Saving the Baby
Most Rev. Donald J. Sanborn
In a speech to the Curia, Benedict XVI uses desperate measures —
including blasphemy — to try to save his baby, Vatican II, from
the accusation of discontinuity with the past.
Introduction
Benedict XVI gave a speech to the
members of the Curia on December 22nd, 2005 which is very
revealing. He was reminiscing about the year's events to them, among
which was the fortieth anniversary of the closing of the Second
Vatican Council, on December 7, 2005.
Ratzinger admitted, in his usual obscure and roundabout manner, that the effects of the Council have been, to a large extent, confusion and turmoil. He quotes Saint Basil, commenting on what happened after the Council of Nicea. Making an analogy to a naval battle, the Saint says: "The harsh cry of those who dispute with one another, the unintelligible chatter, and the confused noise of uninterrupted shouts have filled nearly the whole Church, falsifying the true doctrine of the Faith either by excess or defect." Ratzinger then offers an explanation for the disaster: that there are two interpretations of the Council, one bad, and the other good.
The
"Bad" Interpretation of Vatican II
The
bad interpretation, he says, is that of discontinuity and
rupture. He blames the mass media and certain modern theologians
for this. He says that the partisans of this interpretation see
Vatican II as not having done enough, think that it retained far too
much from the past, and interpret it as a new constitution for the
Church, replacing the old one.
Ratzinger
distances himself from this interpretation, saying: "The
interpretation of discontinuity runs the risk of resulting in a
rupture between the pre-conciliar Church and the post-conciliar
Church." Such a
rupture is the bête noire for the Modernists; it is their
Godzilla. For they know that if ever Vatican II should appear to be
a rupture with what has gone before, then everything they have done
will end in ruin. Indeed, the sedevacantists, who today are
considered to be on the outer edges of the theological solar system,
will be proven right. Roncalli, Montini, Luciani, Wojtyla and
Ratzinger will go down in history together with the false popes of
the Great Western Schism, and the rest of similar ecclesiastical
charlatans who made themselves absurd by trying to be real popes,
when they were not.
But
history is ruthless in its judgements, and when the propaganda and
euphoria of a certain age have passed, — and its politically
correct thinking — the tables can easily turn. The Modernists are
playing with high stakes in this game of history, since they know
that either they will win completely, or lose completely. A state or
nation can tolerate political changes without losing its identity,
but a 2,000-year-old Church, which claims to be founded by Jesus
Christ, and to have the same nature and constitution which He gave
it, cannot tolerate any substantial change in its doctrines,
disciplines, or worship. All those who have attempted such changes
have been consigned to the theological gallows: Arius, Eutyches,
Nestorius, Luther, Cranmer, the Modernists.
In
an effort not to end up with these people, Ratzinger offers a
solution in order to save his Council, which is to him something
like a baby. For it was he, together with the arch-Modernists Rahner
and Küng, who worked tirelessly at the Council, telling their
Modernist European bishops what to think and do, filling up the
blank minds of the ignorant and undecided bishops with Modernist
theology by means of a daily newsletter. They seized the moment, and
they won. Küng said that they achieved far more at the Council than
they had ever dreamed of.
The
"Good" Interpretation of Vatican II:
The
License to Contradict All Catholic Dogma
So
in the speech Ratzinger strives to save the Council. He calls for
the correct interpretation of the Council, which is the interpretation
of the reform.
He
skillfully proposes a way in which to place all of the traditional
teaching of the Church into the dustbin. It is known as historicism.
It consists in holding that the Church is always consistent in
its fundamental principles, but the historical application of these
principles could change from age to age.
"The
nature of true reform lies in this combination of multi-leveled
continuity and discontinuity. In this process of change through
continuity, we had to learn how to understand better than before
that the Church's decisions about contingent matters — for
example, about actual forms of liberalism or liberal interpretations
of the Bible — were necessarily themselves contingent because
related to a reality itself changeable."
This
gobbledygook means this: that the Church's decisions in the past
were based on passing circumstances. As the circumstances change, so
can the decisions of the Church change. He cites the very negative
reaction of Pope Pius IX (1846-1878) to liberalism as a case in
point. This reaction was justified, says Ratzinger, because the
principles of the French Revolution were so radical, that they gave
no room to the practice of religion.
