September 2007 Print

Teachings of the Church Fathers on Limbo

 

The Courrier de Rome has several times previously dealt with the question of limbo, which the neo-modernists would like to suppress. We return to this question to study in depth the dogmatic aspect of this reality and especially to rebut in advance the sophistries by which the modernists would like to twist the problem and alter the Church's traditional doctrine. Indeed, in well-informed Roman circles opposed to doctrinal innovation, the rumor is that some modernists maintain that, just as God sanctified some of the elect (St. John the Baptist and Ezechiel) in their mothers' wombs without waiting for the babies' circumcision, the Old Testament equivalent of New Testament baptism, so also He would make this special privilege, which He had reserved to a very small number, common to all.

The falsity of the modernists' reasoning is self-evident to the simple faithful. If indeed this reasoning were true, the miraculous privilege would be something ordinary and normal, and it would cease to be a miraculous privilege, that is, an exceptional and rare event. There would be a contradiction in terms since it would be a non-miraculous miracle, which is repugnant to common sense. God only derogates from the common rule for an exceptional privilege (for example, the Divine omnipotence can suspend a natural or physical law by bringing the dead back to life, as Jesus did with Lazarus to prove His Divinity to the incredulous Jews, but that does not happen to all who die: this is a fact we observe daily, and "contra factum non valet argumentum"). The ordinary way, established by Providence, consists in receiving the supernatural order either by an act of faith followed, if possible, by baptism (for adults), or by baptism alone (for infants). Such is God's common way of acting; sanctification in the maternal womb is a privilege that as such cannot be common under pain of ceasing to be a privilege. Moreover, Cardinal Journet, in the Dictionary of Catholic Theology [French], (s.v. "Baptism") wrote:

Even though all things are possible to God, it is not permissible to admit a derogation from the universal law [infant baptism], unless God Himself should reveal it [as in the cases of Ezechiel and St. John the Baptist]. Exceptions to a universal law must not be presumed but proved.

The Patristic Teaching

I would like to restrict myself to discussing the theses already exposed, to show the reader the bearing they have on our faith, and the seriousness of the change in doctrine to be found already in germ in the Novus Ordo Missae, which provides a rite for unbaptized children, a change that was also incorporated into the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

Firstly, the doctrine on limbo has been formally revealed (Jn. 3:5: "Unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God"; and Mt. 28:19: "Going therefore, teach ye all nations; baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost"; and Mark 19:16: "He that believeth and is baptized, shall be saved"). That is why the infallible practice of the Church, founded on Divine revelation and the Apostolic tradition, imposes the duty to baptize newborns as soon as possible (Council of Trent, Dz. 791).

The Church's Magisterium then condemned this "new" old error, an error as old as the devil and professed by Pelagius and his disciples, in 411 at the Council of Carthage, but it is inexact to say that the doctrine on the limbos [of the Fathers and of children] arose during the controversy with the Pelagians.

St. Jerome and St. Augustine were among the first Church Fathers to rise against the Pelagian error. A second Council was convoked at Carthage in 416 to condemn it anew. Then, at Milevum, also in 416, the Church condemned it for the third time.¹ On January 27, 417, Pope Innocent I wrote his Letter 182 to the primate Silvanus and all the bishops of the Council of Milevum to reiterate that his goal was to preserve the Catholic faith against the Pelagian heresy, and that "It is the height of folly (perfatuum est) to affirm that children can obtain the reward of eternal life even without the grace of baptism."² Comments Fr. Attilio Carpin, O.P.:

Pope Innocent I's intervention acquires, by the very words of the Pontiff, a dogmatic character since it involves the intervention of the Church's supreme teaching authority in a matter of faith. The pontifical document confirms the decisions of the Councils of Milevum and Carthage....The Pope excludes the possibility that children who die without baptism can accede to eternal life..., since this cannot be totally independent of baptism. In the contrary case, the necessity of Christ for salvation and the presence of original sin would be denied.³

