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.  

The Utterly New Way of the Second Vatican Council

The Vatican II document styled Dogmatic Constitution on the Church Lumen gentium presents us with a novel vision of the Church as "a sacrament of salvation" and "sign of the unity of mankind."  Factor in LG's teaching that "elements of sanctification exist in [non-Catholic] assemblies" and that the "Church of Christ subsists in the Catholic Church", you have an ecclesiology so far from traditional doctrine as to represent an entirely new conception of what it means to be 'Church.' but don't take my word for it, here is Pope John Paul II: 

"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 

So, LG is establishing ways the Catholic Church is related by degree to non-Catholic religious bodies first with the 'separated brethren' (another conciliar novelty) but then astonishingly to Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, and Buddhism. Therefore we have lost the dogma of Extra ecclesia nula salus completely which has given way to an amorphous, invisible 'church' that includes all humanity - and this too, John Paul II teaches with shocking audacity: 

...The opening made by the Second Vatican Council has enabled the Church and all Christians to reach a more complete awareness of the mystery of Christ, "the mystery hidden for ages" in God, to be revealed in time in the Man Jesus Christ, and to be revealed continually in every time. 

...Accordingly, what is in question here is man in all his truth, in his full magnitude. We are not dealing with the "abstract" man, but the real, "concrete", "historical" man. We are dealing with "each" man, for each one is included in the mystery of the Redemption and with each one Christ has united himself for ever through this mystery. 

...this is "each" man, "the most concrete" man, "the most real"; this is man in all the fullness of the mystery in which he has become a sharer in Jesus Christ, the mystery in which each one of the four thousand million human beings living on our planet has become a sharer from the moment he is conceived beneath the heart of his mother." 

- Pope John Paul II, Redemptor hominis, 1979

"...utterly new way, quite unknown previously..." 

"...to reach a more complete awareness of the mystery of Christ..." 

"...with each one Christ has united himself for ever through this mystery." 

"...this is 'each' man ...in all the fullness of the mystery in which he has become a sharer in Jesus Christ..." 

Astonishing what you see when you isolate the novel phrases. 

And the result? 

"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. 

John Paul II and various religious leaders, Prayer Meeting of Religions, Assisi, Italy 1986

And (get ready for it) for Pope John Paul II, the Holy Spirit is the inspiration behind these false religions! 

"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). 

All this is condemned by St. Pius X in his encyclical against Modernism: 

"How far off we are here from Catholic teaching we have already seen in the decree of the Vatican Council. We shall see later how, with such theories, added to the other errors already mentioned, the way is opened wide for atheism. 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 gregis #14

Lumen gentium provides the basis for an "...utterly new way" of seeing the Church, "quite unknown previously..." thanks to the Second Vatican Council. John Paul II's vision of a Christ united with each man forever in which each man is already a "sharer in Jesus Christ" easily portends to a Church which is comprised of the entire human race. 

In this universal church in which each man is united to Christ forever and in which "the Holy Spirit ... is mysteriously present in the heart of every person” there is no need for evangelical preaching, missionary work, or personal conversion. No, what is needed is dialogue between men of all religions in order to discover that consciousness which is being aroused in the Teilhardian march towards Omega Point - the consciousness that we are all already united to the God-Man and only lack the realization of it. This is the inescapable conclusion of the New Theology. This is why the Churches are emptying and the average Catholic is utterly confused as to what his Church teaches and what it means to be saved at all.

Kyrie Eleison!

More merciful than God?

From the Roman Martyrology:

This Day, the Thirteenth Day of May 

At Rome, in the time of the emperor Phocas, the dedication of the church of St. Mary of the Martyrs, formerly a temple of all the gods, called Pantheon, which was purified and dedicated by the blessed Pope Boniface IV to the honor of the Blessed Mary ever Virgin, and of all the martyrs.

This consecration of the Basilica dedicated to St. Mary and the Christian Martyrs in a temple formerly dedicated to the adoration of the pagan gods occurred in 609 A.D. It symbolizes the empire of Christ - an empire of martyrdom and charity - overcoming the false religions backed by the state in the first six centuries of the Christian era.

In 1986, Pope John Paul II completely reversed this victory by convening his "Prayer Meeting of All Religions" at Assisi, Italy wherein he invited practitioners of all manner of religions to invoke their luminaries under the auspices of the Pope himself.

