From that first Pentecost until the end of time, the Holy Ghost abides with the Church and will “guide it in the way of holiness and truth” (Baltimore Catechism). Our Lord tasks His Church with converting all nations — and Jesus wants all souls to be saved — but, at the same time, we have numerous indications in the New Testament, including the following two passages from the Gospel of St. Matthew, that not even those who profess to be Christians will be saved:
* “Not every one that saith to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven: but he that doth the will of my Father who is in heaven, he shall enter into the kingdom of heaven. Many will say to me in that day: Lord, Lord, have not we prophesied in thy name, and cast out devils in thy name, and done many miracles in thy name? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, you that work iniquity. 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, And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and they beat upon that house, and it fell not, for it was founded on a rock.” (Matthew 7:21-25)
* “But if thy brother shall offend against thee, go, and rebuke him between thee and him alone. If he shall hear thee, thou shalt gain thy brother. And if he will not hear thee, take with thee one or two more: that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may stand. And if he will not hear them: tell the church. And if he will not hear the church, let him be to thee as the heathen and publican.” (Matthew 18:15-17)
John Paul II’s monumental encyclical on ecumenism was directly contrary to Pope Pius XI’s Mortalium Animos, and to what the Church, following the clear teaching of Our Lord in the Gospel of St. Matthew, had always taught. John Paul II admitted that he was deviating from what the Church had always taught.
In his commentary on this latter passage, Cornelius à Lapide elaborated on the significance of being counted “as the heathen and publican”:
“For he who despises the prelate of the Church giving him admonition, despises the whole Church which he represents and rules, and shows thereby that he does not want to be a son or citizen of the Church. Therefore, he must be accounted not a faithful Christian, but a heathen and a publican, that is to say, a public sinner. . . Again, let him be to thee as the heathen, that is, let him be expelled, excommunicated and separated from the Church by its prelate, lest his crime and his obstinacy infect the faithful with its contagion: let him be considered, rather, a heathen, i.e., an infidel and a pagan, devoid of all faith or knowledge of God, or religion or the law. This implies that you must not eat with him, as Paul commands (1 Cor. 5:11), nor greet him (2 John v. 10), that he may be confounded by the disgrace, acknowledge his fault, and return to the Church.” (Cornelius à Lapide, The Holy Gospel According to Saint Matthew, Volume II, pp. 211-212)
These words make it clear that those who consider themselves to be part of the unity of the Church must nonetheless be excluded if they refuse to follow the Church’s teachings. How, then, can we respond to the words of seemingly sincere Catholics who would say the following?:
“Is it not right, it is often repeated, indeed, even consonant with duty, that all who invoke the name of Christ should abstain from mutual reproaches and at long last be united in mutual charity? Who would dare to say that he loved Christ, unless he worked with all his might to carry out the desires of Him, Who asked His Father that His disciples might be ‘one.' And did not the same Christ will that His disciples should be marked out and distinguished from others by this characteristic, namely that they loved one another: ‘By this shall all men know that you are my disciples, if you have love one for another’? All Christians, they add, should be as ‘one’: for then they would be much more powerful in driving out the pest of irreligion, which like a serpent daily creeps further and becomes more widely spread, and prepares to rob the Gospel of its strength.”
These sound like questions we might hear from Francis and almost all of the bishops of the world today. These are, however, questions that Pope Pius XI addressed in his 1928 encyclical on religious unity, Mortalium Animos. Here is Pope Pius XI’s response to such ideas:
“These things and others that class of men who are known as pan-Christians continually repeat and amplify; and these men, so far from being quite few and scattered, have increased to the dimensions of an entire class, and have grouped themselves into widely spread societies, most of which are directed by non-Catholics, although they are imbued with varying doctrines concerning the things of faith. This undertaking is so actively promoted as in many places to win for itself the adhesion of a number of citizens, and it even takes possession of the minds of very many Catholics and allures them with the hope of bringing about such a union as would be agreeable to the desires of Holy Mother Church, who has indeed nothing more at heart than to recall her erring sons and to lead them back to her bosom. But in reality beneath these enticing words and blandishments lies hid a most grave error, by which the foundations of the Catholic faith are completely destroyed. Admonished, therefore, by the consciousness of Our Apostolic office that We should not permit the flock of the Lord to be cheated by dangerous fallacies, We invoke, Venerable Brethren, your zeal in avoiding this evil . . .”