A third Council was held at Carthage (418) which again condemned the Pelagian doctrine, basing its reasoning upon what has been formally revealed: "Unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God" (Jn. 3:5). The Council teaches as a divinely revealed truth ("For on account of this rule of faith even infants...are therefore truly baptized unto the remission of sins" [Dz. 102]) the fact that baptism is also necessary for infants to go to heaven. If there were exceptions (Ezechiel and St. John the Baptist), they are exceptions that confirm the rule; but one cannot make a rule of the exception (as the modernists would like to do) under pain of contradiction. The Council of Ephesus (431) renewed the condemnation of Pelagianism.

St. Augustine

It must be said that St.Augustine, in reaction to Pelagianism, initially adopted an excessively severe thesis (by departing from the teaching of the Greek Fathers, who spoke only of privation of the vision of God without pain), which he later moderated, affirming that infants who die without being baptized suffer an eternal, though very slight, pain.⁴ But the holy Doctor himself acknowledged:

I am conscious of the depth of the mystery and I recognize that my resources are insufficient to sound the depths..., but I must take into account the human insufficiency and I must not contradict Divine authority.⁵

The Catholic faith teaches the absolute and universal necessity of salvation by Christ, even for newborn infants. Without sanctifying grace, which is the seed of glory, one cannot attain the beatific vision, just as without the apple seed there can be no apple tree. This is absolutely certain. The supernatural order is above nature, and without it the infant has no right to the supernatural vision of God. This is not an injustice; indeed, the unbaptized soul [in limbo] has a purely natural knowledge and love of God, First Cause, and he does not suffer remorse of conscience because, unlike the neo-modernists, he knows that it is not his fault if he cannot enter Paradise; and where there is no guilt, there is no pain. Nevertheless, St. Augustine remained attached to the doctrine, subsequently perfected by the Schoolmen, of a pain that, while minimal, was still a pain ("minima poena non tamen nulla").

St. Gregory the Great

St. Gregory the Great also denies the beatific vision for children who die without baptism, basing his teaching on Divine revelation (Jn. 3:5). The holy Pope speaks of a difference of pain endured between someone who dies with an actual mortal sin, and the children who die with original sin alone and who suffer a much lesser pain, but pain nonetheless. Like St. Augustine, St. Gregory halts before a mystery that the early Church Fathers still had not adequately addressed. This work was to be tackled by the Scholastics. In spite of this, St. Gregory specified that in hell there is an upper region (a place of tranquility devoid of physical, if not moral, suffering, which would be elaborated on by the medieval theologians) and a lower region, which is the place of physical torments (the pain of sense) and the pain of loss.⁶ With St. Gregory the Great, the distinction begins to be clearly made between the hell or limbo of the just of the Old Testament, who temporarily suffer the pain of loss; purgatory, where souls temporarily suffer the pain of the senses and of loss; and the limbo of children who die with just original sin.

Scholasticism

Between the 9th and the 11th centuries, theology advanced in the steps of St. Augustine and St. Gregory. In the 12th century, the question was revisited in depth, in particular by St. Anselm of Aost, who still remained very attached to the Augustinian tradition; by Yves of Chartres; and by Hugh of St. Victor, who introduced an important and homogeneous dogmatic development: instead of speaking of damnation, he spoke of the privation of the beatific vision without suffering.⁷ The how and why remained a mystery. Peter Lombard proposed the Augustinian solution in a mitigated form: very light pain without either physical or moral suffering, consisting in the privation of the face-to-face vision of God.⁸ With Alexander of Hales, the way to a definitive solution was opened, which was to be given by St. Bonaventure and St. Thomas Aquinas. In his commentary on Peter Lombard's Sentences, Alexander coined the term limbo, which signifies the edge or border (of hell). We have seen that this notion (and not just the word) was already implicitly present in the teaching of St. Augustine and St. Gregory. But with the Fathers the idea remained that in the upper region of hell (or limbo) a certain anguish or torment of conscience remained, the typical state of someone who desires a good he cannot obtain.⁹ To reach the answer closest to the reality, it is necessary to await the two great Scholastics: St. Bonaventure and St. Thomas.

