The Catechism of the Crisis in the Church, Pt. 4
Fr. Matthias Gaudron
21) Does the pope also share the responsibility for the current crisis in the Church?
As we related, one of the characteristics of the current crisis in the Church is that it is encouraged by the highest authorities in the Church. The conciliar popes have encouraged this crisis: 1) by giving modernist theologians their support; 2) by their defending opinions and acting in ways incompatible with the Catholic faith; and 3) by erecting obstacles to the work of defenders of the faith.
l Can you prove these assertions? We shall give some illustrations here; others will appear further on in our study.
l Does Pope John XXIII have a share in the responsibility for the current crisis? John XXIII (1958-63) is the pope who made the crisis, which had been simmering for several decades, erupt. Despite warning voices, he convoked the Vatican Council II, and his aggiornamento became the marching order for an unlimited upheaval as well as for the entrance of the spirit of the world into the Church.
l Can John XXIII really be blamed for convoking Vatican II? Even more than for convoking the Council, John XXIII should be blamed for the goal and the spirit of the convocation. In his opening discourse at the Council, after recalling that the Church had never failed to condemn errors, Pope John XXIII continued:
...Nowadays, however, the Spouse of Christ prefers to make use of the medicine of mercy rather than that of severity. She considers that she meets the needs of the present day by demonstrating the validity of her teaching rather than by condemnations. Not, certainly, that there is a lack of fallacious teaching, opinions, and dangerous concepts to be guarded against and dissipated. But these are so obviously in contrast with the right norm of honesty, and have produced such lethal fruits that by now it would seem that men of themselves are inclined to condemn them.1
The Pope was also against the "prophets of gloom" and thought that the errors would vanish by themselves "like fog before the sun."
l What is blameworthy in these statements? Its naive viewpoint has no connection with reality. Buddhism, Islam, and Protestantism are errors that have existed for centuries and have scarcely vanished by themselves. On the contrary, they are spreading even more because the Church nowadays refuses to condemn them. In the Church itself, despite the optimistic expectations of Pope John, the truth has not shone, but on the contrary a multitude of errors have spread.
l Are there other examples of John XXIII's eirenism? Even worse is the episode witnessed by Archbishop Lefebvre while a member of the Council's preparatory commission. At one of the meetings during which experts for the Council were being chosen, he was astonished to discover on the lists, contrary to the rules, the names of at least three experts who had been condemned by Rome for their heterodoxy. At the end of the meeting, Cardinal Ottaviani approached Archbishop Lefebvre and explained to him that this was at the Pope's express wish. Thus the Pope wanted at the Council experts the integrity of whose faith was questionable!
l What was the attitude of John XXIII's successor, Pope Paul VI? Pope Paul VI (1963-78), who continued the Council after John XXIII's death, clearly supported the liberals. He appointed the four Cardinals Doepfner, Suenens, Lercaro, and Agagianian to be the moderators of the Council. The first three were well-known liberals, and the fourth was not an outstanding personality.
l During the Council, didn't Paul VI oppose the liberal bishops (especially during what came to be called "the black week" in November 1964)? Even if Paul VI sometimes acted against the extremist liberals, it is certain that the situation of the conservatives among the Council Fathers was practically blocked because the liberals visibly enjoyed the Pope's favor.
On December 7, 1965, Pope Paul declared to the bishops assembled for the Council's cloture:
The religion of the God Who became man has met the religion (for such it is) of man who makes himself God. And what happened? Was there a clash, a battle, a condemnation? There could have been, but there was none. The old story of the Samaritan has been the model of the spirituality of the Council. A feeling of boundless sympathy has permeated the whole of it. The attention of our Council has been absorbed by the discovery of human needs (and these needs grow in proportion to the greatness which the son of the earth claims for himself). But we call upon those who term themselves modern humanists, and who have renounced the transcendent value of the highest realities, to give the Council credit at least for one quality and to recognise our own new type of humanism: we, too, in fact, we more than any others, honour mankind [literally: have the cult or worship of man].2
l What should we make of this declaration? It can be contrasted with the advice given by St. Pius X in his first encyclical:
We must use every means and exert all our energy to bring about the utter disappearance of the enormous and detestable wickedness so characteristic of our time–the substitution of man for God.3
Freemasonry, the goal of which is the destruction of the Catholic Church, has the cult of man, but not the Catholic Church. Hearing Paul VI promote the cult of man, the Freemasons must have savored their triumph. Is it not the achievement of the plans they forged in the 19th century?
