MOTHER OF GOD, HAVE PITY ON US!
O Mary, Queen of Angels, Immaculate Virgin Mother of God, I throw myself at Your feet
– the least and most unworthy of Your servants – to speak, not of my own pain
and misery, nor of the trials and sufferings of my friends, not of those matters which
already form the theme of my daily petitions – but to speak, today, of the Church,
our Church which is also Yours, for are You not her Queen and Mother?
She is One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic… One, without peer, like Yourself,
O Virgin Mother; Holy in her origin, her teaching and her works; Catholic,
for she is ready to receive into her Fold every human being on earth; finally, Apostolic,
bound to unchanging fidelity to the memory, to the words and institutions of her Spouse,
by a bond which the greatest crime cannot destroy. When we behold her with the eyes of
Faith, we see her resemblance to You, as the marvelling eyes of the disciples saw You in
Jerusalem and Ephesus, as You are today, gloriously assumed into Heaven… thus shall
we see Holy Mother Church too, at the resurrection on the last day.
But to day we live in anxious fear for our Mother… We see a cancer spreading
within her before our very eyes. Before long it will be disseminated throughout her body,
attacking even her cherished countenance, and that will be the end… You cannot,
surely, remain aloof and insensitive to our affliction. Yes, I know that You are always
close to the Church and to each one of us miserable sinners. You have given us proof of
this at Lourdes, at Fatima, and on so many other occasions. You always remain close to
your children, concerned about the smooth running of the home, just as You were at the
wedding feast of Cana… and as You will be to the end of the world.
But… this is the point: The Church is like the barque of St Peter in the tempest.
It is not Our Lord whom we are trying to rouse, when He seems to be asleep… We have
learnt the lesson of that episode, and today we have the Faith, we know that the ship
cannot sink while He is there. But we also know that it is the task of the Pope and the
bishops to continue toiling away, and not to sit back and dream about some miraculous
rescue to be effected without any effort on their part, even when all the Powers of Hell
are let loose.
Our Lord Himself I do not wish to disturb. But You, who have expressed the wish to help
us, You alone, in this extreme hour of need, can ask Him to come to our aid, and to come
quickly, lest we die before the promised dawn. In short, I should like to tell You, in
spite of my own unworthiness and thinking only of the dire need of the Church, that it is
high time for You, O Help of Christians, to come to our aid, for we are literally about to
perish. Christianity was not in any greater danger when the Turks had conquered
Constantinople or when they stood before the gates of Vienna, than it is today, for now
the enemy is within the gates of the City, within Rome itself, and from there he controls
the Church throughout the whole world. Surely, surely, You cannot let this go on any
longer – You whose mission is to crush the head of the Serpent, whose strength is as
that of a whole army ready for battle. In spite of our unworthiness, or rather, because of
it, because we do not deserve to be saved and thus cannot effect our own rescue, You must
come and save the Church from this shameful bondage…
Shall it be through great miracles, or perhaps even by way of terrible punishments? But
no, I cannot believe that Your generous Heart would wish to resort to means that were more
appropriate to the Old Testament. Your victories are won by gentleness, for these show
more clearly the power that lies in Your tender love. We expect from You a discreet
intervention that passes almost unperceived, as at the wedding feast in Cana when that
simple and yet so moving miracle brought a distressing situation to a happy close. Today,
once again, we ask You to intercede with Jesus that He might change the hearts of men as
He changed the useless water into the best wine which the guests had yet tasted, and as
each morning He changes ordinary wine into His Precious Blood.
Has not the Pope himself been led to admit that Your Enemy has become master within the
Church? Indeed it is high time that You should come to our aid… But there are other
reasons too… Today, and ever since that wretched Council which did not see fit to
bestow on You the title of Mediatrix of All Graces, since the start of this relentless
Reformation, You are being honoured less and less in our churches, Your messages are kept
from us, the Rosary is despised, and there are even those who would cast doubts upon that
most sublime of all Your privileges – Your glorious and perpetual virginity.
Inseparably linked to Your own immaculate Glory, is the Gift bestowed upon us by God in
His infinite Wisdom, of Himself in the Blessed Sacrament. And the Blessed Sacrament too is
under attack following that wretched Council, daily and in an infinite variety of ways. I
am not speaking of mere disrespect, going sometimes as far as sacrilege, nor of lack of
devotion in Its reception and lack of zeal in expounding the Mystery – for which of
us has not failed in this regard? It is the doctrine itself concerning the Real Presence
which is being insidiously changed, and the liturgy of the Holy Sacrifice has been emptied
of its mystery until it has become nigh heretical; for does not the New Mass and its many
variants appear to justify the Lutheran heresy, leading priests and faithful to see in the
Mass no longer the Mystery of our Redemption but only a mere fraternal and humanistic
communal meal?