But
now we understand better. Just as the modern world has moderated its
hatred for religion, so it was necessary for the Church, he says, to
moderate its attitude toward the modern world. "We
had to learn how to recognize that in such decisions only principles
express what is lasting, embedded in the background and determining
the decision from within. The concrete forms these decisions take
are not permanent but depend upon the historical situations. They
can therefore change." [emphasis
added]
Ratzinger
in a single stroke relativizes every decision which the Church ever
made. It makes no doctrinal decision of the past, no condemnation of
any error, a permanent decision, but one which can and must change
as historical circumstances change. This one statement gives the
Modernists a license to alter any declaration of the Church in the
past. It subjects the teaching of the Church to a perpetual
evolution.
Ratzinger
used this historicism in the Joint Declaration with
the Lutherans in order to cast off the decisions of the Council of
Trent, relegating the solemn condemnations to mere "salutary
warnings." The same thing was done in the case of the doctrines
of Antonio Rosmini, which were condemned by Leo XIII. In their
historical context, they say, it was right to condemn these. But now
we understand better, and we can lift the condemnations.
Ratzinger's
Blasphemy Against the Martyrs
So
Vatican II approved, on December 7, 1965, the Decree on Religious
Liberty, which, he says, "recaptured a deeper heritage of
the Church." What is this "deeper heritage?" It is
that the martyrs were dying for religious liberty. "The
martyrs of the early Church died for their faith in which God
revealed Himself in Jesus Christ, and indeed they therefore died as
well for liberty of conscience and for the liberty to profess their
own faith, a profession which cannot be imposed by any State, but
can only be done with the grace of God, in the liberty of
conscience."
Ratzinger
would like us to believe that the liberty of conscience to hold to
the one, true faith, the Roman Catholic Faith, and the liberty to
profess it, which the martyrs were demanding, is the same liberty of
conscience and liberty of profession which Vatican II called for.
Thus he "saves" Vatican II, by attaching it to the early
martyrs. Sounds wonderful, doesn't it?
It
is all a crock of baloney. Vatican II does not claim the right of
religious liberty for the Catholic Faith alone, but for every
religion. "This Vatican Council declares that the human person
has a right to religious freedom. This freedom means that all men
are to be immune from coercion on the part of individuals or of
social groups and of any human power, in such wise that no one is to
be forced to act in a manner contrary to his own beliefs, whether
privately or publicly, whether alone or in association with others,
within due limits."1
"Religious communities also have the right not to be hindered,
either by legal measures or by administrative action on the part of
government, in the selection, training, appointment, and transferal
of their own ministers, in communicating with religious authorities
and communities abroad, in erecting buildings for religious
purposes, and in the acquisition and use of suitable funds or
properties." 2
Does
Ratzinger really expect us to believe that St. Peter was martyred
for the right of Romans to offer without hindrance dead chickens to
Jupiter? Or that St. Justin accepted death in witness to the right
of the cultists of Mithra to sacrifice their sacred bull? 3
Listen
to Pope Pius XII: "What
does not correspond to the truth and to the moral law does not
objectively have any right to existence, or to propaganda, or to
action." 4
Listen
to Pope Pius IX: "Contrary
to the teaching of Scripture, of the Church, and of the holy
Fathers, they do not fear to affirm that — the best form of
government is that in which there is not conceded to the authorities
the duty of curbing the violators of the Catholic religion with the
sanction of penalties.' " 5
Ratzinger
and other Vatican II apologists try to justify the heretical
doctrines of this Council concerning religious liberty by attempting
to confuse the right to religious liberty to profess the one true
faith with a right to profess any religion whatsoever. It is a
cunning lie, and they know it.
Listen
to Pope Leo XIII: "Liberty of religion, considered in its
relationship to society, is founded upon the principle that the
State, even in a Catholic nation, is not bound to profess or to
favor any religion; it must take them all into equal consideration
legally. It is not
here a question of that de facto tolerance which, in given
circumstances, can be conceded to the dissident cults, but rather of
the recognition granted
to them of the very rights that belong only to the one true
religion, which God
has established in the world and has designated with clear and
precise marks and signs, so that everyone can know it as such and
embrace it. Furthermore such a liberty indeed places on the same
level truth and error, faith and heresy, the Church of Jesus Christ
and any human institution whatsoever; with this liberty is
established a deplorable and wicked separation between human society
and God, who is the author of it; it
leads finally to the sad consequences of State indifferentism in
religious matters, or what comes to the same thing, its
atheism." 6
Listen
to Pius VII: "By the fact itself that the liberty of all the
cults without distinction is established, truth is intermingled with
error, and the holy and immaculate Spouse of Christ, the Church
outside of which there can be no salvation, is put onto a class with
heretical sects and even the Jewish perfidy…It
is implicitly the disastrous and forever deplorable heresy that St.
