Pope Francis, the motu proprio, and the showdown at Mt. Carmel

 There is a prophetic irony in Pope Francis promulgating his motu proprio Traditionis custodes [on the use of the Roman Liturgy prior to the reform of 1970] on the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. The standoff between the two 'forms' of the Roman Rite was prefigured in the confrontation between the Prophet Saint Elias and the priests of Ba'al on this very mountain about 2800 years ago.

Mount Carmel was the scene of the biblical duel between the prophets of the pagan deity Ba'al and the Prophet of the LORD God, Elias (cf. 3rd Kings 18, DRV). The duel took place on Mount Carmel, which is located in the Jezreel Valley in what was then the Northern Kingdom of Israel, comprised of the ten tribes that had renounced their loyalty to the Davidic dynasty and the priesthood of Aaron after the disastrous rule of King Solomon's son, Reheboam. The northern tribes substituted the Davidic line with a series of violent coup de etats, and the Aaronic priests with men unqualified for covenant priesthood. The northern tribes capitulated easily to idolatry, and it was Ba'al, the god of nature they substituted as their object of worship. This period is the backdrop for the Books of the Prophets Osee (Hosea) and Amoz (Amos). 

Elias was sent to call the northern kingdom back to the LORD, then under the rule of the emasculated Achab, who bent his will to his pagan queen, Jezebel. Elias challenged the priests of Ba'al to a duel: both would offer a sacrifice to their deity, and the God which answered by fire would be recognized as the true. Elias was convinced that he was alone in this cause, but the LORD consoled him with the knowledge that a faithful remnant remained in the northern kingdom. What occurred on Mount Carmel is one of the most dramatic and thrilling episodes of biblical history, as the true worship, while in the minority was vindicated with the power of God displayed from heaven and the priests of Ba'al routed.

In a stunning irony, it is Pope Francis who is pursuing the constriction of the tiny orthodox remnant, and proposing an audacious challenge to them: reservations about the Second Vatican Council are tantamount to a rejection of the Holy Ghost. Accept the reforms and return to the Pauline liturgy or be guilty of resisting the Spirit of God! (this conclusion is detailed in the letter that accompanies the motu proprio, 6th paragraph).

Like the naturalist priests of Ba'al, the Vatican is arrogantly asserting a claim that is either the vox Deus or a display of astonishing hubris: was the Second Vatican Council and the reformed liturgy of Pope Paul VI inspired from heaven, or men? For the Pope, the question is settled.

For the Church, the confrontation, like that on Carmel of old, is clearly couched between the ancient forms (the sacrifice offered by Elias according to immemorial tradition going back to Abel) and the new, anthropocentric (man-centered) forms which break with tradition (the Ba'alist natural religion). Could the Pope not have foreseen the prophetic irony of promulgating his motu proprio on the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel?

And so we have it: as Elias prophesied, "...if the Lord be God, follow him: but if Baal, then follow him" (3rd Kings 18, 21). And the Pope throws down the gauntlet: if Vatican II is the work of the Holy Spirit, you sin mortally by resisting its reforms. 

I will not take up the arguments at this time against the sources of inspiration of Vatican II which I have detailed elsewhere. Suffice to say, we know the liturgy handed down from antiquity and canonized by Pope St. Pius V is from heaven.

Carmelite Sisters are executed by French revolutionaries in 1794 for the crime of maintaining their "silly religious traditions" that were against the "unity of the republic."

Martyrs, Mystics, and Missionaries: Casualties of the Second Vatican Council

 Among the reforms inspired by the Second Vatican Council were sweeping changes to the sacred liturgy, a new orientation towards the unbelieving world, and a new and novel effort to promote a unity with those who confessed Christ but rejected His Church and its divinely appointed government.

As a consequence of the new liturgy approved by Pope Paul VI in 1969, the Roman Breviary was also reformed. The new Liturgy of the Hours excised the office of Prime, and with it, the recitation of the Roman Martyrology. For centuries the Martyrology placed the heroic witness of the martyrs of the Church before the eyes of those bound by holy orders; daily their combats and tumults were rehearsed in the hearing of the clergy, and their glorious victories over their tormentors informed many sermons and counsels. Yet but for the few who have happily discovered this suppressed treasury of inspiration, the Martyrology is not only ignored, it is simply unknown. The impact of this glaring and tragic omission is incalculable (think of the type of sermons we have grown accustomed to since the Novus Ordo was promulgated).