And thirdly, God in His Wisdom gave His Church the Sovereign Pontiff as her Head on
earth. What we are witnessing today, again in the wake of that wretched Council, is a Pope
who presides, not over the Oneness of the Church but over her anarchical disintegration, a
Pope who is not the Pastor, Prince and Teacher of his people, but the obsequious lackey of
all those whose motto, resounding from all corners of the world, is Nolumus Christum
regnare super nos! (We will not have Christ reign over us) We have a Pope who declines
to act as Pope, who goes below to sleep while the barque is left to drift, and tells us
that he has handed over the controls to Christ, who will steer her in his stead. We watch
him travelling around the world, wooing popularity among the non-Christian peoples, while
he lays the gates of the Church open to her worst enemies… Even in Fatima itself,
this our Pope Paul VI spoke to the crowds gathered there in Your honour, not of the
messages which Your maternal solicitude intended as a timely warning for us – for he
persists in refusing to publish these – but of his own philosophy consisting in an
a-Christian, humanistic pacifism, liberalism and internationalism. In this Your very own
domain, we find him putting his own Gospel into the place of that of Your Son, and doing
this on an occasion when some might believe him to be speaking in Your name… Can you
think of anything more terrible?
For the past ten years, the Church’s honour has been persistently sullied at the
hands of her own Pastors – and her honour is also Your honour, and that of God Our
Father, Your Father. Surely You cannot let this go on… Nay, I will go farther, and
remind You of what You Yourself know better than anyone – I mean, concerning certain
solemn promises given to us by Heaven – promises which cannot be lightly dismissed:
When He called upon all men to board the Barque of Peter, and went, Himself, to the stern
to rest, as a Master who had every reason to trust His coxswain and the rest of the crew,
Jesus gave us His guarantee that the Gates of Hell would never prevail against His Church.
It was a promise given in no uncertain terms but with a decisive certainty, which itself
showed us that the Church herself is a great and continuous miracle, apparent to our eyes
as the Resurrection itself, in order that the whole world might believe. Today, this
miracle is no longer manifest to the eyes of the world, and the faithful themselves are
beginning to doubt, some of them needing only the slightest push to make them sin against
Faith, and leave the Church, to join one or other of the sects. The Infallibility of the
Magisterium is overshadowed by the failings, gross and innumerable, of the Pope and
bishops, not to speak of the theologians whose distortion of the Faith they acclaim as
sincere, courageous and erudite…
If there were only an apostasy – on however large a scale – of the Faithful,
there would be nothing to do but weep and pray. Even if entire sections of the Church were
to disintegrate, but the Centre remained intact, the Holy of Holies undefiled, there would
be no reason to waver in the Faith. But when the entire Hierarchy commits daily acts of
infidelity, when the Pope himself gives every encouragement to what is evil and places
obstacles in the way of that which is good and proper, when things have reached the pitch
where it would be better to be without a Pope at all, then surely, O Blessed Virgin, I
have every reason to insist – not in my own name but in that of the Church, and
mindful of the promises given by Your Son – that it is high time for You to come to
our aid.
High time that we should be delivered from a Pope who will not act as Pope, from a
Hierarchy who persistently disregard what ought to be their prime concern, and high time
that we should be for ever freed from the yoke of a Council whose very memory will always
remain odious to the Catholic Church of the future, and whose Acts deserve to be condemned
and expelled from our Christian heritage.
Yes, we have the right to ask this of You, our Mother, not on account of any merit of
our own, but mindful of the maternal solicitude of Your Immaculate Heart and the promises
You gave us.
I appeal to You on behalf of all those who are letting themselves be carried by the
tide, and are thus gradually losing their devotion and Faith, merely through following the
precept and example of their Pastors who claim to be acting on the inspiration of the Holy
Spirit. I appeal to You also on behalf of all those who react by rebellion and, trusting
merely to their own lights, reject these Pastors out of hand, becoming like the blind who
in their anxiety to avoid an abyss on one side, fall off on the other.
For the Church cannot become the Synagogue of Satan. The Church remains in existence;
she belongs to You, for was she not founded in Your image? It must be through You,
therefore, that, by the help of God’s grace, she is to be saved! What we ask of You,
lest we all perish, is the following:
That our Holy Father Paul VI may resign and be succeeded by one who is prepared to act
in accordance with the will of Our Lord.
That our bishops, once more guided aright, may again exercise their divinely bestowed
authority.
