Lagrange who, in his essay "Where is the New Theology Leading Us?" answered with "back to Modernism." The recommendations to combat the "false opinions" given in paragraphs 18-21 and 41-43 are nearly the same ones provided by Pius X: return to Scholastic philosophy and depart not from it.

Fr. Reginald Garrigou-LaGrange, O.P.

This is the battlefront of the theological war that ensued: modern philosophy vs. Scholastic philosophy. Those in favor of the former based their reliance on modern philosophy on a felt need to harmonize theology with the 'new science' epoch that began with Copernicus and peaked with Teilhard - both Catholic priests, mind you. The New Theology partisans argued that the mythical creature known as 'modern man' would not accept 'ready made truths' fed by the manualists to reluctant theology students. St. Pius X and Pius XII knew what letting go of St. Thomas would mean in the environment of the utopianism of the 19th and 20th centuries: a wholesale plunge into novel theories without being moored in Tradition. And those apprehensions have been confirmed 1,000 fold.

This insistence on the primacy of science dealt a staggering blow to belief in the supernatural. The men of science stigmatized miracles as 'myths' and 'magic' and sought to save the 'stories' of the Bible by divining "what the sacred writer meant to say" - a system expressly condemned by Pope Leo XIII in Providentissimus Deus. Yet this view was widely seen as 'relevant' and more in tune with ways of 'modern man', so much so that Vatican II stated,

"May the faithful, therefore, live in very close union with the other men of their time and may they strive to understand perfectly their way of thinking and judging, as expressed in their culture. Let them blend new sciences and theories and the understanding of the most recent discoveries with Christian morality and the teaching of Christian doctrine, so that their religious culture and morality may keep pace with scientific knowledge and with the constantly progressing technology." (GS #62) 

May keep pace! So that religion may keep pace with science!

Loss of belief in the supernatural order always results in a loss of divine and Catholic faith.

John Paul II devoted his life to an impossible task: synthesizing Thomism and Personalism/Phenomenology. This of course is a violation of the law of noncontradiction. The existentialist-subjectivist philosophies can never be synthesized with Scholastic philosophy because they are polar opposites with two diametrically opposed versions of reality. Scholasticism begins with God and ends with man. Existentialism begins with man and ends with whatever each man determines is real. JPII approached the mystery of the Incarnation with a personalist paradigm and concluded that by it Christ has united Himself forever with each man. Thus, each man by accepting his 'transcendent' humanity accepts the Christ with whom he is united, even if he is utterly ignorant of this Christ.

He inverted the mystery of the incarnation by establishing a novel theory from Vatican II's Gaudium et spes known as the 'mystery of man'. This mystery concludes that Christ by revealing the Father and His love to man also reveals man to man himself. Giuseppe Cardinal Siri concluded that this means either Christ is a mere man or each man is divine (Gethsemane). In this theory, Christ reveals man's supreme dignity to him: not in potency, viz, if a man accepts the Son, he receives the power to become a son of God (St. John 1:11); but in actuality, viz, each man is already a "sharer in Jesus Christ" and a "partaker of the mystery of redemption" (RH).

The greatest error produced by this anthropocentric inversion is that the Incarnation is identified as the cause of the Redemption of mankind. The Church has always taught that the PASSION of Christ was the cause of redemption - His death, burial, and resurrection - this priestly sacrifice is what redeems man. John Paul II reduces the cross to the "sign of God's love for man" and the proof of man's surpassing dignity. He makes the Incarnation the cause of redemption. Check Redemptor hominis carefully; he mentions redemption 37 times; the word justification - that process by which the redemption is subjectively applied by faith and baptism - is never mentioned. Neither will one find the word "Catholic" anywhere in the encyclical.

To sum it all up, we must look to what is considered as Pope John Paul II’s greatest dogmatic achievement: the promulgation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church in 1992. This volume quotes Vatican II over 600 times. It quotes John Paul II 135 times. It never quotes St. Pius X - not even once - who led the Church in its combat against the most dangerous collection of errors ever to menace her - Modernism - just 80 years prior.

At the time (1992) Pius X was the last canonized Pope. Before him, it was Pius V. How one can leave St. Pius X completely out of any 20th century catechism staggers the imagination - unless it is a deliberate conspiracy of silence to avoid the confrontation Papa Sarto is yet making with the Synthesis of all Heresies even today. Think about it.