He traces this spectacular display reversing all previous Catholic teaching to the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965):

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 inter-religious 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) 

One can only tremble at what price the martyrs paid to testify to the One true God, His Only Begotten Son, and His One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church as the only way of salvation when considering the actions of Pope John Paul II and the aftermath of the Second Vatican Council.

I look at this horrible accident as a parable. This giant crucifix dedicated to John Paul II is bent unnaturally forward as though Christ were straining from the Cross to appeal to man. However two days before his canonization, this giant crucifix collapsed under its weight and unnatural posture killing a young man who had come to admire it. This is a sad parable of the men who believe God is not merciful enough so they must make Him to appear even more merciful (as though that were possible):

Hence, the manipulation of the mercy of God by men who are deficient in supernatural faith ends up bringing death instead of life by proclaiming a Christ who fails.

A PRAYER FOR PAGAN PEOPLES

O Lord, have mercy also on the pagan nations of the world, the sad thousands of millions who walk in the darkness of the shadow of the valley of death. Have pity on abandoned sinners, on the malicious, on outcasts, on the fallen and on the depraved. Have mercy on the dying and especially on those who have none to pray for them. With all the fervor of Thy Sacred Heart, my Jesus, pray and beseech Thy Heavenly Father for the conversion of all sinners, and for the perseverance in Thy grace of all the just. Amen.

Vatican II and communism: state of the world today

What the USSR and the worldwide communist revolution were unable to impose by force is being adopted in the West by free association.

How could this be, when millions of soldiers and sailors gave their lives to prevent such tyranny and violence from spreading to their homelands?

The answer is that men love darkness and will not come to the light so that their sins may be reproved (St. John 3,19-20). The engine of this evil in the modern age is atheistic communism.

The Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to the three children in Fatima, Portugal in 1917 prophesying that the Great War (WWI) would soon end but that a worse war would come if men did not cease offending God. To remedy this, our Lady prescribed a public act of religion led by the Pope in concert with all the bishops of the world in which Russia would be consecrated to her Immaculate Heart. If this were followed, Russia would be converted to the Catholic faith and peace would follow. If not, Russia would flood the world with her errors and great devastation would come by wars, persecution of the Church, and the annihilation of many nations.

Sister Lucia communicated this message in writing to her confessor, Fr. Gonçalves in 1929 after seeing a vision of the Virgin Mary in her chapel requesting this consecration again. According to Sr. Lucia, our Lady had requested this consecration on several occasions, and it occupies a central theme in the Fatima apparitions.

The Russian Orthodox Church was formed after the Eastern Churches (known today as the Orthodox) had renounced their filial relationship to the Roman Pontiff (and the depths and concreteness of this submission is hotly contested by historians from both sides) in 1054 A.D. in what is known as “the Great Schism.” Aligning with the monarchies of the East, the Orthodox Churches fractured along political lines and eventually bore the names of their states (e.g., the Russian Orthodox Church). This separation from Rome and dependence upon the Eastern states eventually resulted in a Church subordinated to the state which many accused of aiding the Czars in the oppression of the poor. 

Against this backdrop arose the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 promising the Marxist utopia envisioned by Lenin and Trotsky. The communist regime that followed was erected upon atheism and dialectical materialism; early reforms of the government included the destruction of Churches, systematic arrest and capital punishment of clergy, seizure of all private property by the state, forced collectivism and involuntary population relocations. Abortion on demand, no-fault divorce and women’s rights legislation were enacted to bolster the work force in support of the means of production. 

Our Lord taught that a house once delivered from the demon that returns to its demonic domination suffers a seven-fold increase in wickedness (St. Matthew 12,45). He made it clear he was speaking of generations and not just individuals. This explains the spiritual origin of the USSR's astonishing evils which vanquished all public free expressions of Christianity and controlled the [puppet] Russian Orthodox Church for 70 years. A post-Christian society is much more evil than a pre-Christian society. Responsible estimates of the human toll of communist imperialism in the past century are around 100 million lives lost to communist states and the wars engendered thereby.

It is without doubt that the most opportune time for the Pope and all the bishops of the world to consecrate Russia to our Lady’s Immaculate Heart would have been the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) convened by Pope John XXIII and concluded by Pope Paul VI. Here were more than 2000 bishops gathered with the Roman Pontiff and the act could have easily been done in a short, deliberate ceremony in response to heaven’s request. In fact, the opposite happened.