St. Bonaventure

According to the Saint of Bagnorea, children who die without baptism are deprived of grace and hence of glory, but they suffer no sensible pain since they have committed no actual sin.¹⁰ For St. Bonaventure, the children do not suffer morally either, even though they are conscious of not having the vision of God.¹¹ The Scholastic teaching

is not perceived as being in contradiction [or heterogeneous] with St. Augustine’s thought, but rather its explication. The ambiguities of Augustine's teaching...find a more coherent theological solution with St. Bonaventure.¹²

St. Thomas

St. Thomas Aquinas teaches that the only pain due to original sin after death is the absence of the supernatural vision of God.¹³ The Angelic Doctor interprets reverenter St. Augustine and makes him say that the "torment" is not the pain of the senses, but only the privation of the vision of God. The children who die unbaptized know the cause of their privation but suffer no anguish because of it. Indeed, one must not be afflicted for lacking something that surpasses one's own condition. The infants who died without having been baptized were not capable of the supernatural order or eternal life, being deprived of the habitual grace which is "inchoatio Vitae aeternae." Grace surpasses nature; it is not owed to man, but absolutely gratuitous (contrary to the error of the modernists and neo-modernists, especially Lubac). Thus these children do not experience grief or anguish because of this privation; they even possess a natural well-being that results from their participation in God's goodness and the perfections of nature. In fact, they are not totally separated from God, but are united to Him by their participation of natural goods (being, goodness, beauty, truth, etc.).

The speculations of the Schoolmen were adopted and canonized in 1439 by the Council of Florence (Dz. 464); and by the Council of Trent in 1546 (Dz. 791: "For by reason of this rule of faith from a tradition of the apostles even infants, who could not as yet commit any sins of themselves, are for this reason truly baptized...." The Catechism of the Council of Trent teaches that "...infant children have no other means of salvation except Baptism"). In 1794, Pius VI reaffirmed the existence of limbo as a privation of the beatific vision without pain (Dz. 1526). Finally, Pius XII, in his discourse to midwives of October 29, 1951, reaffirmed the necessity of baptism for newborns, since "in the present economy there is no other way to communicate that [supernatural] life to the child who has not attained the use of reason..." (for adults, on the contrary, there is the possibility of baptism of desire).

Conclusion

According to the neo-modernists, it is not allowed to reason from a universal principle (whoever dies with original sin is excluded from the beatific vision) to a particular principle (children who die without baptism are deprived of the vision of God). But in logic, every syllogism draws a particular conclusion from a (major) universal premise and from another (minor) particular premise. For example:

Major premise: Man is rational;

Minor premise: Anthony is a man;

Conclusion: Therefore Anthony is rational.

Philosophy and theology study and take into consideration the rule (the per se) and the exception (the per accidens). In logic, then, one is not concerned about whether So-and-so is demented and hence not rational; on the contrary, the fact that he is demented is the exception that confirms the rule that men, normally speaking, are rational. Similarly, theology is not concerned with the fact that Ezechiel and John the Baptist were sanctified (miraculously) in their mothers' wombs, but with the fact that the ordinary and common lot of the human race is to be born with original sin, which is only remitted by baptism. Otherwise, one could also argue the "immaculate conception of man" since Mary was miraculously preserved from the stain of original sin. Such reasoning is an instance of the sophism "ab uno, disce multis" (one hairdresser killed his wife, therefore hairdressers are wife-killers). This is no longer logic but sophistry; it is no longer sacred science but theological fantasy. It is possible for the Divine omnipotence to sanctify someone in the maternal womb, but "a posse ad esse, non valet illatio" (just because a thing might be doesn't mean that it is). For example, I can win the lottery, but that doesn't mean that I am really a multi-millionaire.

