The “smoking gun” is revealed in the “Analyst Note” in footnote (a) of the memo, which includes this description of the Second Vatican Council:
“Vatican II took place from 1962-1965 and essentially shaped the Modern Roman Rite Catholic Church. It was intended to help the church respond to global cultural changes in the aftermath of World War II and resulted in significant reforms to the liturgy, attitudes towards non-Christian religions, roles and responsibilities of the laity, views on religious freedom, etc.”
Those who have not studied the history or basic teachings of the Catholic Church would presumably find nothing alarming about this description — after all, it sounds like the “updating” that many organizations undertake to keep up with the times. However, as the First Vatican Council clearly stated, such “updating” can only be legitimate insofar as it is does not run contrary to what the Church has always taught:
“For, the doctrine of faith which God revealed has not been handed down as a philosophic invention to the human mind to be perfected, but has been entrusted as a divine deposit to the Spouse of Christ, to be faithfully guarded and infallibly interpreted. Hence, also, that understanding of its sacred dogmas must be perpetually retained, which Holy Mother Church has once declared; and there must never be recession from that meaning under the specious name of a deeper understanding [can. 3]. ‘Therefore . . . let the understanding, the knowledge, and wisdom of individuals as of all, of one man as of the whole Church, grow and progress strongly with the passage of the ages and the centuries; but let it be solely in its own genus, namely in the same dogma, with the same sense and the same understanding.’” [Denzinger 1800]
For many Catholics throughout the centuries, this aspect of “immutability” has been the primary basis for believing the Catholic Faith. And, prior to Vatican II, so much of Church teaching consisted of defending the Church’s teachings against those who sought to “modernize” them. Indeed, St. Pius X’s Oath Against Modernism required Catholic priests and bishops (including those who attended Vatican II) to reject the idea that Church teaching could change to keep up with the modern world:
“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.”
St. Pius X required priests and bishops to take this Oath Against Modernism because he and his predecessors understood that the enemies of the Catholic Church sought to infiltrate it for the purpose of deceiving Catholic and non-Catholics into believing that the Church’s teachings had changed. The Church’s teachings can never change to contradict what they once were, and those who say they can are mistaken at best and frequently malicious.
The FBI analyst failed to recognize that no person or Council can legitimately “shape” a “modern Church” in that way because that would fundamentally violate the Church’s mission to faithfully transmit the truths entrusted to it by God.
Until Francis’s occupation of the papacy, most of those who had infiltrated the highest positions in the Church to change its teachings had the perspicacity to tell Catholics that they were not really changing anything — they generally couched their “updating” in terms of translating the Church’s perennial teachings into a language the modern world could understand. Thus we have almost sixty years of debates about whether Vatican II is in fact in continuity with what the Church had always taught.
But the FBI analyst must have found a source for his or her report who is like those drug addicts who periodically call the police to say that someone who has stolen their drugs: they are not reliable other than in their self-incrimination. And so the analyst was correct in writing that Vatican II “essentially shaped the Modern Roman Rite Catholic Church,” resulting in “significant reforms” to various Church teachings. Unfortunately, the analyst failed to recognize that no person or Council can legitimately “shape” a “modern Church” in that way because that would fundamentally violate the Church’s mission to faithfully transmit the truths entrusted to it by God.
To get a sense of how criminal it is for infiltrators to attempt to change the Church in the ways suggested by the FBI analyst, consider how it would be if an anti-semite infiltrated the Anti-Defamation League to cause it to direct all of its funding and resources to attacking Jewish interests; or if racists infiltrated the NAACP to cause it to direct its funding and resources to sabotaging African Americans. It is even more egregious for progressives to have infiltrated the Catholic Church because its timeless truths have been recorded and defended for two-thousand years and cannot change under any circumstance.
Because the FBI analyst did not realize this about the Catholic Church, he or she showed up at a confusing crime scene and took the word of the perpetrators instead of the victims. The analyst saw the Traditional Catholics complaining about being persecuted and did not investigate enough to determine both that (a) they were telling the truth and, (b) the persecutors were still committing crimes against the Traditional Catholics.
In addition to the fact that the FBI ought to be targeting those who are persecuting Traditional Catholics, one of the great ironies of the FBI memo is that we are among the people least likely to engage in criminal activity.
Lest it sound like hyperbole, we should briefly summarize the crimes being committed. The infiltrators who are attempting to change the Church in a way it can never be changed have fraudulently taken positions of authority in the Church. With these positions, they have used the Church’s funding and other resources to (a) support initiatives that fundamentally oppose the Church’s unchangeable mission, and (b) attack those Catholics who simply want to believe and practice what the Church has always taught. Given the fact that these infiltrators commit these crimes against Traditional Catholics because they despise the religion, they are committing hate crimes.
In addition to the fact that the FBI ought to be targeting those who are persecuting Traditional Catholics, one of the great ironies of the FBI memo is that we are among the people least likely to engage in criminal activity. As Bishop Joseph Strickland commented, our commitment to following the Church’s teachings sets us on the path of virtue that excludes “attacks of violent aggression”:
“Yes, committed traditional Catholics will defend the unborn and others who are helpless, but attacks of violent aggression are antithetical to what it means to be a radically committed traditional Catholic.”
Unlike most of those in the “Modern Roman Rite Catholic Church,” we still believe that we must live and die in the state of sanctifying grace, which means that we strive to avoid sin, including the crimes/sins about which the FBI is apparently concerned. In this sense, we should be fairly low on the list of groups to target for investigation. Ultimately, we do not want bad actors infiltrating our Church trying to stir up violence against anyone, but it is far more likely that those infiltrators would be converted to our Christian beliefs than we would be converted to their anti-Catholic criminality.
May God bless and reward those who have stood for the truth, and may God help others do the same as the attacks on Catholicism increase! Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us!