The Impossibility of a 'Gay' Catholic Priest

Bottom line up front: an ordained man who self-identifies as a sodomite (homosexual/'gay') is probably not even in the faith, regardless of the sacrament of holy orders.

One of the gravest errors of our day is to treat sodomy like just another sin. Adultery is a mortal sin but it is not against nature. It is natural for men and women to be attracted to each other and nature itself teaches us that the connubial act is the source of human procreation. It is a very serious offense against the law of God, but not against nature itself.

Sodomy (generic term that also applies to lesbian acts) attacks the moral sense, the conscience, and the faculty of reason. You will see this if you carefully read St. Paul's Letter to the Romans chapter 1:24-32. Three times in this passage, it describes God handing men over to their debased mind to destroy themselves.

When dealing with sodomites, we are not dealing with men who have a healthy, functioning conscience or an intact ability to reason according to the natural law. We are dealing with men who have rejected the natural law, the divine law, and even their own consciences. They are reprobate in most cases, meaning their consciences are ruined. This is one reason we see so few conversions from this unnatural vice, and why it is very dangerous to engage in religious discussion with such people.

To the Catholic conscience, the very idea that a Priest could be a sodomite should cause a strong moral reaction - revulsion, disgust, even hatred (of the act and its intrinsic disorder, not the person). Our society is permeated with this sin and therefore we have to a great extent lost our ability to reason, thinking emotionally rather than logically. This is one of the four sins that cry out to heaven for divine vengeance - the wrath of God.

Dr. Gerard van den Aardweg, a member of the newly formed John Paul II Academy for Human Life and the Family writes:

“It is crucial whether or not a person normalizes his attractions. Doing this, he suppresses his reason and conscience, for the inner perception that homosexual activities are contra naturam is inborn and universal. Starting thus to lie to himself, he must suppress his awareness of the normality of man-woman love and of normal marriage with its fertility, and is forced to cling desperately to rationalizations that justify his choice to see himself as normal, healthy, and morally good. Thus he alienates himself from reality, locks himself up in wishful thinking and, not willing to seek the truth about himself, wants to change the natural feelings and opinions about homosexuality of 98% of mankind which he feels as hostile to him. In reality, it is not society, culture, or religion that persecute him but his own conscience.”

What we are dealing with here is not simply a sexual disorder. We are dealing with minds that have rejected the natural law - and by implication, the God Who planted that law in their hearts. How then can such a person be in the faith, let alone function in persona Christi as a sacerdotal priest? Who would assume such a person could even be in a state of grace at all, and why would you seek the sacraments at the hands of such a man?

Let us remember that the wickedness of wayward priests does not negate the flow of grace from the Holy Ghost - it is de fide that the sacraments are efficacious ex opere operato - by virtue of their operation. The ordination of a sodomite truly confers the sacrament of orders - but both that wicked man and his ordinary incur wrath upon wrath every time they perform a sacred function:

1. A man who receives the sacrament of orders is set to lead others. Therefore, he should be a man of holy and exemplary life. Yet this is a requirement of precept and of propriety; it is not of the essence of the sacrament. Even a sinful man who receives orders is validly ordained, although he does great wrong in accepting ordination.

2. A candidate for orders should have knowledge adequate for the proper discharge of his sacred duties. He must have a sufficiency of knowledge of the scriptures, and know the doctrines of the faith, and the requirements of Christian morality.

3. The personal holiness of an ordained man has nothing to do with the sacrament itself; an ordained man does not advance in degree of orders as he advances in personal holiness.

4. A prelate who knowingly ordains a candidate wholly unworthy of the office he assumed, commits a grave sin, and shows himself an unworthy servant of the Lord.

5. A man in orders who, apart from necessity, exercises his office while he is in the state of mortal sin, is guilty of another grievous sin every time he performs a sacred function.

(St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Supplement IIIa, 36)

The mere mention of the words "sodomy" and "homosexual" summon unwholesome images to the mind that are unfit for Christian thinking. Traditionally, this sin was not discussed in polite company.  Saint Thomas Aquinas, writing about sins against nature, explains:

However, they are called passions of ignominy because they are not worthy of being named, according to that passage in Ephesians (5:12): ‘For the things that are done by them in secret, it is a shame even to speak of.’ For if the sins of the flesh are commonly censurable because they lead man to that which is bestial in him, much more so is the sin against nature, by which man debases himself lower than even his animal nature. (Super Epistulas Sancti Pauli Ad Romanum I, 26, pp. 27f)

In the ecclesiastical Tradition of the Church, any hint of the perversion was to be acted upon swiftly and decisively: 