The Catholic faith remains what it has always been and does not undergo heterogeneous mutations. Dogma develops in a way that is homogeneous, in the same sense, as has been the case from St. John's Gospel to Pius XII. The Creed teaches us that children who die without baptism (normally, ordinarily) go to limbo: that is the rule of faith. If God wants to sanctify Peter, Paul, or James in their mothers' wombs, it would be an exception, which cannot be the object of dogmatic definitions, but only confirm the rule (whoever dies without the supernatural order, conferred on infants solely by water baptism, does not go to heaven).

It would be very grave to abrogate the doctrine of limbo, which is, at a minimum, a theological certitude, following as a sure conclusion (there is not the shadow of a doubt that newborns who die without baptism do not possess the vision of God) from a formally revealed major premise (without grace there is no glory), which is hence of faith, and from a naturally logical minor premise (whoever dies without baptism and without the use of reason is deprived of sanctifying grace).

 

Agobard

 

Translated exclusively by Angelus Press from Courrier de Rome, April 2007, pp. 1-3.

 

¹ Concilium Milivetanum, Canon 2.

² Innocent I, Ep. CLXXXII, 5.

³ A. Carpin, Augustine and the Problem of Children Who Die Without Baptism [Italian] (Bologna: ESD, 2005).

⁴ De Libero Arbitrio, III, 23, 66-67.

⁵ Sermo CCXCIV, 7, 7.

⁶ Moralia in Job, IV, 3; IX, 23, 32; XIII, 44, 49, 53.

⁷ De Sacramentis Christianae Fidei, Bk. II, Pt. IV, 2.

⁸ Sententiae, IV, d. 4.

⁹ Sententiarum, II, dist. 33, 9.

¹⁰ Commentarium in 2um librum Sententiarum, dist. 32, q. 1, ad 2um et ad 5um.

¹¹ Ibid., q. 2, respondeo.

¹² A. Carpin, O. P., Limbo in Medieval Theology [Italian] (Bologna: ESD, 2006).

 

 

 

Reflections on Counterfeit Catholicism

 

Never before, thanks to almost non-stop media chatter, has the voice of the official Catholic hierarchy and of the faithful made itself heard by such a steady stream of declarations, interviews, documents and publications of every sort. There is something for every taste. But if the quantity is impressive, does the quality measure up? Is the pastoral ministry of the present hierarchy, which has already openly set in motion the adaptation of doctrine and religious practice to the values of modernity (the famous aggiornamento desired by Vatican II), really in harmony with the doctrine and pastoral ministry of the preceding 1900 years? And is the faith which is based upon this pastoral approach, the faith of "modernized" Catholics, the popular faith of today, in harmony with the faith of all time?

It seems to us that the Church's pastoral ministry has been diminished because of repeated silences on the fundamental truths of our faith, while the popular faith that predominates today seems to be that of a religion that resembles Catholicism but which in reality is no longer truly Catholic–it is a counterfeit, or apparent, Catholicism.

The Last Things Down the Memory Hole

Article 208 of the Compendium of the (new) Catechism of the Catholic Church reaffirms the doctrine of the particular judgment that awaits everyone of us after death:

It is the judgment of immediate retribution which each one after death will receive from God in his immortal soul in accord with his faith and his works. This retribution consists in entrance into the happiness of heaven, immediately or after an appropriate purification, or entry into the eternal damnation of hell.

But how many of the faithful still believe in "the eternal damnation of hell"? And how many priests and bishops believe in it, since they almost never speak of it in their homilies or their writings. The notion of a divine justice that, after death, infallibly attributes to each one eternal reward or punishment seems to have fallen into oblivion. No one believes that he must be judged one day, that he must render an account for all that he has done, said, or thought in this life. How many times does anyone hear purgatory or hell named, let alone heaven?