In order to promote ecumenism, one of the council’s overriding themes, a pact was struck in Metz, France between a Roman envoy and representatives of the KGB-dominated Russian Orthodox Church in August of 1962. As a condition for Russian Orthodox observers to attend Vatican II, this agreement stipulated that the council would not condemn communism.

Communism had been condemned by many Popes culminating in the encyclical Divini Redemptoris in 1937 promulgated by Pope Pius XI:

The doctrine of modern Communism, which is often concealed under the most seductive trappings, is in substance based on the principles of dialectical and historical materialism previously advocated by Marx, of which the theoricians of bolshevism claim to possess the only genuine interpretation. According to this doctrine there is in the world only one reality, matter, the blind forces of which evolve into plant, animal and man. Even human society is nothing but a phenomenon and form of matter, evolving in the same way. By a law of inexorable necessity and through a perpetual conflict of forces, matter moves towards the final synthesis of a classless society. In such a doctrine, as is evident, there is no room for the idea of God; there is no difference between matter and spirit, between soul and body; there is neither survival of the soul after death nor any hope in a future life. Insisting on the dialectical aspect of their materialism, the Communists claim that the conflict which carries the world towards its final synthesis can be accelerated by man. Hence, they endeavor to sharpen the antagonisms which arise between the various classes of society. Thus, the class struggle with its consequent violent hate and destruction takes on the aspects of a crusade for the progress of humanity. On the other hand, all other forces whatever, as long as they resist such systematic violence, must be annihilated as hostile to the human race.

A traditionalist faction in the council known as Coetus Internationalis Patrum circulated a petition formally requesting the council’s condemnation of communism which at the time menaced the Church and threatened half the globe. Led by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, the Coetus Fathers obtained nearly 500 episcopal signatures for their petition which 'disappeared' under the cunning hand of ecumenical conspirators. At the Second Vatican Council two Popes not only failed to consecrate Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, they added to their trespass the unconscionable dismissal of a condemnation of the 'errors of Russia' that were then flooding the world.

It was a complete and unprecedented anomaly for Pope John XXIII to set aside the magisterial duty to condemn errors at Vatican II. What the Church leaders did not condemn exposed her faithful to become. The ‘errors of Russia’ cited by our Lady at Fatima have not only filled the world, they have saturated the human element of the Church.

There are almost no differences in the percentages of Catholics and non-Catholics today who contracept, procure abortions, divorce and remarry, and support sodomy and other perversions. Catholics today support political factions and causes that the Church has long and often condemned. This has not been forced down the throat of Catholics at the point of a gun as it was in communist Russia; it has been willingly imbibed by the faithful accepting with docility the new, conciliar faith of Vatican II that could not condemn communism or any other errors. 

But what of Pope John Paul II, ‘destroyer of communism?’ The image of John Paul II the anticommunist is largely a media fabrication that began in his native Poland:

While Cardinal Wyszynsky could not get away from his diocese, because the communist government would not grant him permission, Archbishop Wojtyla had full freedom to travel abroad without restriction. This was the common policy of encouraging Wojtyla and destroying the old Cardinal Wyszynski for his anti-communism.
It should be noted that from the start, the figure of John Paul II was built carefully by the press and the media, as opposed to the Primate of Warsaw, the heroic unyielding anti-Communist Cardinal Wyszynski. Therefore, an alleged conflict was exaggerated between the two, Wyszynski as the super-conservative and Wojtyla, instead, as the open intellectual who loved the company of girls, who went about dressed in shorts, a true “liberal” and “progressive.” Indeed, Wojtyla really was a liberal prelate. (Fr. Luigi Villa)

 Pope John Paul II styled himself apostle of Vatican II, the council that would not consecrate Russia to the Immaculate Heart nor condemn communism. In his first address as Pope, John Paul II encouraged the adoption of the ‘spirit of Vatican II’:

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.

Finally, it was John Paul II who audaciously cited communist protest as organic to Catholic doctrine:

What we refer to as communism has its own history. It is the history of protest in the face of injustice, as I recalled in the encyclical Laborem Exercens - a protest on the part of the great world of workers, which then became an ideology. But this protest has also become part of the teaching of the Church. (Crossing the Threshold of Hope, pp 130-131)

The apex of this abominable surrender to communism was achieved in 2018 when in a secret agreement with the Peoples’ Republic of China Pope Francis accepted the communist-appointed ‘bishops’ of the Chinese Patriotic Association as true bishops and betrayed the underground bishops who had loyally supported Rome and submitted to the Popes for generations under the most intense duress. Pope Francis ordered the two entities to merge under the head of the bishops controlled by the communist PRC.