l How can one learn about the plans elaborated by Freemasonry against the Church? One way the plans of Freemasonry were made known was through the secret correspondence of the heads of the Italian Alta Vendita that fell into the hands of the Vatican police in 1846, which Pope Gregory XVI ordered to be published.4
l What do the Masonic plans foretell? The correspondence that was seized and published shows that the Freemasons wanted to do everything so that "a Pope according to our wants" could ascend the throne of Peter. They explained:
...that Pontiff, like the greater part of his contemporaries, will be necessarily imbued with the ...humanitarian principles which we are about to put in circulation....You will have fished up a Revolution in Tiara and Cope, marching with Cross and banner–a Revolution which needs only to be spurred on a little to put the four quarters of the world on fire.5
l Can it truly be said that Paul VI was this Pope imbued with humanitarian principles? The following hymn, which Paul VI intoned when man walked on the moon, would be suitably placed on the lips of a Freemason:
Hail to man; hail to thought and science, to technology and work; hail to the boldness of man....Hail to man, king of the earth and now prince of the heavens.6
l Is Paul VI responsible for other aspects of the current crisis? Paul VI is also the pope who introduced the new rite of Mass, the harmfulness of which we shall examine.
l What else should be pointed out about Paul VI? It was during Paul VI's reign that the persecution of priests who wanted to stay Catholic and who refused to abandon the faithful to Protestantism, modernism, and apostasy began.
l Didn't Pope John Paul II turn things around? Endowed with a stronger personality than Paul VI, John Paul II was able to seem firmer on certain points, but he also committed himself more resolutely to the course of novelties. He performed actions to which the note of apostasy or suspect of heresy would formerly have been attached.
l Can you give us an example? On May 29, 1982, John Paul II recited the Creed with the so-called Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Runcie, in Canterbury Cathedral, and then gave the benediction with him. The Primate of the Anglican Church was vested in all his pontifical regalia, whereas he is just a layman by reason of the invalidity of Anglican orders.7
l Are there any similar examples? There is worse: participation in idolatrous rites. In August of 1985, John Paul II participated in an animist rite in the sacred forest of Togo. On February 2, 1986, at Bombay, he received on his forehead the Tilac, which symbolizes the Hindu deity Shiva's third eye.8 On February 5, at Madras, he received the Vibhuti (sacred ashes), sign of the adorers of Shiva and Vishnu.9
l How far did the Pope's participation in false worship go? The sad climax of these activities was reached with the prayer meeting of religions at Assisi on October 27, 1986. The Pope invited all the religions of the world to come and pray for peace at Assisi, with the representatives of each religion praying according to their own rite. Catholic churches were placed at their disposition for the celebration of pagan rites. In San Pietro's Church, they even placed a statue of Buddha on the tabernacle.
l Isn't it a good thing to promote peace and elicit prayers for this intention? It is not peace, but idolatry and superstition that are bad, for they seriously impinge on the honor due to God. A good intention can never justify committing or encouraging acts bad in themselves.
l Did John Paul II stop there? After 1986, John Paul II continued to sponsor annually interreligious meetings like the one at Assisi. He also continued the spectacular gestures in support of false religions. On May 14, 1999, he publicly kissed the Koran. The diffusion of the photograph of this act, widely broadcast in Muslim countries, could only confirm the Mohammedans in their false religion.
22) Why do these popes pass for conservatives?
The conciliar popes generally pass for conservatives because they continue to defend certain principles of the natural law that the modern world rejects, and because, in doctrinal matters, they seek to restrain the more radical of the modernist theologians.
l Is there any other explanation for this mistaken reputation as "conservative"? One characteristic of the current crisis is the great confusion of ideas and viewpoints which holds sway even in the Catholic Church. It is sufficient to defend some point of Catholic doctrine to be labeled conservative. The expression no longer signifies very much.
l Why does Pope Paul VI have the reputation of being a conservative pope in matters of morals? Pope Paul VI passes for a conservative because of the Encyclical Humanae Vitae (July 25, 1968), which reaffirmed the Church's opposition to contraception. This encyclical aroused much hatred against him, and many bishops were more or less openly against it.
l Given the circumstances, wasn't Paul VI's promulgation of the Encyclical Humanae Vitae a courageous act? Promulgating Humanae Vitae undoubtedly required a certain courage on his part, and it certainly is proof of the divine assistance afforded the Church even in the midst of the current crisis. But it should not be forgotten that Pope Paul VI was chiefly responsible for the prevailing circumstances since he had refused to allow a clear condemnation of contraception by the Council. The door would not have been so difficult to shut had it not been left ajar during the Council.