Whatever the Compendium may say on this point, the fact is that today the faithful are only very rarely, if ever, reminded that one who dies "in his sins," that is, without amendment, without repentance in Christ or changing one's life (even–by the grace of God–in the last instants of one's life) goes straight to hell, condemned to remain there for ever. Worse, they let them think that hell is empty and destined to remain so; substantially, that no one goes to hell anymore. This is a conviction that has taken root in the masses of the faithful, in what could be called the popular religion, the religion as it is felt and practiced daily by the people. No one today believes any more in the reality of eternal damnation and hence in the reality of hell or the existence of the devil, a murderer and tempter, "the Father of Lies."

Consequently, no one believes in purgatory either. The idea has spread that salvation is henceforth guaranteed to everyone, that a sort of collective salvation exists for all, for all men of all religions and not just for the Catholics. It is enough to be "good" or "in good faith," to show "solidarity" with one’s neighbor according to the canons of the "solidarity" which today takes the place of true Christian charity, which asks of us to love our neighbor not for himself, but for the love of God, the true God, who desires above all a "neighbor" who is converted to Christ more than someone aided in his material needs when they exist and when it is possible.

A Sentimental Notion of Divine Goodness

This manner of thinking, in our opinion, explains the disuse into which the sacrament of penance has fallen. What need have we of confessing our sins if all of us are already saved, if hell (supposing it really exists) is destined to remain empty? And then, what is "sin"? A mere "disorder"? A lack of "solidarity"?

God is love, the Hierarchy repeats ad infinitum, almost without ever reminding the faithful that He is at the same time the just Judge, who will judge us very exactly and without appeal at the end of our days. Well, the thinking often goes, if God is love and if He is only love, He is so because He is good; and how can a being so good condemn someone to eternal damnation? If He were to do so, He would no longer be good. And can a good being only punish? The goodness attributed to God (a deformed and edulcorated notion of goodness) would prevent per se the existence not only of hell, but also of every form of sanction by the perfect Being.

This is the way worldlings misreason, and today the Catholics do too, seduced as they have been by "dialogue" and by "aggiornamento," be they laymen or churchmen. This way of thinking, besides offending God, forgets, in our opinion, some essential truths.

The existence of hell as a supernatural place of eternal expiation for impenitent sinners is attested by holy Scripture, by Revelation: it was declared by St. John the Baptist, by our Lord (several times), and it is to be found in the Old Testament as well. The idea of a pain (and what pain!) lasting eternally is certainly terrible for us, but we must accept it on the basis of the authority of the supernatural source that avouches it, and the Church's constant teaching. This idea is not illogical at all, as the enemies of the true faith and "modernized" Catholics claim. Indeed, it manifests God's justice, who justly considers it necessary to punish the impenitent sinner, an obstinately rebellious and perverse soul, an enemy of God and of His laws to the end, by an everlasting punishment.

As has been observed, for example, if hell did not exist eternally, there would ultimately be no difference between a life of conjugal fidelity and a life of prostitution. The difference, on the contrary, really exists, and it is insurmountable, as is the difference between good and evil, between God and Mammon. This difference cannot but remain for ever and be recognized for ever in the respective reward and punishment that last for ever. Moreover, this difference is destined to remain forever in the intention of the prostitute or the libertine when they are hardened and impenitent, and to the end of their days they scoff at virtue and the moral law established by God: it is hence just that they be punished for eternity.

Only the unfathomable measure of divine mercy can annul the difference by pardoning the sinner who repents, abandoning his sickly pride and acknowledging his faults against the God who created him. Sometimes divine mercy grants this to a sinner at the end of a life spent in sin, thanks to what is called "final penitence," announced by our Lord in the parable of the workers of the eleventh hour, in which the master pays the worker hired at the last hour the same wage (the beatific vision) as the one who worked all day (Mt. 20:1-16). But final penitence is not granted to all: it constitutes the exception and not the rule, for, in keeping with the parable, it is true that the rule is to work seriously all day long, and not just at the last hour.