That the Infallibility of the Roman Magisterium may be triumphantly asserted in a new
Council, Vatican III, which shall effect the new Counter-Reformation and restoration of
the Church, casting an anathema upon Vatican II as the first and foremost cause of the
evils of today.
Amen.
PREPARING FOR VATICAN III
THE SALVATION OF THE HUMAN RACE
(Preliminary Schema)
There can be no salvation except in Jesus Christ: that is the firm, unshakeable
teaching of the Church, however bold, even presumptuous it may sound when we think of the
millions upon millions of human beings who have lived in the past, or even live today,
without ever having so much as heard of Him. The Cross of Christ is not only the centre of
our Faith: it is at the hub of the whole of human history. It is the Event upon which
converge the hopes for redemption harboured by men through the ages, and it is from this
one Event that there flow the graces which alone can effect this redemption. The great
family of mankind, scattered as a result of original sin, cannot recover its brotherhood
and unity except in and through the Redemptive Cross. The Death of Christ has gained for
all men the right to be reconciled with God as His adoptive sons. They are however able to
attain this salvation de facto only by means of membership – either formal and
explicit or by "hope", that is, implicit – of the Church, the Mystical Body
of Christ. The Church is the sole and universal means of salvation of mankind: hence her
title of "Catholic".
We have already seen that this correct and precise definition of the place of the
Redemption in human history does not in any way rule out – it rather explains the
possibility of – the salvation of any or every human soul who has shown himself
faithful to God to whatever extent his understanding and circumstances have permitted (cf.
CCR No 27 - May 1972, p. 9). Though there remain certain aspects of this matter of the
"salvation of the infidels" which we do not claim to understand, this much is
certain: it is only through Jesus Christ and the one true Religion founded by Him that men
can please God and once more gain access to His supernatural graces. The various rungs on
the ladder by which mankind is able to attain salvation were described by St Augustine as:
natura, lex, gratia, gloria (Nature, the Law, Grace, Glory).
Can we, looking at them with Christian eyes, see anything of value in the ancient
religions, or indeed in the non-Christian religions and ideologies existing today? It is
simple to dismiss them as unimportant, because they are false religions. But the
question remains whether they do still in some way help their followers to attain
salvation, or whether they form an obstacle to this. Should the Church regard them as
enemies or as allies? Are they inspired by God or by the Devil? In attempting to give an
answer, we must make certain distinctions, while also bearing in mind that there has
always been some divergence of views upon this matter which the Church’s Magisterium
has not finally settled – no doubt because the differing opinions can usefully
complement each other.
Some of the early Fathers regarded the ancient pagan religions as containing divine
inspiration, and their founders as, in a certain sense, prophets of Christ. Even the pagan
rituals acquired a certain aura, on this interpretation, of being a preparation for the
reign of grace. At the other extreme we have the view held, among others, by St Paul,
according to which the gods of the heathen are devils (cf. 1 Cor 10.20) A certain
synthesis between these opposing views is however possible: the pagans did indeed find in
their (false) religions a means of expressing a natural sense of worship of God, their
true Heavenly Father. But in so far as these religions set up idols, false saviours, they
are evil and enemies of the true Faith of Christ, hence doomed to disappear from the face
of the earth.
Judaism is however in a different category, as are the later ideologies of Islam and
Marxism which can be considered with it. The Jewish religion had been God’s way of
preparing mankind for the new and perfect Covenant formed through the Coming of Christ. With
His Coming, the divinely instituted Jewish religion comes to an end. What remains
today as the Jewish religion is something intrinsically opposed to Christ. It is precisely
because it was of divine origin and hence perfect within its limitations that it has
retained its triumphalist eagerness to rule the world, a Messianism that, being entirely
of this world, can never be satisfied. These qualities make it a dangerous enemy of the
Church, who must therefore protect her faithful against it. Islam, in its turn, shares not
only the strict monotheism of Israel but also its opposition to Christianity. Marxism also
has in common with Judaism a Messianism centred wholly upon this life, making of the
Proletariat the new Messiah who shall conquer the world.
It was the wonderful idea of Vatican II – and entirely in accord with the
intentions of Paul VI – to preach the brotherhood of all men regardless of
their religion, and to do this by stressing whatever there is in common between them and
sweeping under the carpet the matters which divide them. Such a misleading picture
of the various religions is calculated to flatter their followers but must needs be a
false one. The fact is that all religions devised by men are in their very nature false
and anything there might have been in them of supernatural inspiration has necessarily
lost what value it had with the coming of the Church, as the Sign among nations and their
signpost to salvation. This is the great truth which divides the true Religion from all
other religions, and to omit it is a crime against the Faith. And we can see how it has
led, over the past ten years, to a rising tide of indifferentism among Catholics, with the
disappearance of all missionary zeal.