Augustine mentions in these terms: ‘It affirms that all the
heretics are on the right path and speak the truth, an absurdity so
monstrous that I cannot believe that any sect really professes it.'
" 7
Ratzinger's
blasphemy becomes clearly visible. According to him, the early
martyrs died for a doctrine which is "contrary to the the
teaching of Scripture, of the Church, and of the holy Fathers"
(Pius IX), "the atheism of the State" (Leo XIII), and for
a "disastrous and ever deplorable heresy." (Pius VII)
Ratzinger would have been less blasphemous if he had said that they
died for the right to fornicate, to commit adultery, or even for a
woman's right to have an abortion.
Ratzinger
Cannot be Taken Seriously
How
can Ratzinger expect us to take him seriously when he tries to brush
off this teaching of Leo XIII and other popes, indeed of all
previous popes, as merely a reaction to a set of unique historical
circumstances? Are not these teachings general moral principles
presented to us in a calm and reasonable manner by these Roman
Pontiffs? Ratzinger's attempt to discard them by means of
historicism will end in failure.
I
say end in failure, since there are millions who will defend
anything which falls from his mouth, rather than face the specter of
sedevacantism. If Ratzinger said Mass in the nude, they would say
that he was wearing beautiful traditional vestments. This voluntary
blindness will not pass the test of time, however.
An
Admission that Vatican II Contradicts the Teaching of the Church
Ratzinger
continues: "By
defining in a new way the relationship between the faith of the
Church and some essential elements of modern thinking, the Second
Vatican Council revised and even corrected some past
decisions." [emphasis
added] We have finally an admission from them that Vatican II
contradicts the teaching of the Church in the past. He tries to
justify it in this way: "But
in an apparent discontinuity it has instead preserved and reinforced
its intimate nature and true identity. The Church is one, Holy,
Catholic and Apostolic both before and after the council throughout
time." In other
words, "despite the fact that the consistent teaching of Pius
VI, Pius VII, Gregory XVI, Pius IX, Leo XIII, St. Pius X, Pius XI
and Pius XII has been trashed by Vatican II, we can still consider
ourselves Catholics."
Ratzinger
delights in his middle-of-the-road approach to Vatican II, and
devotes much time to its praise: "Thus
we can today turn our eyes with gratitude to the Second Vatican
Council: if we read it and receive it under the guidance of a
correct interpretation, it can be and always become a greater force
for the ever necessary renewal of the Church."
The
Fruits of Vatican II
Turn
our eyes with gratitude? Really? Let us look again at the fruits of
Vatican II. A certain Fr. C J. McCloskey, in an article entitled
"The Church in the US,"8
gives statistics from the past forty years:
"Let's
look at the numbers in the US first. In 1965, at the end of the
Council there were 58,000 priests. Now there are 41,000. By 2020, if
present trends continue (and there is no sign of a dramatic upsurge
in vocations), there will be only 31,000, and half will be over 70.
To give an example, I was ordained in 1981 at the age of 27. Today
at the age of 52, I can still attend priests' meetings and be one of
the younger priests there. In 1965, 1575 new priests were ordained,
In 2005, the number was 454, less than a third, and remember that
the Catholic population in the US increased from 45.6 million in
1965 to the 64.8 million of 2005, almost a 50% increase. The
Venerable John Henry Newman said, "Growth is the only evidence
of life." By his definition, the Church in the United States
has been and continues to be in sharp decline. Now, quite clearly,
there has been a sharp decline in the number of seminarians over
this time period. Between 1965 and 2005, the number of seminarians
fell from 50,000 (some 42,000 high school and college seminarians,
and 8,000 or so graduate seminarians) to today's approximate 5,000,
a drop of ninety percent.
"The
religious men and women (those taking vows) have even more
precipitously declined in the US over this time period. In 1965,
there were 22,707 priests; today there are 14,137 with a much higher
percentage of them well over the age of 65. Religious brothers have
gone from 12,271 to 5,451, and women religious from the astounding
number of 179,954 in 1965 to 68,634 in 2005. I should mention here
that the attrition in these numbers, as well as that of diocesan
priests is not only due to deaths and a dearth of priestly or
religious vocations, but also a massive defection, whether
sanctioned or not by the Church. Again we do not have time to
analyze the multiple causes that caused this precipitous decline in
belief and practice; the doubting in questions of faith and morals
that was widely spread in the post-conciliar Church after the
Council also led many priests and religious to abandon ship into lay
married life. Naturally this also has a depressing effect on the
recruitment of response to a vocation by young men and women who had
seen this exodus in full play. Quite clearly the abandonment or
radical changes on the part of many religious congregations of their
historical rules, community life, and clothing also had a
deleterious effect both on perseverance and recruitment in
vocations. There are many more women religious over the age of
ninety than under the age of 30 in the US. The number of Catholic
nuns, 180,000 in 1965, has fallen by 60%. Their average age is now
68. The number of teaching nuns has fallen 94% from the close of the
Council. The number of young men studying to become members of the
two principal teaching orders: the Jesuits and Christian Brothers,
have fallen by 90 percent and 99%, respectively. There is little
sign of growth in this part of the Church in the US. However there
are some signs of hope with the arrival of some new religious
congregations and revival of others.