 “Homosexuality is the heaviest sin, which irrevocably and definitely prevents one entering the Priesthood (and of course the Church does not allow any homosexual to be elevated to the priesthood, even if he has stopped the sin for years). Basil the Great considers homosexuality or lesbianism a beastly sin: “Abusers of themselves with mankind and with beasts, as also murderers, wizards, adulterers, and idolaters, are deserving of the same punishment” (Canon 7 of Basil the Great). Saint Gregory of Nyssa characterizes homosexuality as “unnatural” in his 4th Canon. Saint John the Faster observes in his 19th Canon, according to the compilation of The Rudder by Saint Nikodemos the Hagiorite, the following: “A boy who has been ruined by any man cannot come into the holy priesthood. For although on account of his immature age he did not sin himself, yet the vessel of his body was rent and became useless in connection with the sacred priesthood.”
 (St. John Chrysostom on the Terrible Passion of Homosexuality)

Another Doctor of the Church affirms the gravity of this unnatural vice saying the vice of sodomy "surpasses the enormity of all others," because:

 "Without fail, it brings death to the body and destruction to the soul. It pollutes the flesh, extinguishes the light of the mind, expels the Holy Spirit from the temple of the human heart, and gives entrance to the devil, the stimulator of lust. It leads to error, totally removes truth from the deluded mind ... It opens up hell and closes the gates of paradise ... It is this vice that violates temperance, slays modesty, strangles chastity, and slaughters virginity ... It defiles all things, sullies all things, pollutes all things ...
This vice excludes a man from the assembled choir of the Church ... it separates the soul from God to associate it with demons. This utterly diseased queen of Sodom renders him who obeys the laws of her tyranny infamous to men and odious to God. She strips her knights of the armor of virtue, exposing them to be pierced by the spears of every vice ... She humiliates her slave in the church and condemns him in court; she defiles him in secret and dishonors him in public; she gnaws at his conscience like a worm and consumes his flesh like fire. ... this unfortunate man (he) is deprived of all moral sense, his memory fails, and the mind's vision is darkened. Unmindful of God, he also forgets his own identity. This disease erodes the foundation of faith, saps the vitality of hope, dissolves the bond of love. It makes way with justice, demolishes fortitude, removes temperance, and blunts the edge of prudence.”

St. Peter Damian (source)

In the ecclesiastical Tradition of the Church, sodomy was not only a sin against nature that cries out to God for vengeance, but was always treated as an ecclesiastical crime punishable by the severest means:

“Having determined to do away with everything that may in some way offend the Divine Majesty, we resolve to punish, above all and without indulgence, those things which, by the authority of the Sacred Scriptures or by most grievous examples, are more repugnant to God than any others and raise His wrath: that is, negligence in divine worship, ruinous simony, the crime of blasphemy, and the execrable libidinous vice against nature [sodomy]. For such faults peoples and nations are scourged by God Who, according to His just condemnation, sends catastrophes, wars, famine, and pestilence ... Let the judges know that if, even after this our Constitution, they are negligent in punishing these crimes, they will not only be guilty of them in the divine judgment but also will incur our indignation ... If someone commits that nefarious crime against nature that caused divine wrath to be unleashed against the children of iniquity, he will be given over to the secular arm for punishment [of death]; and if he is a cleric, he will be subject to the same punishment after having been stripped of all his degrees [of ecclesiastical dignity].”
- Pope St. Pius V, Constitution Cum primum, April 1, 1566, in Bullarium Romanum (Rome: Typographia Reverendae Camerae Apostolicae, Mainardi, 1738), vol. 4, chap. 2, p. 284, apud Atila S. Guimaraes, Vatican II, Homosexuality and Pedophilia, TIA, 2004, pp. 19-20

What about today? In his reforms of the code of canon law, John Paul II decriminalized clerical sodomy:

The 1917 CIC 2359 § 2 stated:

‘If [clerics] engage in a delict against the sixth precept of the Decalogue with a minor below the age of sixteen, or engage in adultery, debauchery, bestiality, sodomy, pandering, [or] incest with blood-relatives or affines in the first degree, they are suspended, declared infamous, and are deprived of any office, benefice, dignity, responsibility, if they have such, whatsoever, and in more serious cases, they are to be deposed.’

THIS CANON WAS DELETED FROM THE 1983 CIC promulgated by John Paul II. The 1962 instruction of the Holy Office (now Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) ...refers to sodomy as crimen pessimum (“the foulest crime”) and directs back to Canon 2359 of the 1917 Code.

So sodomy is now an act of "grave depravity" and "objectively disordered" (CCC #2357-58) but no longer a crime when committed by those under holy orders.