l Is not John Paul II a great herald of Christian morality to the modern world? John Paul II is decried as a hard-core conservative because of his clear position on the questions of conjugal morality and celibacy. Yet let us not deceive ourselves: even in these matters, there has been some doctrinal slackening.
l Can you give an example of a relaxation in John Paul II's teaching on morals? The Pope's declarations give the impression that, if artificial birth control is indeed forbidden, the natural regulation of births is authorized without restriction. But according to Catholic teaching, it is only authorized under certain conditions: when, whether temporarily or permanently, a couple can no longer have children for grave reasons.
l Does the moral teaching of John Paul II deviate from Tradition on other points? In the justifications John Paul II gives for Christian morals, the accent is shifted: the dignity of man is always given as the primary reason. The new Catechism of the Catholic Church, for instance, affirms: "The murder of a human being is gravely contrary to the dignity of the person and the holiness of the Creator" (§2320).
Such an inversion of the order of those two things shows just how far the humanism of churchmen has gone. It echoes Paul VI's affirmation that the Church also "has the cult of man."
l As regards doctrine, didn't Paul VI defend traditional doctrine in his "Credo of the People of God," as did John Paul II in his Apostolic Letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis of May 22, 1994, clearly declaring that the ordination of women is absolutely out of the question? The current popes are not (and, thank God, they cannot be) deficient in everything. But it is enough for them to be deficient in some things for the consequences to be tragic for the whole Church. And in fact, these popes have in numerous cases upheld the modernists and abandoned or even condemned the defenders of Catholic truth.
l Can examples be cited in which John Paul II supported modernists? John Paul II named cardinal four neo-modernist leaders: the French theologians Henri de Lubac and Yves Congar, and the German-language theologians Hans Urs von Balthasar and Walter Kaspar.
l Who is Henri de Lubac? Henri de Lubac (Jesuit, 1896-1991) was the principal leader in France of what is called the "new theology." After World War II, the "new theology" adopted the modernist theses condemned by St. Pius X in 1907 (confounding of the natural and the supernatural, doctrinal evolutionism, etc.), but more cleverly. The Jesuit Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) said of St. Augustine: "Don't mention that unfortunate man; he spoiled everything by introducing the supernatural."10 His confrere and friend Henri de Lubac, who always defended him (not hesitating to abridge his correspondence while claiming to publish it in its entirety),11 was much more subtle: he admitted in principle the distinction between "natural" and "supernatural," but then in his books deliberately worked to make it lose all meaning. Without denying anything too categorically, the "new theology" excels at making everything hazy by systematically putting forward the least precise authors. It invokes the Fathers of the Church against St. Thomas, the Greek Fathers against the Latin Fathers, and even, when useful, St. Thomas himself against his most exact commentators.
Pius XII condemned the principal theses of the "new theology" in the Encyclical Humani Generis in 1950, but the Encyclical was hardly obeyed. Henri de Lubac, who had been suspended from teaching by his Roman superiors, was a theologian at Vatican Council II and named cardinal by John Paul II in February 1983.
l Who is Yves Congar? Yves Congar (Dominican, 1904-95) was the father of the "new ecclesiology," that is, the new way of conceiving the Church. A disciple of Fr. Marie-Dominique Chenu, he took classes at the Protestant Faculty of Strasbourg just after being ordained to the priesthood. He decided to consecrate his whole life to the rapprochement of the Church with the heretics and schismatics, going so far as to claim that
Luther is one of the greatest religious geniuses of all history. In this regard I put him on the same level as St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, or Pascal. In a certain way, he is even greater. He entirely rethought Christianity....I studied Luther a lot. Scarcely a month goes by without my revisiting his writings.12
Subject to strict surveillance after 1947, (he would later say: "From the beginning of 1947 until the end of 1956, I experienced nothing but an uninterrupted series of denunciations, warnings, restrictive or discriminatory measures, and mistrustful interventions"13) he cleaved to the same ideas (in his intimate diary, he relates that twice while at Rome he went to urinate against the door of the Holy Office as a sign of revolt!14). Nevertheless, Yves Congar was summoned as an expert to Vatican II by John XXIII and greatly influenced the Council. John Paul II named him cardinal in October 1994.
l Who is Hans Urs von Balthasar? In keeping with the "new theology," Hans Urs von Balthasar (Swiss, 1905-88) devoted himself to reconstructing theology around modern philosophers and poets. Highly influenced by the fake mystic Adrienne von Speyr (1902-67), he also developed the thesis of an empty hell. Named cardinal by John Paul II in 1988, his sudden death prevented him from receiving the cardinal's hat.