"We
can now examine the state of what was, in many ways, the pride and
joy of the pre-Vatican II Catholic Church in America: the
educational system that extended from grammar school through
hundreds (yes, hundreds) of Catholic colleges and universities. It
is accurate to say that there had never been such an extensive, and
at least in appearance, such a fundamentally sound, education
system, in any place or at any time in the history of the Church.
Elementary education was basically taken care of by the parish
following the pioneering work of St. John Neumann. The parish also
directed many high schools but there were also many directed by the
armies of men and women religious. Virtually all of the high schools
were single-sex while some were co-institutional i.e., boys and
girls in the same building but educated separately. Naturally the
combination of stable marriages, relatively large families, and
strong catechesis produced not only vocations but also well formed
men and women who lived their faith in a coherent way in their
professional work, including politics and marital life. That is all
virtually gone now.
"Almost
half the Catholic schools open in 1965 have closed. There were 4.5
million students in Catholic schools in the mid-1960's. Today there
is about half that number. What is even more troubling is that those
children still attending Catholic schools (grammar and high) are
taught by lay poorly formed Generation X Catholics who often
themselves have serious difficulties with aspects of Catholic
doctrinal and moral life. Only 10 percent of lay religious teachers
accept Church teaching on contraception, 53 percent believed a
Catholic woman could get an abortion and remain a good Catholic, 65
percent said Catholics have a right to divorce and remarry, and in a
New York Times poll, 70 percent of Catholics ages 18-54 said
they believed the Holy Eucharist was but a "symbolic
reminder" of Jesus.
Such
are the fruits of Vatican II. Consequently, we Catholics turn our
eyes with disgust upon Vatican II, and curse the day that it was
conceived in the Modernist brain of John XXIII. Our lives have been
miserable ever since. What Ratzinger and his henchmen have done is
to throw a wrench into a well-oiled and humming engine of truth, to
smash a crystal-clear and precious vase of decency and
righteousness, to defile a golden chalice of supernatural beauty by
the turpitude of their heresies. They have destroyed our Catholic
world and our Catholic lives. And after forty years, as the Catholic
world falls down around them, they have nothing better to say or do
than to tell us that it is all wonderful. It makes us sick to hear
it.
Our
Lord said: "By
their fruits you shall know them. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or
figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit,
and the evil tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A
good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can an evil tree
bring forth good fruit.
Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit, shall be cut down,
and shall be cast into the fire. Wherefore by their fruits you shall
know them." (Matth. VII: 16-20)
Highlights
of Ratzinger's Speech
The effects of
the Council have been in great part negative. To
my knowledge this is the first such admission.
The decisions of
the Church in the past are "contingent because they are related
to a reality itself changeable." This
gives the Modernists the license to discard any of the Church's
dogmas or condemnations of error, since they are all attached, in
some way, to historical circumstances.
Vatican II
"revised and even corrected some past decisions." This
means that the pre-Vatican II decisions were wrong. This is the
first admission that Vatican II has actually contradicted the
Church's traditional teaching. This is very significant.
The early martyrs
died for Vatican II's teaching on religious liberty. This
statement is blasphemy, and is so absurd that no comment is
necessary.
[MHT Seminary Newsletter, January 2006]
Footnotes
1 Dignitatis Humanæ, no. 2.
2 Dignitatis Humanæ, no. 4.
3 One of the central motifs of Mithraism is the tauroctony, the myth of sacrifice by Mithra of a sacred bull created by the supreme deity Ahura Mazda, which Mithra stabs to death in the cave, having been instructed to do so by a crow, sent from Ahura Mazda. In this myth, from the body of the dying bull spring plants, animals, and all the beneficial things of the earth. (Wikipedia)
4 Ci riesce
5 Quanta Cura
6 Ìl giunto
7 Post tam diuturnas
8 This article is available in its entirety at catholiccitizens.org. I have given excerpts here.