The infestation of the unnatural vice among clergy reached such saturation under the pontificate of John Paul II that just seven months after his election in 2005, Pope Benedict XVI had the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments issue this teaching instruction:

“…this Dicastery, in accord with the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, believes it necessary to state clearly that the Church, while profoundly respecting the persons in question[9], cannot admit to the seminary or to holy orders those who practise homosexuality, present deep-seated homosexual tendencies or support the so-called "gay culture."
- Instruction Concerning the Criteria for the Discernment of Vocations
with regard to Persons with Homosexual Tendencies in view of their Admission to the Seminary and to Holy Orders

What are we to make of all this then? When some venture to estimate that the percentage of priests so disposed to this mortal sin against nature may be as high as 50%? 

The above quoted instruction breaks the prohibited class into three sub-groups: active sodomites, those with deep-seated tendencies, and those who support the so-called "gay culture." If you count those too timid to openly oppose the sodomite agenda - even inside the Catholic Church - then you will quickly see how few faithful priests remain in active ministry today. 

No one who rejects the natural law in preference for the unnatural vice can be in a state of grace. Its simply impossible. These are the men preaching your homilies, hearing your confessions, and confecting the Holy Eucharist for you (although this also brings grave doubt on the validity of many Masses which require the intention of the priest to do what the Church does). The filth has reached the highest levels in the Church - this is clearly beyond dispute today. 

Do such men deserve our support - let's put it bluntly - our money? Corrupt men with debased minds who reject the faith of the Church in order to justify their disordered perversion? You must decide for yourselves and your own households.  It is certain that what you are receiving from the preaching and teaching of such men is not divine and Catholic faith.

We will end with the teaching of the first Pope, who far from opting out with "who am I to judge?" thunders down the centuries

These are fountains without water, and clouds tossed with whirlwinds, to whom the mist of darkness is reserved.  For, speaking proud words of vanity, they allure by the desires of fleshly riotousness, those who for a little while escape, such as converse in error:  Promising them liberty, whereas they themselves are the slaves of corruption. For by whom a man is overcome, of the same also he is the slave.  For if, flying from the pollutions of the world, through the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they be again entangled in them and overcome: their latter state is become unto them worse than the former.  For it had been better for them not to have known the way of justice, than after they have known it, to turn back from that holy commandment which was delivered to them.  For, that of the true proverb has happened to them: The dog is returned to his vomit: and, The sow that was washed, to her wallowing in the mire.    (2nd Peter 2:17-22)

God gave man reason and the natural law written upon his heart. To depart from it leaves only one possibility: eternal perdition.  God help us all.

  

Are canonizations infallible?

The idea that canonizations are infallible is the majority opinion of Catholic theologians; it is neither a dogma nor even a doctrine of the Church; it is a disciplinary tradition, inasmuch as it depends upon the prudential judgment of bishops, and in some cases, the Pope himself.

The fact that until the 1980s almost no one, ever - over the past 350 years - questioned the infallibility of canonizations is attributable to two factors: (1) the rigorous process put in place by Pope Urban VIII in 1634 which included a comprehensive examination of the candidate's life and doctrine by the Promotor Fidei through the office of "devil's advocate"; and (2) a minimum 50-year 'cooling off' period before a candidate could be declared Blessed due to the excitement and hubris that may surround his/her cult shortly after their decease. In rare cases this 50 year waiting period was waived due to multiple miracles and the exhuming of incorruptible remains 30 years after burial, as in the case of St. Pius X.

John Paul II gutted the Code of Canon Law established by Pope Benedict XV (actually developed by the Curia of St. Pius X) and abrogated 141 canons that dealt with beatification and canonization. There is no more devil's advocate, only one miracle is required (and the threshold for these modern 'miracles' is remarkably low). The speed, haste, and hubris by which the conciliar Popes have been beatified is unprecedented in Church history.

Between 1314 and 2014, exactly two Popes were canonized, whose heroic virtue and Papal careers could never be questioned: Sts. Pius V and Pius X.  Since John Paul II died in 2005, two Vatican II Popes have been canonized, and another beatified, [ed. note: Paul VI was also canonized in 2018] even though the Church fell into precipitous decline during their pontificates or as a direct result of their prudential decisions.