l Who is Walter Kasper? President (since 2001) of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, Walter Kasper is notwithstanding a declared enemy of the Catholic Faith. In his book Jesus the Christ, he openly denies many miracles recounted in the Gospels
We must count as legendary many of the stories of miracles contained in the Gospels. In these legends one must seek not so much their historical content as their theological aim.15
He doubts the historicity of the Resurrection:
This observation of the existence of an historical core in the accounts concerning the tomb in no way implies a proof in favor of the resurrection.16
He also goes so far as to put in doubt our Lord's divinity, writing pages and pages to relativize all the scriptural passages that mention it. Nevertheless, Kasper was named cardinal by John Paul II in 2001 without having retracted any of his theses.
l Yet didn't Pope John Paul II support the efforts of the conservatives? When Dom Gerard Calvet, the Benedictine abbot of Le Barroux, went to Rome in April 1995 with 75,000 signatures to ask that the Holy Father allow the traditional Mass to be celebrated freely, he was invited to concelebrate the new Mass with the Pope "to give a sign." He concelebrated, but liberalization of the usage of the traditional rite of Mass did not follow. As for the conservative bishop of Coire, Msgr. Haas, instead of helping him to reform his diocese, John Paul II assigned him two progressivist auxiliary bishops before shunting him aside by making him the Archbishop of Lichtenstein.
l To conclude, what can be said about John Paul II? It must not be forgotten that the prayer meeting at Assisi, as well as the entire ecumenical movement, was one of the principal intentions of John Paul II.
23) Are then the post-conciliar popes heretics?
A heretic, in the precise meaning of the word, is someone who expressly denies a dogma. Now, the Popes Paul VI and John Paul II have done and said many things that have seriously harmed the Church and the faith and that could have confirmed the heretics in their way of acting, but it cannot be proven that they knowingly and willingly denied a dogma. Rather, they must be counted among the number of liberal Catholics, who on the one hand want to remain Catholics, but on the other desire to please the world and do everything to accommodate it.
l Isn't it possible for a liberal Catholic to push his conciliation with the world to the point of heresy? One of the characteristics of Catholics of this kind is that they never want to commit themselves; for this reason alone, it is very difficult for them to maintain a heresy with pertinacity.
l Is pertinacity in error absolutely necessary for someone to be a heretic? It suffices to contradict a single dogma to be materially heretical. But to really commit the sin of heresy (to be formally heretical) this negation must be conscious and deliberate. A child who, having badly learned his catechism, attributes two persons to our Lord Jesus Christ has committed a sin of laziness but not the sin of heresy (he proffers a heresy without being conscious of it; he is not formally a heretic). A liberal Catholic multiplying ambiguities and concessions to please the world may even arrive at uttering heresies without being really conscious of it: he is not formally a heretic.
l What is the Church's teaching on these liberal Catholics? About the liberal Catholic, Pius IX said:
These are more deadly and dangerous than declared enemies....Because [by remaining just outside the bounds] of formally condemned opinions, they show a certain sign of apparent integrity and irreproachable doctrine, convincing thereby imprudent amateurs who support conciliation and misleading honest souls who would have revolted against a declared error.17
24) In the Church's history, are there analogous examples of papal deficiencies?
If there have been, unfortunately, a certain number of popes whose moral lives were not exemplary, yet in doctrinal matters, they were almost always irreproachable. There are, however, some examples of popes who fell into error or who, at least, upheld error instead of fighting it. These were the Popes Liberius, Honorius I, and John XXII.
l How did Pope Liberius uphold error? Pope Liberius (352-66) succumbed to the pressure of the Arians, who denied the divinity of Christ. In 357, he excommunicated Bishop Athanasius, the valiant defender of Catholic doctrine, and subscribed to an ambiguous profession of faith.18
l How did Pope Honorius I uphold error? In the seventh century, Sergius, the Patriarch of Constantinople, invented the heresy of monothelitism. This error teaches that in Christ there is only one will, while in fact Christ possesses two wills, the divine will and a human will. Sergius succeeded in deceiving Honorius I (625-38) and winning him to his cause.
