The Costs of Catholic Silence as the World Looks for Answers

As Michael Matt highlighted in a recent Remnant Underground, some of the most persuasive thinkers in the secular world (most notably, Tucker Carlson) have started to describe today’s mounting worldwide crisis in terms of a spiritual battle. Such realizations of themselves do not necessarily lead souls to the truth, but they provide opportunities for Catholics to help more people see that the only path out of this crisis is to embrace the immutable Catholic Faith.

Any such efforts to lead souls to the Catholic Church must overcome the fact that most people see Catholicism as the religion represented by Pope Francis, which is arguably contributing more to the Great Reset and corruption of morals than any other religion in the world today. God can certainly work miracles with conversions if He so chooses, but as a general matter no reasonable person will consider that the Church ostensibly led by Bergoglio is the guardian of the true religion absent some reasonable explanation.

In much the same way that the figureheads of the Great Reset (Schwab, Fauci, Biden, Trudeau, etc.) double-down on bad policies and lies when faced with their bad fruits, the Church’s infiltrators have spent the past sixty years moving the Church from one disaster to another, always persecuting those who try to stop the damage.

Fortunately, the explanation is not only compelling in its own right but also helps us understand how and why the world has reached the desperate condition we now see. We can briefly state the explanation as follows:

After the French Revolution, numerous popes warned of the grave dangers of accepting liberal and Freemasonic ideas into the Catholic Church. Notably, in 1910 St. Pius X promulgated an Oath Against Modernism, to be sworn by all clergy, which included the antidote to so many evils that have plagued the Church since then:

“I sincerely hold that the doctrine of faith was handed down to us from the apostles through the orthodox Fathers in exactly the same meaning and always in the same purport. Therefore, I entirely reject the heretical misrepresentation that dogmas evolve and change from one meaning to another different from the one which the Church held previously.”

Despite these warnings from several popes, the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) allowed men who had previously been suspected of heresy for their liberal ideas to play a vital role in drafting the Council’s documents. The innovators then used the ambiguities they intentionally placed throughout the Council documents in their ongoing attempts to fundamentally reshape the Church.

Although the most visible changes in the Church since Vatican II have come from replacing the Tridentine Mass with the Novus Ordo Mass, other key Vatican II innovations have played a signifiant role both in damaging the Catholic Church and advancing the New World Order: false ecumenism and universal salvation convince souls that they no longer need the Catholic Faith; the focus on humanism and the dignity of man has elevated the rights and desires of men over the commandments of God; and the mixing of truth and error has paralyzed the intellects and wills of so many Catholic shepherds, so that they cannot speak out against the evils in the Church and world.

In short, the infiltration of the Church explains why the world has reached this climactic moment in the timeless spiritual battle.

If the Church were merely a human institution, we might not expect these deviations from the true Faith to cause grave consequences. But as the institution established by Jesus to disseminate His immutable truth and the graces He won on the Cross, the Church is the only entity that can hold back Satan’s domination of the world. Therefore, as the infiltrators knew, undermining the Church was (and remains) a necessary step to establishing the New World Order.

The so-called traditional Catholics who have adhered to what the Church has always taught have been the control group in the post-Vatican II experiment with the Faith: the traditional Catholics have flourished while every other part of the Church has suffered in proportion to the extent to which it has embraced the novelties. And in much the same way that the figureheads of the Great Reset (Schwab, Fauci, Biden, Trudeau, etc.) double-down on bad policies and lies when faced with their bad fruits, the Church’s infiltrators have spent the past sixty years moving the Church from one disaster to another, always persecuting those who try to stop the damage.

Even though we knew that we were living through the worst period in the history of the Church, many of us did not realize the full magnitude of the problem until Bergoglio blasphemously welcomed the demonic Pachamama idol into the Vatican in October 2019. Shorty thereafter, the Covid pandemic spread throughout the world, initiating the Great Reset. As Bergoglio has partnered with the architects of the Great Reset to spread anti-Catholic ideas, it has become painfully clear that this was the goal from the beginning: the infiltrators of the Catholic Church (led by Satan) needed to undermine the Church to enslave the world.

In short, the infiltration of the Church explains why the world has reached this climactic moment in the timeless spiritual battle; and the fact that traditional Catholics have thrived despite being persecuted points the way to our only hope at this point: we must return to the true Catholic Faith.