Professor Donald S. Prudlo, Associate Professor of Ancient and Medieval History at Jacksonville State University in Alabama and Assistant Professor of Theology and Church History at the Notre Dame Graduate School of Christendom College writes:

"As an historian of sainthood, my greatest hesitation with the current process stems from the canonizations done by John Paul II himself. While his laudable intention was to provide models of holiness drawn from all cultures and states in life, he tended to divorce canonization from its original and fundamental purpose. This was to have an official, public, and formal recognition of an existing cult of the Christian faithful, one that had been confirmed by the divine testimony of miracles. Cult precedes canonization; it was not meant to be the other way around. We are in danger then of using canonization as a tool to promote interests and movements, rather than being a recognition and approval of an extant cultus."
- Professor Donald S. Prudlo

One need not be a Church historian or a theologian to detect what is going on here: the attempt to canonize the "mere pastoral council" known as Vatican II.

Why the Second Vatican Council Failed

The Second Vatican Council - a true and valid ecumenical council of the universal Church - failed spectacularly because it was convened on a false premise.

This premise - that 'modern man' had somehow attained a stature or condition that required an aggiornamento or 'updating' of the Church's methods of communicating that which God has revealed to man - is demonstrably false.

Two assumptions are provided by the document styled Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (Gaudium et spes) that betray this false premise. The first rejects the stability and essences of nature, requiring a new way of reasoning (philosophy) about the natural order:

Thus, the human race has passed from a rather static concept of reality to a more dynamic, evolutionary one. In consequence there has arisen a new series of problems, a series as numerous as can be, calling for efforts of analysis and synthesis. (GS #5)

This is in effect, a concession to Darwin and Marx. It needs to be mentioned that the Church lacks competence to make such an observation as well - but aside from that, the premise is a rejection of the preconciliar philosophical system required by Pope St. Pius X to combat the super-error of Modernism.

The second assumption is based on the council's preoccupation with man:

 According to the almost unanimous opinion of believers and unbelievers alike, all things on earth should be related to man as their center and crown. (GS #12)

This anthropocentric focus is likewise a concession to modern philosophy which rejects external authority and objective reality. For the Church, only God can be the center and crown of reality. The concord with unbelieving man in this passage should immediately startle the Catholic; what can we have in common with unbelieving man but only the essences and accidents of nature, which for the unbeliever comprise the Marxist dialectical system?

Which brings us to the Council's most glaring failure of all: it refused to confront 'modern man's' most intimidating foe: global communism. Younger readers may not recall the world before 1990 when the USSR dominated half the planet in a bi-polar security environment. This communist world - erected on the false philosophies of materialism, evolution, and socialism - was deliberately avoided by Pope John XXIII as a subject for the council, even though it menaced the entire human race with its aims of global empire as it ruthlessly persecuted the Church.

In the little known clandestine agreement referred to as the Metz Pact, the Pope's envoy met in August 1962 with delegates from the Russian Orthodox Church to ensure the council would not condemn communism as a condition for the Russians to send observers.  Although a petition was circulated by nearly 500 council Fathers to draft a statement condemning the scourge of communism, the petition was 'lost' and never reached the point of a vote.

Ostensibly this pact was struck to support the conciliar aim of ecumenical relations with the Eastern Churches; however, it appears to have set aside the supernatural method required by the Fatima apparitions in preference for mere human means of political rapprochement. And what better opportunity could there have been to consecrate Russia to Our Lady's Immaculate Heart in a public act of religion in concert with all the bishops in the world than at the Second Vatican Council? This general tendency of muting or denuding the supernatural order permeates the Council's sixteen constitutions, decrees, and declarations.

And that is why the Second Vatican Council failed. It was convened by men and for men; it jettisoned the perennial philosphical framework of St. Thomas Aquinas in favor personalist, subjectivist philosophy; and it refused to confront 'modern man's most pressing concern: communism. The very premise of the council was false; there is no 'modern man' dissociated from the man created by almighty God in the Garden of Eden; the truth of revelation is still external to man and must come to him from without, by the vehicle of preaching (Romans 10,13-15).

From Dietrich Von Hildebrand's Trojan Horse in the City of God:

"Altar girls" and Democracy in the Church

How did the Catholic Church find its way into the radical effeminization of its liturgy, once the most manly and commanding of all Christian liturgies? Travel almost anywhere in the US today and you will find the ubiquitous employment of young women as 'altar girls' (or as I like to say, alter-boys) in Novus Ordo liturgy. Is this a symptom, or a cause of this effeminization?

At the center of this situation (surprise!) is the Apostle of Vatican II, Pope John Paul II, who early on in his pontificate laid down the law in support of the traditional practice:

INAESTIMABILE DONUM
Instruction Concerning Worship Of The Eucharistic Mystery
James R. Cardinal Knox
Prefect Virgilio Noe Assistant Secretary
Prepared by the Sacred Congregation for the Sacraments and Divine Worship
Approved and Confirmed by His Holiness Pope John Paul II 17 April 1980:

18. There are, of course, various roles that women can perform in the liturgical assembly: these include reading the Word of God and proclaiming the intentions of the Prayer of the Faithful. Women are not, however, permitted to act as altar servers.