But there is even more behind this extended ecumenism… The Conciliar thinking can
be simply summarised by saying that, as God is the Father of all men, they are necessarily
brothers, and all discrimination and persecution must be banned from among them. The
result is that Christ is betrayed anew with a kiss, for the distinction between Church and
Synagogue can be glossed over only by obscuring the Cross of Christ, which is the summit
of human history and the dividing line between the Old and the New Testaments. In
extending its great ecumenical design to include Judaism, the Council tacitly agreed to
regard Christ as a mere child of the Jewish people and to pretend that the Church arose
from that Judaism which is still extant today… If we can all agree to regard the
whole human family as the sons of Abraham, the Father of all believers – so the
thinking goes – then the Church will be among these the chosen one, the Child of
Promise. But in the Jewish plan the Christians have an inferior role to play, so for those
the present (Conciliar) era must remain a transitional one, to culminate finally in a new
Messianic era in which Christianity will figure as a heresy, and Christ as one condemned
to death for betraying the religion of His Fathers. Then indeed the Church will awake to
the realisation that to seek a unity of men apart from Christ constitutes apostasy, that
you have to be either for Him or against Him, as He Himself told us…
Proposed Constitution of Vatican III
on
THE SALVATION OF THE HUMAN RACE
The time had come, so it would seem, when in the striving for the Freedom and
Brotherhood of all mankind, the various religions too were to be reconciled,
"renouncing the gods that divide them". The Catholic Church would be failing to
play her part in attaining thus Unity of all Men if she did not show herself ready to
agree to an unconditional truce, not only with the various Christian denominations, but
with all the religions including, first and foremost, Judaism.
He who is not for Christ is against Him…
The idea that the whole of mankind – all children of the same Heavenly Father
– can come together in such a holy union comes naturally to men, and is indeed in
line with God’s original design for them. But this design was thwarted by Original
Sin which brought divisions among men. Adam’s sin against God his Father led his
children to become their brothers’ murderers. After the Flood, mankind became
scattered far and wide. Those who tried to build the Tower of Babel, and their imitators
today, have always lived in a false Utopia, oblivious of sin and its consequences. Men
have always liked to chase the phantom of their lost unity, but as they envisaged only a
unity among men, leaving out the prerequisite of their reconciliation with God, these
plans have been doomed to failure. When God Himself took a hand in the matter and chose
one People to be the primary instrument of His great design, this itself introduced a
division – between those who knew God and those who did not – between the Jews
on the one hand, and the Gentiles on the other. But with neither of them was God well
pleased.
With the Advent of Christ, the great task of restoring to mankind its lost unity was
begun once more, but based on faith in the Mystery of man’s reconciliation with God
through the Cross of Christ. "For I am not ashamed of the gospel. For it is the power
of God unto salvation to every one that believeth: to the Jew first and to the
Greek." (Rom l.16) These words of St Paul give us the theological key to the meaning
of history: they show that it is upon Christ alone that the unity of mankind can and must
be re-established. St John elaborates this when he tells us that "as many as received
him, he gave them power to be made the sons of God." (Jn 1.12) With this, all past
causes for distinction and discrimination between men disappear but there appears this new
and definitive one, between the children of Light and the children of Darkness, between
those who believe and those who refuse to believe, between the true sons of Abraham and
the false, whose true father is Satan (Jn 8.44). For in bringing salvation, Christ brings
also division among men, and this in its turn brings hatred, wars and persecutions. The
religious unity of mankind can be achieved only in and through Christ. In order that such
unity may come about, all other religions, which are false and form an obstacle to this
unity, must disappear, including the ancient Jewish faith which was intended to lead up to
Christianity and has been superseded by it. It follows that any plan to unite men which is
not based on this fundamental principle is necessarily anti-Christian. An ideology which
claims to break down all distinctions between men and between creeds, and re-establish
human brotherhood "in Adam" considers man to be self-sufficient – his own
god and his own Redeemer. This is the philosophy of Freemasonry and it is also that of the
new humanistic religion that holds sway today – it is the religion of anti-Christ.
We may add here that, according to St Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, the
"Greeks" will be the first to receive the Gospel and thus form part of this new
unity, while the Jews reject it at first and become the enemies of the Church, but that,
in a later epoch, the Gentiles will apostatise en masse while the Jews will become
converted. (Rom 11)
What we have outlined above is the Christian teaching and every other "faith"
is in conflict with it, above all, every philosophy which envisages a human unity other
than through the Cross of Christ. Under the guise of a "charity" that seeks to
eliminate divisions and discrimination such a sinister Masonic project has been made
acceptable to Catholic priests and faithful, who are thus becoming the instruments of
Antichrist… Turning to the Acts of Vatican II, we shall find them pervaded by a
universalism whose ultimate aim is nothing less than a Union of World Religions. Our text
is the Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions.