While any given bishop may have a legitimate reason to remain silent on some matters, the incalculable damage caused by the cumulative silence of the Catholic leadership testifies to the folly of remaining silent when faced with mounting scandals.

Thus we have a relatively simple explanation for the state of the Church and world in 2022. We recognize it all more clearly now, but as we can see from Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre’s letter to eight cardinals before John Paul II’s interreligious prayer meeting at Assisi, the key components were already clear in 1986:

“Confronted with events taking place in the Church that have John Paul II as their author and faced with those he intends carrying out at Taize and Assisi in October, I cannot refrain from addressing you and begging you in the name of numerous priests and faithful to save the honor of the Church never before humiliated to such an extent in the course of her history. The speeches and actions of John Paul II in Togo, Morocco, and the Indies cause a righteous indignation to rise up in our heart. What do the Saints, the holy men and women of the Old and New Testaments make of this? What would the Holy Inquisition do if it were still in existence? . . . The scandal given to Catholic souls cannot be measured. The Church is shaken to its very foundations. If faith in the Church, the only ark of salvation, disappears, then the Church herself disappears. . . . Is it conceivable that no authoritative voice has been raised in the Church to condemn these public sins? Where are the Machabees? . . . Eminence, for the honor of the one true God and of our Lord Jesus Christ, make a public protest, come to the help of the still faithful bishops, priests and Catholics.”

As we know, John Paul II went ahead with his blasphemous prayer meeting at Assisi on his way to becoming St. John Paul II (the Great). During his lengthy pontificate, he oversaw unparalleled destruction of the Catholic Faith, excommunicated Archbishop Lefebvre, and paved the way for Bergoglio’s occupation of the papacy by appointing some of the worst villains in the history of the Church to the positions of highest responsibility.

While any given bishop may have a legitimate reason to remain silent on some matters, the incalculable damage caused by the cumulative silence of the Catholic leadership testifies to the folly of remaining silent when faced with mounting scandals. As we can see from the following partial list of evils, the silence of good Catholics can be even worse than the wickedness of the Church’s avowed enemies:

Offending God. Without even considering the practical consequences of allowing errors to spread throughout the Church, we know that it offends God when the apparent leaders of His Church teach falsehoods. As Jesus said at the Sermon on the Mount, we must beware of false prophets: “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in the clothing of sheep, but inwardly are ravening wolves. By their fruits you shall know them” (Matthew 7:15-16). He would not have told us these things if He wanted us to follow the false shepherds and choose bad fruits over good fruits. Therefore shepherds must warn their flocks!
Eclipsing the Truth. Throughout the history of the Church, the popes and bishops have safeguarded the Faith by condemning the errors that threatened sound Catholic teaching. The need to boldly refute errors increases in proportion to the prevalence and potential harms of the errors — and since Vatican II the most insidious errors have spread throughout the Church. At the very least, those who have care of souls have a duty to protect their flocks by charitably and unambiguously explaining why the errors attacking the Faith are wrong and must be resisted.
Ceding the Battlefield to Satan. Given that we find ourselves in a spiritual battle, we know that Satan will make use of our weaknesses to advance his objectives. Satan delights when good Catholics refuse to denounce his stratagems because it cedes vital areas of the battlefield to his minions. This is especially the case when it is clear that the Catholic Church had previously combatted the same errors throughout its history — a refusal to fight the anti-Catholic errors flowing from Rome today suggests that the errors are no longer bad enough to combat, when in reality they are more pernicious than ever before.
Neglecting Spiritual Works of Mercy. God permits certain evils and has told us that we should practice spiritual and corporal works of mercy in response to such evils. Among these, we can readily see that the post-Conciliar hostility to Catholicism requires us (and the shepherds in particular) to admonish the sinners, instruct the ignorant, and counsel the doubtful. In doing so, we honor God, help our neighbors, and gain merit for heaven. When we neglect to perform these works of mercy, we generally increase the evils that should have inspired our charity.
Normalizing Spiritual and Intellectual Blindness. If we are to “judge a tree by its fruits” as Our Lord told us, we need to be able to distinguish between good and bad fruits. But when those charged with educating the flock fail to identify, and warn against, bad fruits, we eventually lose our ability to properly judge a tree by its fruits. The resulting spiritual and intellectual blindness spreads from the bishops, to the priests, to the laity, and ultimately to all those non-Catholics who might have otherwise benefited from the clear guidance of those to whom God has given the true Catholic Faith.
Dividing Faithful Catholics. The well-meaning shepherds who refuse to denounce the bad fruits of Vatican II often shift their indignation from the rightful target (the errors) to those who denounce the errors (such as Archbishop Lefebvre). We can and should govern the extent and manner of our work to combat error by the dictates of prudence and charity, but it is neither prudent nor charitable to remain silent on the evils described above. A refusal to properly acknowledge the unpleasant realities that threaten souls cannot possibly form the basis for true Catholic unity among faithful Catholics.
Forestalling the Vital Process of Returning to God. God has allowed us to see clearly that the errors promoted by the innovators of Vatican II have caused the grave harms in the Church and world. It appears that He is permitting matters to grow worse because so many Catholics have allowed those errors to spread without direct opposition. We pray for God to intervene to save us, and He can certainly do so even if we stubbornly refuse to defend the religion He gave us; but faithful Catholics generally understand that we cannot effectively petition for God’s mercy when we pertinaciously refuse to do His will.