The situation in the US is also untenable. The federal and state governments fund social welfare programs run by Catholic dioceses which are primarily instituted by Democratic Party initiatives. This renders most bishops in the thrall of the Democratic Party and their antichristian platform which includes open borders; abortion-on-demand until and even after birth; so-called ‘gay marriage’; and now even socialism itself, the ideological forerunner of communism. How can such bishops speak out against the sins that are sponsored and promoted by the Democratic Party? Even the few who do are vastly outnumbered by the majority of our own episcopal soviet, the non-canonical democratic body known as the US Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Bolivian President Evo Morales gave Pope Francis a
crucifix atop a hammer and sickle, 9 July 2015.

Many Catholics are deceived by those who claim the consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart has been done by John Paul II. If it had been done, there would be libraries of books chronicling every detail of the world-wide, public act of religion performed simultaneously by all the Bishops in the world in union with the Holy Father. There would be furious outrage from the Russian Orthodox. Man-made ecumenism as we know it would collapse at once, along with it all the other synthetic institutional fabrications proceeding from the Second Vatican Council. Mass conversions of Russian Orthodox priests to Rome would stun the world. The socialism spread by the USSR all over the world would collapse. There is simply no way the consecration could have taken place without an impossible-to-miss spiritual, social and political earthquake taking place in its wake.

The Fatima prophecies tell us the consecration will occur, only that it will be late and that the scourges unleashed by Russian errors will ravage the world. We are living amid these ravages now. Its toxins occupy the very air we breathe, the languages we speak, the activities we perform daily. The only way out is the consecration.

Until then, we must begin in our own hearts, families, spheres of influence and Churches to purge ourselves of these diabolical errors. We must prepare ourselves for that moment when indeed a Roman Pontiff will obey the Mother of God without conditions or exceptions. The weapon issued to us by heaven is the daily recitation of the Holy Rosary and reparations for sin by the Five First Saturdays devotion, but especially the Rosary.

All the novelties, innovations, reforms, and developments springing forth from the Second Vatican Council are infected with this virus. What the Church leaders failed to condemn they have doomed us to become. Yet we must take courage and follow the heroic and pious example of our fellow Catholics in China who, while betrayed by the Pope, have not been betrayed by our heavenly Lord or His Immaculate Mother. O Immaculate Heart of Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee!

Living Tradition: disastrous fruit of the New Theology

When Pope John Paul II promulgated his motu proprio Ecclesia Dei adflicta on 2 July, 1988, he claimed that Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, founder of the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X (SSPX), did not understand the true meaning of Catholic tradition.

The motu proprio, which means 'written on the Pope's own initiative' reads

The root of this schismatic act can be discerned in an incomplete and contradictory notion of Tradition. Incomplete, because it does not take sufficiently into account the living character of Tradition, which, as the Second Vatican Council clearly taught, "comes from the apostles and progresses in the Church with the help of the Holy Spirit. There is a growth in insight into the realities and words that are being passed on. This comes about in various ways. It comes through the contemplation and study of believers who ponder these things in their hearts. It comes from the intimate sense of spiritual realities which they experience. And it comes from the preaching of those who have received, along with their right of succession in the episcopate, the sure charism of truth".

Headstone at the grave of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre.
It reads, 'what I received, I handed on.'

 The idea that Monsignor Lefebvre, probably the most fruitful missionary bishop of the last century did not understand Catholic tradition is laughable prima facie. Lefebvre served 30 years as a missionary priest, bishop, and Archbishop in French speaking Africa; baptized tens of thousands of converts; ordained hundreds of priests; founded 21 new dioceses and consecrated African bishops for each of them. He founded schools, convents, clinics, and seminaries. If anyone understood the root and germ of Catholic tradition it was Marcel Lefebvre.

