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Tuesday, November 16, 2021

How the Modernists and Francis Turn Catholic Foundations into Sand

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How the Modernists and Francis Turn Catholic Foundations into Sand

“Every one therefore that heareth these my words, and doth them, shall be likened to a wise man that built his house upon a rock.” (Matthew 7:24)

The First Vatican Council’s decree on Faith sets forth the basis for our believing all the truths which the Catholic Church teaches:

“Since human beings are totally dependent on God as their Creator and Lord, and created reason is completely subject to uncreated truth, we are obliged to yield to God the Revealer full submission of intellect and will by faith. This faith, which is the beginning of human salvation, the Catholic Church professes to be a supernatural virtue, by means of which, with the grace of God inspiring and assisting us, we believe to be true what He has revealed, not because we perceive its intrinsic truth by the natural light of reason, but because of the authority of God Himself, Who makes the revelation and can neither deceive nor be deceived.”

 

Regardless of whether “we perceive the intrinsic truth” of the Faith, we believe the truths the Church has always taught because God, the Revealer, can neither deceive nor be deceived. And since our Faith “is the beginning of human salvation,” we would be absolute fools to choose the opinions of men over the truth revealed by God, which can never change.

If this Faith is strong enough to have inspired Catholics to become Martys for nearly two thousand years, surely it is strong enough to lead Catholics to resist any anti-Catholic initiatives demanded by the Great Reset.

This is the unshakeable foundation of Faith. With this foundation, countless Martyrs have chosen death rather than deny a single Catholic truth. And if this Faith is strong enough to have inspired Catholics to become Martys for nearly two thousand years, surely it is strong enough to lead Catholics to resist any anti-Catholic initiatives demanded by the Great Reset. That, of course, is why the architects of the Great Reset (led by Satan) have to attack the Faith.

This particular attack on the Faith is not new. Fr. Malachi Martin’s The Jesuits describes the greatest obstacle the Modernists faced in spreading their lies:

“The one obstacle to that sustained and spectacular development Modernism promised was a certain fixity of religious belief, the clinging by many to ancient dogmas. Of course, any organized religion presented such an obstacle. But, for the new race of unbelievers and Modernists, the Christian churches and in particular the Roman Catholic Church were the prime creators of this obstacle.”

The “fixity of religious belief” follows naturally from a proper appreciation that God has revealed the truths of the Catholic Faith and commands us to believe and practice them. This is why the chief pastor of the globalist religion, Francis, requires us to abandon the “ancient dogmas” if we want to feel the warmth of his paternal care.

The enemies of Catholicism simply need these deluded nominal Catholics to keep calling themselves Catholic rather than acknowledging that they have drifted away from the Faith.

As we know from the aftermath of Vatican II, some Catholics are all too willing to leap at an opportunity to trade rigid Catholic beliefs for beliefs that pamper their appetites. For these, the foundation of belief has always been sand. The Modernists and Francis do not need to do much to win these Catholics — the enemies of Catholicism simply need these deluded nominal Catholics to keep calling themselves Catholic rather than acknowledging that they have drifted away from the Faith.

Conversely, faithful Catholics actually strive to remain firmly planted on the unshakeable foundations of the Faith. One of the early proponents of the wayward liturgical reform that gave us the Novus Ordo Missae was Dom Adrian Nocent, who had this to say about these rigid Catholics:

“One should not, however, imagine that all Catholics are waiting in vibrant hope for a Council which will study the question posed by liturgical life in the Church of our time. There are still people, and indeed more of them that one would believe possible, who ask what reason there is for changing practices which are already old and firmly anchored in their ancient customs. There is a fierce opposition among them to anything that might disturb a religion which they have worn into their own shape and which gives them an obsessive contentment, just as one feels lazily relaxed in an old suit or a pair of well worn shoes. Why disturb practices with which they are comfortable and from which they believe they get real spiritual benefit?” (Avenir de la liturgie, 1961)

If this condescending lament sounds remarkably similar to what we hear from Francis today (sixty years later), the reason is simple: the “rigid Catholics” always remain the same and stand in the way of every novelty the anti-Catholic reformers can imagine. These madmen may change their attacks on the Faith but our defense is always to remain faithful to Catholic truth.