John Paul II, Apostle of the Second Vatican Council and the New Consciousness in the Church however, knew that the old days of Papal command and episcopal obedience ended when Pope John XXIII was overwhelmed at the first session of Vatican II by the demands of the Rhine Fathers. Pope Paul VI similarly took no action at all against openly dissenting episcopal conferences when they refused to teach Humanae vitae after its promulgation in 1968. Democracy having been firmly established in the Church thanks to the theory of collegiality explained in Vatican II's Constitution on the Church Lumen gentium, the US Council of Catholic Bishops easily obtained an indult for distributing holy communion in the hand on 29 May, 1969 - contrary to canon law.

The democratization of the hierarchy could only lead to the democratization of the sacred liturgy, especially under the rubrics of the modular, tailorable Missale Romanum promulgated by Pope Paul VI in 1969. The Novus Ordo offers the celebrant multiple options, so who can be surprised that it fell prey to the whims of each individual liturgist shortly after it's promulgation?

It was in fact, democracy that led to the acceptance of 'altar girls.' The reality is, just as with communion-in-the-hand, the abuse - then condemned by canon law - of employing 'altar girls' became a norm later affirmed by the episcopal conferences. So abuses can become new norms in the People's Republic of Catholicism! Capitulating to 'popular demand' Rome proclaimed:

3) If in some diocese, on the basis of Canon 230 #2, the Bishop permits that, for particular reasons, women may also serve at the altar, this decision must be clearly explained to the faithful, in the light of the above-mentioned norm. It shall also be made clear that the norm is already being widely applied, by the fact that women frequently serve as lectors in the Liturgy and can also be called upon to distribute Holy Communion as Extraordinary Ministers of the Eucharist and to carry out other functions, according to the provisions of the same Canon 230 #3.

VATICAN COMMUNICATION ON FEMALE ALTAR SERVERS

Congregation for Divine Worship, 15 March 1994

Anything that originates as an abuse and then later receives official permission should be suspect. Why after two millennia of consistent praxis should this abuse become a permitted norm in the Church? What changed? The Second Vatican Council changed everything, including the Church's self-consciousness:

"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..."
Pope John Paul II, Redemptor hominis (1979)

Ah, democracy! The vox populi! The consciousness of the faithful, the new standard for transforming abuses into the Lex Orandi of the Church!

Pope Benedict XIV, in his Encyclical Allatae Sunt, July 26, 1755, n. 29, writes

Pope Gelasius (+496) in his ninth letter (chap. 26) to the bishops of Lucania condemned the evil practice which had been introduced of women serving the priest at the celebration of Mass. Since this abuse had spread to the Greeks, Innocent IV strictly forbade it in his letter to the bishop of Tusculum: 

"Women should not dare to serve at the altar; they should be altogether refused this ministry." We too have forbidden this practice in the same words in Our oft-repeated constitution Etsi Pastoralis, sect. 6, no. 21."

It's obvious that old Papa Gelasius didn't have the advantages of democracy in his benighted epoch. The effeminization of the Church is a direct result of Pope John XXIII's aggiornamento - adapting to fit the so-called modern world and its obsession with human rights and popular democracy. The democracies which now overwhelmingly favor radical feminism and sodomy can only be expected to bring the same into the new democratized Catholic Church.

 I would like to give Saint Pius X the last word:

For in the same way [say the Modernists] as the Church is a vital emanation of the collectivity of consciences, so too authority emanates vitally from the Church itself. Authority therefore, like the Church, has its origin in the religious conscience, and, that being so, is subject to it. Should it disown this dependence it becomes a tyranny. For we are living in an age when the sense of liberty has reached its fullest development, and when the public conscience has in the civil order introduced popular government. Now there are not two consciences in man, any more than there are two lives. It is for the ecclesiastical authority, therefore, to shape itself to democratic forms, unless it wishes to provoke and foment an intestine conflict in the consciences of mankind. The penalty of refusal is disaster. For it is madness to think that the sentiment of liberty, as it is now spread abroad, can surrender. Were it forcibly confined and held in bonds, terrible would be its outburst, sweeping away at once both Church and religion. (Pascendi gregis #23)

 Forward!

The 1966 Peoples' Mass Book
with it's creepy graphics and socialist
styled title helped cement the idea of
popular democracy in the American
Catholic Church.

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.