We need traditional Catholics to speak the truth without dissimulation.

Against these evils of remaining silent we can add Blessed Pius IX’s December 1876 letter to the editors of a Catholic newspaper of Rodez, who had defended the pope’s Syllabus of Errors:

“To be sure, there will be many who will accuse you of imprudence and that your work is untimely. But because the truth displeases many and is the cause of irritation among those who obstinately remain in error, it must never be judged as imprudent or precocious. On the contrary, the greater and more universal the evil to be combated, the more timely and prudent it will be. Otherwise we would have to conclude that the gospel herself was most imprudently and precociously proclaimed, since it was done at a time when religion, laws and morals of all nations were directly opposed to it. This battle will indeed cause you to be blamed and receive scorn and hateful accusations, but the One who brought the truth to the world prophesied to His disciples that they would be hated for His Name’s sake.” (from Fr. A. Roussel’s Liberalism & Catholicism)

Seen in this light, the shepherds should feel some shame if they are not being blamed and scorned by the wicked men attempting to destroy the Church.

One of the reasons many of us respect men like Tucker Carlson — who is blamed and scorned by the wicked men trying to destroy the world — is that there have been so few truth-tellers as we have witnessed the advancing evils in the secular world. When he stands up and denounces the insanity from Biden, Fauci, Pelosi, and the architects of the Great Reset, we are grateful to hear his voice of reason.

It is unconscionable for those who should speak to remain silent as Satan and his minions attempt to enslave the world.

But although Tucker Carlson’s keen insights can help souls look for a solution, they do not of themselves identify the real remedy for the evils facing the world today. For that, we need traditional Catholics to speak the truth without dissimulation. Our Lord Jesus Christ established His Church to safeguard and dispense the grace and truth we need, and today only a relatively small remnant of traditional Catholics still realize this. It is unconscionable for those who should speak to remain silent as Satan and his minions attempt to enslave the world.

In his 1974 book Athanasius and the Church of Our Time, Bishop Rudolf Graber quoted the letter of St. Athanasius “circulated to all the bishops in the year 340.” In that letter, St. Athanasius compared the outrage committed against the wife of a Levite in the Old Testament (Judges 19) with the outrage committed against the Church through the Arian heresy:

“What we have suffered is terrible and quite intolerable; it is not possible to give an adequate account of it. . . . The Levite’s misfortune is but small compared with what is being ventured against the Church today. Nothing worse has been heard of in the world, none has suffered greater injury. Then it was but a single woman to whom injustice was done, a single Levite who was the victim of violence. Today, however, the whole Church is suffering injustice, the priesthood has been insolently abused and — what is worse — the Godfearing persecuted by the godless. . . . Each of you should offer his aid as if he himself were the victim of [the injustices]. Otherwise the order and Faith of the Church may shortly go to ruin. For both are threatened if God does not repair the crimes through your agencies and expiate the injury caused on the Church.”

What would St. Athanasius tell us today, as the Church suffers a far worse crisis than it did in his time? What would he think of Catholics who try to maintain peace with those who seek to destroy the Church and enslave the world?

May the Blessed Virgin Mary, destroyer of all heresies, intercede for us so that we have the charity, prudence, and fortitude to defend and spread God’s truth as more and more souls are looking for answers. Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us!

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