The avowed aim of the Declaration Nostra Aetate (from the initial words of the
Latin text) is to "consider more closely the relation (of the Church) to
non-Christian religions." We gain an insight into the intentions behind it by
studying the events leading up to its promulgation and from the comments of its
supporters, in particular those of Cardinal Koenig. (The references given in the French
CRC are, as throughout this series, to the collection Unam Sanctam).
It all started when the World Jewish Congress requested an audience with Pope John
XXIII, on 18th January 1960. This was the beginning of a series of contacts between the
Pope and Jewish organisations or individual representatives. It was then that he decided
on the preparation of a Decree concerning the Jews. Cardinal Koenig emphasises that the
relation to the Jews was at the heart of the Declaration, for the rest "was not
likely to raise many problems." No 4 of the Declaration (on The Jewish Religion)
was the only section causing long and heated discussions.
The timing of the events makes it clear that the powerful international Jewish
organisations had been besieging good Pope John, and later the Council, where their
requests were favourably received thanks to Cardinal Bea, who received the gold medal of
the B’nai Berith, in reward for his services.
From the beginning of his pontificate, Pope John had planned to hold out a hand of
friendship to the Jews, which was his object also in introducing certain of the
modifications into the Good Friday Liturgy. Addressing a group of American Jews in October
1961, he spoke the following words: "I am Joseph, your brother, although there
remains a great difference between those who accept only the Old Testament, and those who
accept also the New, as the supreme Law and directive. But this difference in no way wipes
out that brotherhood which is founded upon a common origin, for are we not all children of
the same Heavenly Father? And should there not therefore be a warm, active love between
us?"
When Cardinal Bea presented his schema, on 18th November 1964, he took care to disarm
in advance all opposition, by branding it as political opposition to a
schema of essentially religious nature. In other words, if you refused to form part of
Cardinal Bea’s Semitic lobby, you were showing yourself to be anti-Semitic, and a
supporter of Hitler’s extermination camps!
Paul VI in his turn helped the Jewish lobby by his friendly gesture to the government
of Israel in the course of his pilgrimage to the Holy Land. It was he who instituted, on
12th September 1963, the Secretariat for non-Christian Religions, announcing this as
having "the significance of Pentecost". The Encyclical Ecclesiam Suam
completed the task of establishing present-day Judaism as "a sister religion"
– a "religious tradition to which Christianity is linked by intimate ties and
from which it draws reasons for hope of good relations in the future…
Opposition to the schema came only from a few isolated voices – from Cardinal
Tappouni, speaking in the name of the Eastern Catholics, and from Cardinal Ruffini, who
brought to bear all his knowledge of the Church’s constant Tradition. But Lercaro,
Heenan, Cushing and the rest of the Americans were in favour. When at one stage, Pope Paul
appeared hesitant, the Letter of the 17 Cardinals was used as a form of blackmail, until
he promised Bea that the text concerning the Jews would not be shortened or rendered less
significant. A study, from the doctrinal angle, by Mgr Carli, Bishop of Segni, failed to
influence the bishops and on 28th October, the day of its promulgation, the opposition
had, in the presence of the Pope, dwindled to 88 against 2221.
In his allocution, the Pope referred to the Jews as "objects, not of reproach, but
of respect, love and hope". What nobody seems to have commented on is that in
proclaiming the "brotherhood of men in Abraham", the Council tacitly agreed to
leave out the Cross of Christ! Moreover, in adopting the concept of the Universal
Brotherhood of mankind as the basis of the Declaration, it adopted a Masonic slogan!
STUDY OF THE "DECLARATION ON THE RELATION OF THE CHURCH TO NON-CHRISTIAN
RELIGIONS"
The Introduction: Brotherhood between men, and friendship and equality between
the various religions – this is the basic postulate of No 1 of the Declaration.
"For, since God made all races of men and gave them the whole earth to inhabit (cf.
Acts 17.26), all nations form a single community with a common origin; they also have a
single final end which is God… From his different religions, man seeks the answer to
the riddles and problems of human existence…" Christ and His Church, and the
divisions among men that have followed are treated as of secondary importance and as best
glossed over in order to avoid any appearance of discrimination.
"In this age when the human race is daily becoming more closely united and ties
between different peoples are becoming stronger, the Church considers more closely her own
relation to non-Christian religions. Since it is her task to foster unity and love among
men, and indeed among nations, she first considers in this declaration what men have in
common and what draws them into fellowship together." They seem to have forgotten the
fact that it is only through Baptism that men become truly the children of God!