But the Council - whether by intent or reckless naivete - not only removed the Martyrology from the sacred liturgy of the Church; it disparaged the traditional contemplative spirituality of the Church as well. 

Monasteries and cloisters emptied in the wake of Vatican II which zealously advocated a new partnership with 'modern man' who sought not the purification of prayer, but the social change only attainable by activism. The New Theology which emphasized subjective experience and the dynamics of societal change goaded churchmen to embrace the spirit of democracy, technological progress, and social justice. In this hubris for activism the appreciation for mysticism and contemplation waned; what good was praying and meditating? How could it move the mountains required by revolution in South America and equality for racial minorities and women in the United States? Who had time for spiritual reading or the Rosary when our cities were on fire and the Vietnam war raged on? No, the old Saints such as John of the Cross or Theresa of Lisieux had to give way to the new activist saints who rather than wasting time with angels, apparitions, and visions were toppling oppressive social structures in the name of a revolutionary Christ who came to bring a new ethical order to this present world. 

The Council also introduced a new form of ecumenism which reached its peak during the grotesque display of theological discord which occurred at Assisi in 1986 under the leadership of the Pope himself. Preaching to convert the unbeliever was out; a new sense of brotherhood that could find common ground between men of all religions - or none at all - in the quest for a temporal peace was in. Pope John Paul II was absolutely persuaded that this "utterly new way" of seeing the Church was in fact, the fulfillment of all Vatican II promised:

Two months after the event, in a Christmas speech to his Cardinals published in the Vatican’s L’Osservatore Romano, John Paul said, “The day of Assisi, showing the Catholic Church holding hands with our brothers of other religions, was a visible expression of [the] statements of the Second Vatican Council.” The interfaith event at Assisi was thus described by John Paul II not as a tragic misrepresentation of Vatican II, but as the glorious realization of its teaching.

Pope John Paul II went on to celebrate the inter-religious prayer meeting at Assisi as a new direction for the future, “The event of Assisi” he said, “can thus be considered as a visible illustration, an exegesis of events, a catechesis intelligible to all, of what is presupposed and signified by the commitments to ecumenism and to the inter-religious dialogue which was recommended and promoted by the Second Vatican Council.”

Toward the end of the speech, the Pope urged his Cardinals to continue on the same new path, “Keep always alive the spirit of Assisi as a motive of hope for the future.” 

- Pope’s Christmas Address to Roman Curia,” L’Osservatore Romano, January 5, 1987, pp. 6-7.

Why the need then for missionaries? The greatest missionary of the 20th century who was elected Superior General of the Holy Ghost Fathers - the Church's largest missionary congregation - resigned in 1968 under siege from radical reformers within his own order who clamored for the new reforms, ecumenical activity, and interreligious dialogue advocated by Vatican II. This missionary Bishop was Marcel Lefebvre. Missionary activity in the Catholic Church still lives on in pockets and small communities, but the devastating blow dealt by conciliar ecumenism all but quenched the missionary impulse inspired by Him Who commanded the apostles

Go ye into the whole world, and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized, shall be saved: but he that believeth not shall be condemned. (St. Mark 16, 15-16)

We will conclude with the words provided by the man many modern Catholics esteem to be a great Saint of the Church, at the beginning of his pontificate:

 However, as the Council is not limited to the documents alone, neither is it completed by the ways applying it which were devised in these post-conciliar years. Therefore we rightly consider that we are bound by the primary duty of most diligently furthering the implementation of the decrees and directive norms of that same Universal Synod. This indeed we shall do in a way that is at once prudent and stimulating. We shall strive, in particular, that first of all an appropriate mentality may flourish. Namely, it is necessary that, above all, outlooks must be at one with the Council so that in practice those things may be done that were ordered by it, and that those things which lie hidden in it or—as is usually said—are "implicit" may become explicit in the light of the experiments made since then and the demands of changing circumstances. Briefly, it is necessary that the fertile seeds which the Fathers of the Ecumenical Synod, nourished by the word of God, sowed in good ground (cf. Mt 13: 8, 23)—that is, the important teachings and pastoral deliberations should be brought to maturity in that way which is characteristic of movement and life.