The Modernists fully grasp that they may not overcome all faithful Catholics, but they are exceptionally crafty in their attempts to lure as many as possible.

Commenting on this passage in his The Liturgical Movement, Fr. Didier Bonneterre described Dom Nocent’s overall plan:

“Two years before, Dom Nocent was disclosing the plan of the revolutionaries: the ‘traditionalist’ opposition was still too strong at that time for an immediate upheaval in the liturgy to be thinkable and, to start with, it was necessary to be content with principles of reform acceptable to the ‘traditionalist’ persuasion in order later to entrust the application of those principles to representatives of the ‘progressive’ persuasion.”

It is critical for us to appreciate this line of thinking because it applies to virtually every change we have seen in the Catholic Church since Vatican II. The Modernists fully grasp that they may not overcome all faithful Catholics, but they are exceptionally crafty in their attempts to lure as many as possible. They are patient and lead with changes that “traditionalists” will likely find acceptable. Once the traditionalists are onboard for the journey that was billed as remaining orthodox, the Modernist pilots detour into progressivism and heresy.

In his Against the Heresies, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre described the crucial distinction between what can be changed and what must remain untouched:

“It is true, to a certain extent, that the methods of the apostolate must be adapted; this goes without saying, it is self-evident. Clearly, one does not preach to adults in the same was as to children; one does not address intellectuals in the same way as the common people. One adapts, evidently; this is quite natural and there was no need to hold a Council about this. But in fact they desired to touch the untouchable: they wanted to change the very formulas by which the faith is expressed, allegedly to make it more accessible to modern man. These are ravings!”

Yes, this insidious process of convening synods of commissions to discuss settled matters may not immediately result in changes, but it transfers the matter from the court of immutable Catholic truth to that of fickle and sinful men.

The fact that some things may change does not mean that all things can change. We may suspect that very few Catholic bishops appreciate this distinction today but it was rather basic to Archbishop Lefebvre and those who had heeded the warnings of the popes who forcefully defended the Church against the onslaughts of Modernism. Unfortunately, as Archbishop Lefebvre wrote, the warnings of the popes were completely abandoned during Vatican II:

“The Popes have often denounced the thirst for change. The desire for change is the evil of modern man, and it throve at the Council. They wanted to change everything under the pretext of aggiornamento, under the pretext of adaptation: it is necessary to be attuned to the wavelength of modern man. And as modern man is ever-changing, one must follow suit and adapt indefinitely.”

Many traditional-minded Catholics have disputed this notion that the Council itself changed anything. In his Challenge to the Church: The Case of Archbishop Lefebvre, though. Fr. Yves Congar declared the success of Vatican II in overturning the “inflexibility of the system”:

“By the frankness and openness of its debates, the Council has put an end to what may be described as the inflexibility of the system. We take ‘system’ to mean a coherent set of codified teachings, casuistically-specified rules of procedure, a detailed and very hierarchic organization, means of control and surveillance, rubrics regulating worship — all this is the legacy of scholasticism, the Counter-reformation and the Catholic Restoration of the nineteenth country, subjected to an effective Roman discipline. It will be recalled that Pius XII is supposed to have said: ‘I will be the last Pope to keep all this going.’”

When Congar speaks of the “frankness and openness of debates,” he refers to debates about matters which were hitherto undebatable. So not only did the Council change things that Archbishop Lefebvre described as “untouchable,” it attacked the fundamental stability of the Faith. It set in motion a process of continually questioning the Faith.

We can understand this attack on the stability of the Faith if we think back to the words of the First Vatican Council: we believe the truths of the Faith because they have been revealed by God, Who can neither deceive nor be deceived. But if everything is open to debate, then we believe based on the consensus of men. Thus, even if the the “truths” were to remain the same at a given point in time, the basis for believing them is entirely different under the Modernist regime.