In the conclusion of the Declaration we read: "We cannot call on God, the Father
of all men, if there are any men whom we refuse to treat as brothers, since all men are
created in God’s image. Man’s relation to God the Father is connected with his
relation to his fellow men in such a way that Scripture says, ‘He that loveth not,
knoweth not God’ (1 Jn 4.8). There remain, then, no grounds for any theory or
practice which leads to discrimination between men or races in matters concerning the
dignity of man and the rights which stem from it. Therefore the Church condemns all
discrimination between men and all conflict of race, colour, class or creed, as being
contrary to the mind of Christ…" Is there not something sinister about this
reference to Our Lord in such a Masonic context? We find a similar thought expressed in
Pope Paul’s discourse of 7th December 1965, when he spoke these words:
"In the countenance of every human being we can and we should see the countenance
of Christ; we can and we should recognise the countenance of God the Heavenly Father…
we are therefore right when we maintain that, in order to know God, we must know
man".
The Church, renouncing her claim to be the only source and bond of unity among men, is
allowing herself to become party to a Utopian dream of unity-without-God.
"Christianity, today, will prove acceptable only if it shows itself as a bond of
unity and reconciliation, and not as a source of polarisation, leading to divisions,
hatred and war, as has been the case in the past." (Cardinal Koenig, Archbishop of
Vienna, in a commentary on the Declaration.)
No 2, on "Various non-Christian Religions" elaborates the theme that
all religions are to be treated on a footing of equality. In her insistence on seeing only
"those good spiritual and moral elements and social and cultural values found in
other religions", the Church is, perhaps, trying to assure for herself a favoured
position in the world. But surely it is too much to expect that everybody else, too, would
enter into this spirit of "let’s all work together and forget our
differences."
The Pagan religions receive but the briefest mention, in terms so vague that the
entirely new and absurd philosophy of the missions which has grown up over the past few
years can claim to be founded on this text. To quote but one example, words written by a
White Father – a Rev. Maurier: "What right has the Conciliar Church to pass
judgement upon other religions in accordance with her own standards… to decide which
she is to look upon as ‘true and holy’? Can it still be true to say that the
Church is prepared to recognise in the others only such elements as already exist within
herself? Does this show any understanding of non-Christians?… We must admit that the
Conciliar Church is still totally egocentric in this matter, etc." Moreover, "in
the last resort, the various religions are neither true nor false; we should regard them
rather as one particular interpretation of human existence, within the context of a
particular way of life… they must be assessed not from the point of view of truth but
of viability…"
Hinduism and Buddhism each receive a brief mention, with reference to the "values
found in these Oriental religions." The text does not say that they are essentially
pagan and do not recognise the true God. Nor does it say that the only possible solution
for the Church to aim at must be the conversion, individually, of their followers. The
reader, exhorted to "acknowledge those good spiritual and moral elements and social
and cultural values found in other religions, and preserve and encourage them" is led
to believe that the Catholic Church, which "rejects nothing which is true and holy in
these religions" considers that, by dint of some compromises, they can be
"assimilated".
Islam receives a special section (No 3 ) to itself. Let us quote another White
Father’s comments on this chapter, because they express so clearly the
"pastoral" philosophy of Vatican II: "In these few lines, the Declaration
sums up the essentials of the faith and practice of the Moslem religion and invites all
concerned to forget the ‘dissension and hostility between Christian and Moslem’
in the interests of their collaboration for the welfare of humanity." The Declaration
does not even make any mention of the Moslem teaching concerning the Holy War to be waged
against Christianity, nor refer to the Koran’s strict and explicit denial of the
essential Mysteries of the Christian Faith. The Council is guilty of misleading the
uncritical masses about the true nature of Islam. And why did Paul VI restore the standard
of Lepanto to the Turks?
Chapter 4 - the Council and The Jewish Religion
It is surely absurd that a Faith based on Divine Revelation should seek for compromise
and "reconciliation" with religions whose teaching is contrary to its own, and
even more absurd if such an alien religion, for which the Church now expresses love,
respect and esteem, is the very one which she has superseded, whose very essence is the
contradiction of Christianity. But this is just what the Council’s project of
"reconciliation between Jew and Christian" amounts to, and this was one of the
most important "innovations" of the Council. No 4 of the Declaration had formed
the subject of much controversy and had been reworded a number of times. It is through the
use of terms whose meaning can be taken in various different ways that the doctrinal
confusion has been introduced; that is why we must begin with certain definitions:
1). There is first of all Israel, meaning God’s Chosen People, in the Old
Testament (sense No 1). Its mission is to prepare for the Coming of the Messiah, and with
this, its mission and its existence are brought to a close, the Church herself taking its
place.