Fifty years later, it is plain what devastation the Council has wreaked upon the Church and even the world it aspired to serve. Martyrdom gave way to temporal happiness and rapprochement with the world; mysticism to activism, and missionary labor to the soft appeasement of ecumenism. Only in the full and absolute commitment to the Church's treasury of Tradition can we recover. 

Our Lady of Fatima, Destroyer of All Heresies

Our Lady is the Destroyer of all heresies. St. Pius X called Modernism 'the compendium of all heresies'. The roots of Modernism are in agnostic philosophy - an agnosticism supported by the Copernican assertion that the Church was wrong about her geocentric cosmology. If the Church was wrong about so fundamental and foundational a matter, she cannot be trusted with the far weightier matters of faith and morals. This was the conclusion of the Church's enemies (and too many of her own sons) when Galileo Galilee advanced the idea of a mobile earth spinning diurnally and orbiting the sun. Yet our Lady of Fatima gave us a miraculous sign to demonstrate once and for all that the Church was not wrong to condemn heliocentrism, but that she had faithfully handed down what she received from the Holy Fathers. 

For those unfamiliar with the controversy, it concerns the Church's biblical cosmology. Theologian Paula Haigh (+2015) explains 

The medieval world possessed such a sound foundation in its Geocentric Cosmology. Cosmology, which defines the Structure of the Universe and the fixed centrality of earth, is the necessary essential of the entire body of knowledge we know as the Natural Order. It is this natural order upon which Grace builds the entire edifice of the Supernatural Order of Divine Grace - producing the Elect and those beacons of light for us, the Saints.  Any historian who omits in-depth consideration of the relations between the natural sciences and theology, will not give us true or reliable history.  It was first Copernicus - and then his popularizer, Galileo, who first cut the umbilical cord binding the natural sciences to Theology -  by way of Holy Scripture. Without the guidance of the theologians of the Church, the natural sciences were bound to go astray, and so they did.  The end result is precisely what the encyclical Pascendi describes as the subjugation of faith to science - a science falsely so called, (1 Tim. 6:20).  This is a crime of the greatest magnitude -  the synthesis of all heresies -  overturning in men's minds the very hierarchy of reality. 

The Church put the full weight of her magisterial authority behind the condemnation of heliocentrism as formal heresy. The Church was right. There isn't and there never was any proof for heliocentrism. The miracle of the sun at Fatima was our Lady's way of demonstrating that the defeat of Modernism will only be achieved by recovering the Church's full and plenary power for proclaiming the complete record of revelation to a world that had been plunged into philosophical futility and meaninglessness. For, if the earth were some insignificant planet cast into a random corner of the universe drifting aimlessly towards oblivion as the modern philosophers postulate, what good was religion?  On October 13th, 1917 the sun danced; not the earth, not the cosmos. 70,000 people saw it, to include many atheists. Our Lady is the Destroyer of All Heresies, and the miracle of the sun is a great sign for us to believe as the Church had always taught - that we occupy a privileged place in the very center of the cosmos in which God became man in her virginal womb.

In Psalm 18, the sun is depicted as an athlete running the way "from the end of heaven, and his circuit even to the end thereof" to illustrate the movement of the sun around the earth. This Psalm clearly tells the reader that the 'language' spoken by the heavens is (a) universal; and (b) understood by all. The plain evidence of the phenomena is that the sun circles the earth daily. No one has ever observed the earth circling the sun or spinning on an axis. As if to emphasize how irrefutable and infallible this phenomena is, the Psalmist then discourses about the perfection of the Law of the Lord. The entire Psalm moves in perfect motion through four themes:

(1) The heavens declare the glory of God.

(2) The sun circles the earth.

(3) The Law of the Lord is perfect.

(4) Whoever keeps the just judgments of the Lord will be kept from sin.