The Worst Kind of Anthropomorphism

Salvation granted even at "the eleventh hour" constitutes one of the greatest and most sublime mysteries of our faith. It is the mystery of divine mercy, to which the faithful also have recourse by their daily prayers for the salvation of sinners, urgently requested by the Blessed Virgin during many private apparitions. But it is not possible to make a rule of the exception, which is made even more exceptional by denaturing it to the point of suppressing the obligation to work during "the last hour," that is, the obligation of final penitence. In other words, it is not possible to separate the idea of divine love from the idea of divine justice. Those who, like some Protestants, limit their faith to a belief in a God who is only "love," and who is thus reputed to absolve and pardon everyone a priori, regardless of their repentance, are mistaken, because they believe in a God whose image is patterned on that of a good-natured, broad-minded fellow who can swallow everything. It is an image fabricated expressly for us, an anthropomorphism of the worst sort, which offends and disfigures the idea of the true God, One and Three.

This false divinity, fabricated by men, does not even accord with what reason, rightly employed, can tell us about God, since to conceive of Him as a Divinity insensible to the requirements of justice to the point of failing to judge men at the end of their earthly life, is totally irrational. If God exists, how can He not possess justice as one of His attributes? And how could He, the Almighty, fail to put it in practice with regard to men in this life and in the next? He certainly does know how, and without contradicting the divine attribute of love for His creatures, divine mercy. For when God judges, He has at His disposition all the elements necessary for judging, the elements which we always lack since, unlike God, we cannot see what is in the heart of man (and sometimes not even in our own).

The mercy of God, fruit of His goodness, is so great that it allows Him to give salvation to every sincerely repentant sinner, even if his sins are very grave. But it does not allow Him to pardon the impenitent, who obstinately offend Him to the last instant of their terrestrial life. If He were to do so, God would be in contradiction with Himself, which is impossible. We can be sure that the Blessed Trinity knows and applies infallibly the elementary rules of logic.

The Church's Mission Denatured

Counterfeit Catholicism is thus that which excludes in deed the supernatural from its horizon, and which professes a deformed idea of the Deity, an idea that even seems ridiculous and offensive. The supernatural has practically disappeared from the popular faith of Catholics. They think that everyone will be saved, that we shall all find ourselves together again (without undergoing the judgment) in a future of felicity, the notion of which remains vague and indeterminate. And it cannot be otherwise. Pastors no longer speak of the beatific vision in specific terms as the patrimony of the elect alone, of those who will have lived their lives in seeking to imitate not the world, but our Lord. The dogma of the beatific vision (which constitutes a stumbling block for "ecumenical dialogue") has been replaced in practice by the idea of a sort of final renewal of the world and of the universe, which would somehow involve all men: a sort of new cosmogony a  la Teilhard de Chardin, which fits in with a millenarian type vision along the lines of Joachim de Flora (so dear to the "new theology"), and with the spiritualism of an "orthodox" stripe (that of the schismatic and heretical Greek Church).

Meanwhile, this factitious and apparent Catholicism has, by the force of things, renounced the conversion of the infidels. It cannot be otherwise, since they attribute to the Church Militant the goal of "dialoguing" with the pseudo values of the profane world in order to achieve a so-called "solidarity"capable of inaugurating universal peace on earth by the union–"democratic" is understood–of all nations and all religions. The end of the Church Militant is thus seen as a purely terrestrial objective....An end of this kind, attributed to the Church by "aggiornamento," denatures and betrays the mission of the Church itself, which is not "the people of God" (a simple part of the Church Militant), but the Mystical Body of Christ, founded by Him and thus supernaturally instituted for the eternal salvation of souls by the conversion of the world to Christ, and not for the unification of the human race, embracing universal democracy and all the religions.