2). In its second sense, Israel refers to those who have remained Jews since the
days of Christ, the Jewish people who, like all men, are called upon to undergo conversion
and Baptism. Their ancient heritage has, in a certain sense, brought them close to
salvation but their rebellion has driven them farther from it.
3). Lastly, Israel in the third sense refers to the religion of the Talmud, a
religion which regards Christianity as a heresy and the Saviour as an impostor. The
Church, in its eyes, merits persecution because she has usurped what should have been the
Jewish heritage. It is this, present day, Jewish religion which continues to pander to the
Jewish national pride.
Israel in the first sense is the forerunner of the Church, and the object of her
respect and honour. Israel in the second sense is the object of her maternal love, as
consisting of her elder sons whom she seeks to convert from their rebellion against her.
But with regard to Israel in the third sense there can be no compromise in terminology.
Either you accept that the sons of Abraham are to be understood as forming the forerunners
of Christ’s Church which extends to embrace also the Gentiles, or you believe
that the Judaism that is still in existence today is the legitimate successor of the
Temple of Jerusalem and is rightly teaching its people – still the Chosen Race –
that their Messiah is yet to come, to make them rulers of this world! If one explanation
is the true one, then the other is wrong – you cannot have it both ways.
But the Council did attempt just such a compromise, in deliberately confusing
the different meanings of the word Israel as we have defined them above. To appeal to the
Jews to become converted is in line with tradition but to combine this appeal, as it does,
with a call for the reconciliation of the Church and Israel in the third sense
(more or less identifying the latter with Israel in the first sense) is an absurdity, and
involves a deliberate misinterpretation of Scripture.
The Conciliar document betrays the Tradition of the Church and the meaning of Scripture
upon three points – the Covenant, the question of deicide, and that of antisemitism.
In a climate of change such as was engendered by the Council, there was little difficulty
in doing this; but if its justification was to be found in the Bible, as was claimed, the
sources had to be carefully selected and put together out of their context.
The Covenant: "The Church cannot, therefore, forget that it was through
that people with whom God in his ineffable mercy saw fit to establish the Old Covenant
that she herself has received the revelation of the Old Testament." Thus "all
believers in Christ… are Abraham’s sons in faith (cf. Gal 3.7)…" Very
well, but all this applies to Israel in our sense No 1 and not to the Jews of today
who reject Christ. The fact that there is a discontinuity between the original Israel and
the Jewish people of today, as a result of the Jews rejecting their Messiah, is glossed
over. "Even so, according to the Apostle Paul , the Jews still remain very dear to
God, for the sake of their fathers, since he does not repent of the gifts he makes or the
calls he issues (cf. Rom 11.28-29)." A reference follows to Lumen Gentium
(II,16): "In the first place there is the people to whom the covenants and the
promises were given and from whom Christ was born according to the flesh (cf. Rom 9.4). On
account of their fathers, this people remains most dear to God, for God does not repent of
the gifts He makes nor of the calls He issues (cf. Rom 11.28-29).
Let us quote the Epistle itself, underlining the phrases omitted in the quotations:
"As concerning the gospel, indeed, they are enemies for your sake: but as
touching the election, they are most dear for the sake of the fathers. For the gifts and
the calling of God are without repentance." (Rom 11.28-29) In other words, the people
remain beloved by God, in spite of their rebellion.
Another paragraph of the Declaration reads: "The Church also always keeps before
her eyes the words of the Apostle Paul concerning his kinsmen ‘to whom belongeth the
adoption as of children, and the glory, and the testament, and the giving of the law and
the service of God and the promises: whose are the fathers, and of whom is Christ,
according to the flesh’ (Rom 9.4-5), the son of the Virgin Mary…" Turning
to Rom 9.3-5, we read: "For I wished myself to be an anathema from Christ, for my
brethren: who are my kinsmen according to the flesh: who are Israelites: to whom
belongeth the adoption as of children and the glory and the testament and the giving of
the law and the service of God and the promises: whose are the fathers and of whom is
Christ, according to the flesh, who is over all things, God blessed for ever. Amen."
These last words have a particular significance in affirming Christ’s divinity and
thus placing Him above any human race. In place of this affirmation the Council has
substituted: "the son of the Virgin Mary" – as being safely non-committal.