If God has allowed us to reach this point, surely it is so that we can finally begin to fight the real evils that have afflicted the Church for the past sixty years.

With Francis and his synods, we see a perfect flowering of this change in the way in which Catholics believe. In her recent book on the St. Gallen Mafia, Julia Meloni gets to the heart of the matter with a quote from an unnamed cardinal:

“The mysterious cardinal once said that the very act of creating a commission on a topic told the world that the Church was open to change.”

Yes, this insidious process of convening synods of commissions to discuss settled matters may not immediately result in changes, but it transfers the matter from the court of immutable Catholic truth to that of fickle and sinful men.

Francis’s new Synod on Synodality takes this to a new but entirely predictable level by openly excluding the views of rigid Catholics (i.e., Catholics) and courting those who would not normally have a say in determining Church teaching (e.g., apostates). Although he would not yet say it openly, Francis obviously excludes God from this synodal process as well.

Given the Synod’s aim to completely reshape the Faith, it is tragically fitting that Francis’s November 14, 2021 Angelus message essentially mocks the proper Catholic understanding of the foundations of our Faith:

“According to Jesus, the faithful disciple is the one who founds his life on the rock, which is his Word (cf. Mt 7:24-27), which does not pass away, on the firmness of the Word of Jesus: this is the foundation of the life that Jesus wants from us, and which will not pass away. And now we wonder — always, when we read the Word of God, questions arise — what is the centre, what is the beating heart of the Word of God? In short, what is it that gives solidity to life, and will never end? Saint Paul tells us. The very centre, the beating heart, that which gives solidity, is love: ‘Love never ends’ (1 Cor 13:8), says Saint Paul: love. Those who do good, are investing in eternity. When we see a person who is generous and helpful, meek, patient, who is not envious, does not gossip, does not brag, is not puffed-up with pride, does not lack respect (cf. 1 Cor 13:4-7), this is a person who builds Heaven on earth.”

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Here we have so much that resembles Christianity that we may not notice the one thing it lacks: even though Francis refers to Jesus, he employs his standard bait-and-switch maneuver to present a worldview that purposefully excludes Jesus’s teachings. Whether he is sincere or not, Francis advocates for a purely natural love — without God — which can never be Charity. Indeed, Francis scolds any Catholic who actually attempts to practice true Charity by helping souls remain always in the state of sanctifying grace. Thus, Francis may begin with a Catholic foundation of rock, but he invariably uses his Modernist hammer to pulverize the foundation into the sand that leads souls to sink and slide into apostasy.

By questioning the Faith through their synods and commissions, Francis and his collaborators try to make God into a deceiver. As awful as this all is, we can detect a blessing in the Conciliar religion having reached such a deplorable state. For those with eyes to see, this Modernist cancer has ravaged the Church for over sixty years, largely undetected. Now we cannot deny it unless we wish to be culpably blind.

Just as a physician does not help cure the patient by simply treating the symptoms and ignoring the cancer, we cannot serve God by pretending the Synodal process is fine and simply advocating for the least bad results. The entire Synodal process is a damnable abomination and those who participate in it are mocking God and the Faith.

If God has allowed us to reach this point, surely it is so that we can finally begin to fight the real evils that have afflicted the Church for the past sixty years. As Archbishop Lefebvre said, the popes warned of these insidious errors and provided us with the cure to this sickness: the unflinching defense of the Catholic Faith. We must boldly tell the truth, especially when it means opposing the errors promoted, or at least permitted, by almost the entirety of the world’s bishops. Those who want to debate the Modernists at this point are simply signaling to the world, and God, that they think the Faith is up for grabs. We would do better to tell these enemies of the Faith that they need to either convert or go find another religion — our Faith is from God and not open to debate.

Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us!

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Last modified on Tuesday, November 16, 2021
Robert Morrison | Remnant Columnist

Robert Morrison is a Catholic, husband and father. He is the author of A Tale Told Softly: Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale and Hidden Catholic England.