The Cross Supplanted by the "Rights of Man"

Counterfeit Catholicism is equally nourished by the ambiguous liturgical reform of the Novus Ordo Mass, which shifted the center of gravity of the holy Mass from the Cross to the Resurrection, as if we should now consider the holy sacrifice as a sacrifice of praise for the Resurrection, which would symbolize the collective salvation of mankind without the need to convert to Christianity. At least, such is the way the holy Mass is generally understood today in the popular religion of Catholics: as a celebration of the Resurrection, in the joy of the collectivity that creatively concelebrates with the priest (or in his stead, the master of ceremonies merely presiding over the "Eucharistic synax").

In fact, the holy Cross is not only excluded from the Mass. Previously, it constituted the very meaning of life for Catholics, who would try by every means to "imitate Christ," ever keeping in mind His humility, His meekness, His spirit of obedience unto death in order to do the will of His Father for our salvation. Today, in the place of the holy Cross, Catholics put the "rights of man." That means that, like the children of this world, they seek first their "rights" in relation to others. The profane ideology of the indiscriminate demand for "the rights of man" has insinuated itself into the mentality of Catholics. It is a man-centered and materialistic conception...which aspires to transform into a "right" every claim of the individual understood democratically, that is, as a subject (good by nature) dedicated to the egalitarian affirmation of his (alleged) right to earthly happiness in all its forms and manifestations.

Commitment to the "rights of man" has become one of the well-known characteristics of counterfeit Catholicism. Thus there is a Catholic feminism, which does not even spare the nuns; there are priests who consider that they have a "right" to marry; there is the participation of Catholics in general in the circus of endless demands for the "rights of man" from those of children to women, the sick, the old, immigrants, etc., not to exclude either the "rights of animals" and those who are "different," as the opportunity arises. By feeling "solidarity" with all men and their pseudo values, which he seeks to examine and promote, even if they almost always contradict the values of Catholicism, today's counterfeit Catholic is convinced the he is "good" and deserving of the world's approbation

Responsibility

Why don't the pastors intervene to correct the false ideas dominant today? Some do intervene, albeit with rather slim results overall. But the overwhelming majority of them remain well connected and out of the way. And how could they intervene? since it was they who spread or allowed to spread these ideas, thanks to the errors and ambiguities introduced in the name of aggiornamento: liturgical reform, a new and ambiguous definition of the Church; a new definition of marriage (cf. the Compendium of the New Catechism of the Catholic Church, Art. 338, which places the secondary end of marriage, which is the mutual support of the spouses–vulgo, by sensuality–on the same level or even before the first end, which is procreation; acceptance of the profane principle of "religious freedom," just to give a few examples. The prolonged silence of the pastors about essential, constitutive parts of the dogmas of faith engages in the same way their responsibility.

If they wanted to intervene against the counterfeit Catholicism that has superposed itself on the popular faith of old, the pastors would have to forcefully teach, for example, the existence of original sin, the nature of sin and its destructive force, judgment, hell, purgatory, heaven (for the elect alone); in short, the complete doctrine of original sin and the last things, with its inevitable consequence; namely, that outside the Church there is no salvation, except in the case of baptism of desire, implicit or explicit. But if the pastors did that, if they reaffirmed as they ought the dogmas of faith in their homilies and pastoral letters, then the dialogue and false ecumenism sought today through these errors, ambiguities, and omissions, would forthwith cease, and the hierarchy would experience not only the revolt of the faithful but also the unleashing of a worldwide persecution against them. So the pastors keep quiet, abandoning souls to the deepening darkness that envelops them. But God, even if He is silent, does not cease to judge them and to judge us, as the prophet reminds us:

For whom hast thou been solicitous and afraid, that thou hast lied, and hast not been mindful of me, nor thought on me in thy heart? for I am silent, and as one that seeth not, and thou hast forgotten me. I will declare thy justice, and thy works shall not profit thee. (Is. 57:11-12)

Quirinus

 

Translated exclusively by Angelus Press from the Courrier de Rome, October 2006, pp. 4-6.