"Given this great spiritual heritage common to Christians and Jews, it is the wish
of this sacred Council to foster and recommend a mutual knowledge and esteem, which will
come from biblical and theological studies, and brotherly discussions." Isn’t
that rather as if a priest were to advise two women, the one the wife of a certain man and
the other, his mistress, to embrace and live in peace side by side? No, we are not dealing
with two "sister religions", but with the true one on the one hand, formed by
those Jews who out of their very fidelity to the Law, embraced Christianity, together with
those Gentiles who became converted, and the false on the other, consisting of the
remaining Jews who in rejecting Christ broke their Covenant. That the people should remain
"very dear to God" in spite of this is because He wishes them to become
converted. To say so outright might savour of intolerance, and so we are left with the
ambiguous phrase: "In company with the Prophets and the same Apostle, the Church
looks forward to that day, known to God alone, when all peoples will call on the Lord with
one voice and ‘serve him with one shoulder’…" In the One Church or
perhaps, under the Jewish Law?
The question of Deicide. Any such philosophical compromise must come up against
the Cross as an obstacle to its ambiguity, and that is why Vatican II always seeks to push
it into the background. If the Jews did in fact condemn to death their God and Saviour,
whom they had been chosen to receive into their midst, then it makes sense that there
should be no peace for them unless they make amends by becoming converted… Jerusalem
convertere ad Dominum Deum tuum (Jer). It is interesting to follow the arguments about
the term deicide, which in the earlier formulation had been rejected, the
ostensible reason being that "you cannot kill God". It was pointed out that it
is still correct to speak of deicide because He Who, in His human nature, was killed was a
Divine Person… just as Mary is correctly referred to as Mother of God. "Although
the Church is the new People of God, the Jews should not be presented as rejected by God
or accursed (here there had been an attempt to add "or guilty of deicide")
as though this followed from Scripture." The Church has never taught that any
individual is "rejected by God or accursed" as long as he is alive, for he is
always called upon to be converted to God and the Church. But the text would appear to
deny that the Jewish nation had collectively been guilty of "perfidy" in putting
to death their God and Messiah – a guilt which remains upon its members, in
proportion to their understanding, unless and until they renounce their responsibility by
accepting Baptism. The commentaries upon the debates show us the attempts to explain away
the guilt – the Jews acted in response to an "authentic" obedience to the
Mosaic Law; Christ’s claims appeared impossible to them, so they were "right
according to the Jewish faith, though wrong according to our own…" In other
words, it was all a misunderstanding, and indeed, according to their lights and the Jewish
teaching Our Lord had deserved to be put to death, or at least it had been His own
wish… "But Christ, the Church holds and always has held, in his infinite love
underwent his passion and death voluntarily for the sins of all men in order that all
might achieve salvation. It is the task of the Church in its preaching to proclaim the
cross of Christ as a sign of God’s universal love and as the source of all
grace." (Final Par. of No 4) We have here a deliberate attempt to confuse Our
Lord’s motive in accepting death with the human act by which this was inflicted…
In this way, perhaps Judas too was free of guilt!
Antisemitism. If the Jews can be exonerated, then we must condemn the Christians
for having thus attributed guilt to them. "Further, the Church condemns all
persecutions of any men; she remembers her common heritage with the Jews and, acting not
from any political motives, but rather from a spiritual and evangelical one, deplores all
hatred, persecutions and other manifestations of antisemitism, whatever the period and
whoever was responsible." But they do not have a word to say against the Jewish
racialism which had provoked antisemitism. The Church has not persecuted the Jews –
there is no theological or historical justification for maintaining this – but
Judaism has persecuted the Church, looking upon Christianity as a heresy.
Freemasonry, always in the forefront of the attack upon the Church, has always had Jewish
support on a large scale. Had the Church refused Baptism to Jews, instead of doing all she
could to convert them, there might be some justification for accusing her of antisemitism.
To read the Conciliar texts, you would think that the Church had been guilty of the sort
of racialism that culminated in the Nazi gas chambers…
But why, you may ask, all this fuss about a Declaration which has so little
intrinsic importance? The reason is not any fanaticism or antisemitism on our part. It is
this:
The Declaration belittles, or excuses man from, any collective guilt, both in regard to
original sin and to collective crime. It absolves non-Christian religions from any guilt
for their errors and excuses their hatred of the Church. It seeks rather to lay the blame
for the divisions, rivalries and persecutions which plague mankind, upon the Church
herself. By implication it casts doubt upon the essence of Catholic doctrine – that
the Church alone can rightly claim to be the salvation of souls and the only hope for
mankind. We must declare our solidarity with those Council Fathers who persisted in
opposing the text. At least the fact that neither the Pope nor the Council issued any
formal condemnation against them for refusing to accept their reinterpretation of
Scripture and Tradition shows that the Church’s infallibility remains… |