l Did Pope Honorius really adhere to the error of monothelitism? It seems that Honorius did not really share the Patriarch of Constantinople's error, but, not understanding thoroughly the whole matter and seeing in it nothing but a theologians' quarrel, he still took Sergius's side and silenced St. Sophronius, who defended the Catholic cause. For this reason, Honorius was posthumously condemned by Pope Leo II.19
l How did Pope John XXII uphold error? John XXII (1316-34) supported the false doctrine according to which the souls of the faithful departed do not obtain the beatific vision and thus full beatitude until after the general judgment. Beforehand, they simply enjoy the vision of Christ's humanity. Similarly, the demons and damned men do not undergo the eternal pains of hell until after the last judgment. However, he had the humility to allow himself to be corrected and retracted his error on December 3, 1334, the day before he died.20
Translated exclusively for Angelus Press from Katholischer Katechismus zur kirchlichen Kriese by Fr. Matthias Gaudron, professor at the Herz Jesu Seminary of the Society of St. Pius X in Zaitzkofen, Germany. The original was published in 1997 by Rex Regum Press, with a preface by the District Superior of Germany, Fr. Franz Schmidberger. This translation is based on the second edition published in 1999 by Rex Regum Verlag, Schloss Jaidhof, Austria. Subdivisions and slight revisions made by the Dominican Fathers of Avrillé have been incorporated into the translation.
1 John XXIII, Opening discourse, The Documents of Vatican II, Abbott ed.
2 Paul VI, Public Session, December 7, 1965 [English version: Xavier Rynne, The Fourth Session (London, 1966)].
3 Pope St. Pius X, Encyclical E Supremi Apostolatus (§9). The holy Pope identified as "the distinguishing mark of Antichrist" the fact that "man has with infinite temerity put himself in the place of God, raising himself above all that is called God; in such wise that although he cannot utterly extinguish in himself all knowledge of God, he has contemned God's majesty and, as it were, made of the universe a temple wherein he himself is to be adored" (§5).
4 The publication was done by Jacques Crétineau-Joly (1803-75) in his work L'Église romaine en face de la Révolution (1859). The work was honored by a brief of approbation from Pius IX (February 25, 1861), who implicitly guaranteed the authenticity of the documents. (All the documents were reproduced by Msgr. Delassus in an appendix to his work The Anti-Christian Conspiracy [French]).
5 Ibid. The texts cited by Crétineau-Joly were published by Msgr. George Dillon in Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked (1885; reprint in Palmdale, CA: Christian Book Club of America [Omni Publications], 1999), pp. 91, 95.
6 Paul VI, February 7, 1971, Documentation Catholique, February 21, 1971, p. 156.
7 The invalidity of Anglican ordinations was solemnly pronounced by Leo XIII in the Letter Apostolicæ Curæ of September 13, 1896.
8 La Croix, February 6, 1986; and L’Express, February 7, 1986, with photograph.
9 Indian Express, February 6, 1986.
10 Teilhard de Chardin to Dietrich von Hildebrand in March 1948, published in the appendix of The Trojan Horse in the City of God (London: Sands & Co., 1969), p. 227.
11 See Henri Rambaud, “The Trickeries of Father de Lubac,” [French] Itinéraires, No. 168, pp. 69-109.
12 Congar, Une Vie pour la Vérité (Paris: Centurion, 1975), p. 59. Pope Adrian VII, in the Bull Satis et Plus, designated Luther as “the apostle of the Antichrist,” and St. Alphonsus Liguori called him “a baneful monster from hell.”
13 Informations Catholiques Internationales, June 1, 1964, p. 28.
14 On May 17, 1946, and then on November 27, 1954. See Yves Congar, Journal d’un théologien (1946-56), presented and annotated by Étienne Fouilloux (Paris: Cerf, 2001), pp. 88, 293.
15 Walter Kasper, Jesus the Christ [5th French ed.], (Paris: Cerf, 1996), p. 130.
16 Ibid., p. 193.
17 Pius IX, Brief to the Catholic Circle of Milan (1873), cited in Rev. A. Roussel, Liberalislm and Catholicism (1926; Kansas City: Angelus Press, 1998), pp. 120-21.
18 Letter Studens Pacis addressed by Pope Liberius to the Bishops of the Orient in the spring of 357: "...By this letter, which I composed with a concern for unanimity with you, know that I am in peace with all of you and with all the Bishops of the Catholic Church, but the aforementioned Athanasius is excluded from communion with me, that is to say, from communion with the Roman Church, and from the exchange of ecclesiastical letters" (DS 138). Pope Liberius confirms this excommunication of St. Athanasius in the Letters Pro Deifico (DS 140), Quia Scio (DS 142), and Non Doceo (DS 143).
19 John IV (Pope from 641-2) took up the defense of his predecessor Honorius in the Letter Dominus Qui Dixit (DS 496-498), showing that the ambiguous texts of Honorius can be interpreted in an orthodox sense. But the Third Council of Constantinople (680-1) and Pope Leo II (682-3) pronounced an anathema against Honorius, who had in fact favored heresy (DS 552 and 563).
20 John XXII retracted his errors in the Bull Ne Super His (DS 990-1), which was published by his successor, Benedict XII.
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