Lest we think this is a simplistic and primitive way of exegeting the divine Word, let us take a Doctor of the Church, St. Robert Bellarmine for our guide:

"Second. I say that, as you know, the Council [of Trent] prohibits expounding the Scriptures contrary to the common agreement of the holy Fathers. And if Your Reverence would read not only the Fathers but also the commentaries of modern writers on Genesis, Psalms, Ecclesiastes and Josue, you would find that all agree in explaining literally (ad litteram) that the sun is in the heavens and moves swiftly around the earth, and that the earth is far from the heavens and stands immobile in the center of the universe. Now consider whether in all prudence the Church could encourage giving to Scripture a sense contrary to the holy Fathers and all the Latin and Greek commentators." (Letter to Foscarini, 1615)

Vatican I (1869-1870) infallibly confirmed the teaching of Trent:

Now since the decree on the interpretation of holy scripture, profitably made by the council of Trent, with the intention of constraining rash speculation, has been wrongly interpreted by some, we renew that decree and declare its meaning to be as follows: that in matters of faith and morals, belonging as they do to the establishing of christian doctrine, that meaning of holy scripture must be held to be the true one, which holy mother church held and holds, since it is her right to judge of the true meaning and interpretation of holy scripture. In consequence, it is not permissible for anyone to interpret holy scripture in a sense contrary to this, or indeed against the unanimous consent of the fathers. (emphasis mine) 

The philosophy condemned by Pope St. Pius X in the 1907 encyclical Pascendi gregis (On the Doctrines of the Modernists) is agnosticism, the belief that man could not know for certain whether there is a God, and that His will is likewise unknowable (this is condemned at Vatican I, ch. i, 3). St. Pius X counted among the chief of the doctrines of the Modernists the vile and antibiblical idea of evolution. The evolution championed by Teilhard de Chardin which has wounded the faith of the Church so deeply to this very day presumes upon the Church's loss of authority in supposedly interpreting the first chapters of Genesis incorrectly. If the earth was not created on the first day and the sun, moon and stars on the fourth as lights and signs for the times and seasons to benefit man, which the Church had always taught, then the Church was wrong about the foundational passages of Sacred Scripture. If she was wrong about this, then surely she could be in error about the cosmos being created in six days. Thus the way for Modernism is paved, not by true science, nor by sound philosophy, but by a demonically animated skepticism: "...hath God said...?" (Genesis 3,1)

 This wound was inflicted upon the Church not by Darwin, but by Nicholas Copernicus, who, like Teilhard was a priest who rejected the testimony of the Holy Fathers infallibly confirmed by the Council of Trent. In summary, there is no Darwin and no Teilhard without the monstrous error of heliocentrism, which three Popes rightly condemned as a formal heresy for its opposition to the Patristic consensus. 

Our Lady of Guadalupe

The Mother of God performed another miracle in 1531 by imprinting her image on the tilma of St. Juan Deigo, a miracle that resulted in an astonishing conversion of no less than six million Aztecs who were at the time in the thrall of the most barbaric forms of idolatry imaginable. In this image, our Lady is clearly depicted as being clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet as Sacred Scripture reveals (Apoc. 12, 1). In both Scripture and the miraculous icon of Guadalupe, the Mother of Christ is being encompassed by the sun, a symbolic rendering of the sun orbiting the earth, represented by our Lady, the pinnacle of the earth's created order.

No wonder then that of all the signs at her queenly disposal she, the Seat of Wisdom, chooses the dance of the sun at Fatima. This sign unambiguously indicates the movement of the sun, just as the miracle requested by Josue in the Old Testament (cf. Josue 10,13). Perhaps through this sign our Heavenly Queen is showing mankind that all the errors of Russia which were then as now flooding the world could be staunched by her Immaculate Heart; that she who is Mediatrix of all graces could obtain for the Church that glorious defeat of the compendium of all heresies, Modernism. As St. Pius X recognized her in his encyclical on Modernism as the Destroyer of All Heresies, the Blessed Virgin Mary restores that wisdom which had been so long abandoned and rejected by men under the delusion of the heliocentric cosmos which rendered the Church's interpretation of the Word of God to be wrong. If this sign is received in good faith from our Lady of Fatima, the shame of 'persecuting science' with 'faulty biblical exegesis' would be remedied and the Church vindicated in her treatment of the entire Galileo affair, which at present time serves as an embarrassment and a humiliation. 

There is no heresy of Modernism without the doctrine of evolution infecting the human element of the Catholic Church. There are no evolutionary toxins wounding sacred doctrine without the stigma of wrongly interpreting Genesis. And that stigma was first applied not by the adepts of Darwin, but of Copernicus.

Our Lady is showing us at Fatima that the way back to orthodoxy (and true militancy) is to recover the correct philosophical moorings that the Fathers of the Church handed down to us, which is to say, the earth is stable at the center of the cosmos, and is the theater of redemption in which God became man in the Virgin's womb.