Yet absolutely necessary to the revolution that culminated at the Second Vatican Council was this new understanding of tradition observed through the lens of evolutionary theory:

"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." (Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Second Vatican Council)

Therefore, in an 'evolutionary concept of reality', that which is newest is always best. In the Hegelian system, the dialectic between the thesis [Tradition] and antithesis [the novelties produced by the Nouvelle Theologie] produces a synthesis ['living Tradition'] that becomes the new thesis. This dialectical method will always leave that which is ancient, venerable, immutable, and eternal at a sort of distant reference point for the sake of history. But make no mistake: for those who have accepted Vatican II's theory that "the human race has passed from a rather static concept of reality to a more dynamic, evolutionary one," that which is newer (Vatican II) is better than everything that went before it.

This idea is of course the engine driving all the partisans of the Nouvelle Theologie of Henri de Lubac, Hans Kung, Karl Rahner, Edward Schillebeeckx, Dominique Marie Chenu, Yves Congar, Hans Urs Von Balthasar, and their coterie of Ressourcement theologians. Modern man would no longer be bound by the requirements impressed upon his conscience by objective reality and external authority; he now possessed new sciences that he believed rendered the Thomistic universe obsolete. This new Modern Man with his superior sciences required a new philosophy with which to approach the articles of divine revelation, and the neoModernist theologians were busy cooking up this very philosophy with the help of the Kantians and Cartesians.

Baptizing the theory of evolution was task number one for these innovators, and the prophet of their cause was Teilhard de Chardin, S.J.  Teilhard's theories were so bizarre that his own order forbade him from either teaching or publishing, a suppression which lasted until his death on Easter Sunday 1955. Teilhard studied in England under another Jesuit, Fr. George Tyrrell, whom St. Pius X excommunicated for the very same theological monstrosities which he named "Modernism" which was the "compendium of all heresies" that "ruins and destroys all religion" (Pascendi gregis, 1908).

About Modernism, St. Pius X warned,

"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

This living religion which Pope John Paul II co-opted from de Lubac as 'living tradition' need not maintain any meaningful continuity with the capital 'T' Tradition of the Catholic faith:

"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

(St. Thomas' definition of truth was the mind's correspondence with reality, not life, -editor.)

The conclusion to all this is obvious: for a religion to be true, it must be alive; and the sign of life is its changeability and 'progress.' The stable cosmos envisioned by the Church Fathers had to give way to the new theories proposed by Copernicus, Newton, Darwin, and Einstein; the bold new scientific theories embraced by the Protestants must find acceptance in the Catholic Church as well. The philosophy and theology of St. Thomas had to be updated or even discarded with its objective realism and adherence to divine authority. What Modern Man needed was a living tradition that would prove to him that Catholics too, were constrained by the theory of evolution and that their religion was true because it too, was changing.

Now in a striking irony John Paul II himself is victimized by the contemporary adherents of living tradition. His firm commitment to traditional Catholic morality (paradoxically contained in a philosophical system which for him was quite dependent on man's subjective experiences) must now yield to Pope Francis' ethic of accompanying and listening to not only non-Christian religions, but to 'mother earth'! John Paul II's era is now passed; what he explained in Ecclesia Dei about the council is now coming to pass to leave him as history's casualty on the march to Teilhard's Point Omega.

John Paul II harshly condemned Archbishop Lefebvre for standing firm in what he received and faithfully passed on - the very definition of Catholic Tradition infallibly defined at the first Vatican Council in 1869-1870:

"For the Holy Spirit was promised to the successors of Peter not so that they might, by His revelation, make known some new doctrine, but that, by His assistance, they might religiously guard and faithfully expound the revelation or Deposit of Faith transmitted by the Apostles."

And now, even though canonized in a hasty display of Pontifical hubris, Pope John Paul II's moral doctrine gives way to the latest, newest manifestation of living tradition. The cycle of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis is unending in the elastic world of evolution and perpetual flux. The demands of natural selection can never be contradicted. In fact, philosophical, theological, and moral change is the very signature of 'truth' and progress. Such is the living tradition bequeathed to us by the neoModernists.

In such an atmosphere where the tyranny of the new must always triumph, wisdom bids her children to stand firm with the maxim of Saint Vincent of Lerins:

"Moreover, in the Catholic Church itself, all possible care must be taken, that we hold that faith which has been believed everywhere, always, by all."

This and this only is Tradition. Tradition does not 'live' in any evolutionary sense, and always maintains the same sense and meaning. May God help us to hold fast to the Tradition - Divine, Apostolic, and Ecclesiastical - handed onto to us by the Lord's Apostles, the Fathers, the Doctors, the martyrs, confessors, virgins, Saints, and faithful Pontiffs.