So Pope Pius XI’s words are consistent with those of Cornelius à Lapide and Our Lord. Unfortunately, they are completely opposed to the ideas from John Paul II’s 1995 encyclical “on commitment to ecumenism,” Ut Unum Sint:
“It happens for example that, in the spirit of the Sermon on the Mount, Christians of one confession no longer consider other Christians as enemies or strangers but see them as brothers and sisters. Again, the very expression separated brethren tends to be replaced today by expressions which more readily evoke the deep communion — linked to the baptismal character — which the Spirit fosters in spite of historical and canonical divisions. Today we speak of ‘other Christians,’ ‘others who have received Baptism,’ and ‘Christians of other Communities.’ The Directory for the Application of Principles and Norms on Ecumenism refers to the Communities to which these Christians belong as ‘Churches and Ecclesial Communities that are not in full communion with the Catholic Church.’ This broadening of vocabulary is indicative of a significant change in attitudes. There is an increased awareness that we all belong to Christ. I have personally been able many times to observe this during the ecumenical celebrations which are an important part of my Apostolic Visits to various parts of the world, and also in the meetings and ecumenical celebrations which have taken place in Rome. The ‘universal brotherhood’ of Christians has become a firm ecumenical conviction. Consigning to oblivion the excommunications of the past, Communities which were once rivals are now in many cases helping one another: places of worship are sometimes lent out; scholarships are offered for the training of ministers in the Communities most lacking in resources; approaches are made to civil authorities on behalf of other Christians who are unjustly persecuted; and the slander to which certain groups are subjected is shown to be unfounded.”
So John Paul II’s monumental encyclical on ecumenism was directly contrary to Pope Pius XI’s Mortalium Animos, and to what the Church, following the clear teaching of Our Lord in the Gospel of St. Matthew, had always taught. John Paul II admitted that he was deviating from what the Church had always taught — he seemed to relish in announcing that he had consigned “to oblivion the excommunications of the past.”
If we take Pope Pius XI’s words from Mortalium Animos seriously, we would have to conclude that there is indeed a direct link between today’s mass apostasy and the ecumenism promoted by Vatican II and John Paul II.
But, of course, John Paul II had not entirely consigned to oblivion the excommunications of the past, for he reserved one for Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, who had this to say about the 1986 Ecumenical Prayer Meeting at Assisi:
“He who now sits upon the Throne of Peter mocks publicly the first article of the Creed and the first Commandment of the Decalogue. The scandal given to Catholic souls cannot be measured. The Church is shaken to its foundations. If the faith in the Church, the only ark of salvation, disappears, then the Church itself disappears. Is John Paul II to continue ruining the Catholic faith, in particular at Assisi, with the planned procession of religions in the streets of the town of St. Francis and assignment of religions to the various chapels of the basilica with a view to practicing their worship for the intention of peace as conceived by the United Nations?”
What did Archbishop Lefebvre mean when he warned against the “ruining” of the Catholic faith through ecumenism? Could there be any direct link between the mass apostasy we see in the Church today and the fact that almost every bishop for the past several decades has at least tacitly accepted John Paul II’s vision of ecumenism?
If we take Pope Pius XI’s words from Mortalium Animos seriously, we would have to conclude that there is indeed a direct link between today’s mass apostasy and the ecumenism promoted by Vatican II and John Paul II:
“Shall We suffer, what would indeed be iniquitous, the truth, and a truth divinely revealed, to be made a subject for compromise? For here there is question of defending revealed truth. Jesus Christ sent His Apostles into the whole world in order that they might permeate all nations with the Gospel faith, and, lest they should err, He willed beforehand that they should be taught by the Holy Ghost: has then this doctrine of the Apostles completely vanished away, or sometimes been obscured, in the Church, whose ruler and defense is God Himself? If our Redeemer plainly said that His Gospel was to continue not only during the times of the Apostles, but also till future ages, is it possible that the object of faith should in the process of time become so obscure and uncertain, that it would be necessary to-day to tolerate opinions which are even incompatible one with another? If this were true, we should have to confess that the coming of the Holy Ghost on the Apostles, and the perpetual indwelling of the same Spirit in the Church, and the very preaching of Jesus Christ, have several centuries ago, lost all their efficacy and use, to affirm which would be blasphemy.”
When John Paul II says that we must no longer speak of “separated brethren,” or excommunications for those who reject what the Catholic Church teaches — and that we must instead look to the unity of all baptized souls — he is undeniably saying that we should “tolerate opinions which are even incompatible one with another.” Pope Pius XI called this blasphemy, which undermines and counteracts the operation of the Holy Ghost in the Church.
All of this is simply a matter of common sense. For almost two-thousand years, Catholics had been told that they must follow the Church’s difficult teachings if they wish to please God and save their souls. Since Martin Luther’s revolt, Catholics have had the option of following some Catholic teachings while rejecting others if they wished to become Protestant — indeed, if they could not find a Protestant church that matched their beliefs, they could simply make one that did. And yet Catholics for all those centuries instead followed the difficult teachings of the Catholic Church because they saw the Church as the truth-teller given to us by God, and the sole ark of salvation. So what would happen if the institution they thought was the sole ark of salvation abruptly announced that all Christian religions were pleasing to God and capable of leading souls to Heaven? Those who had the courage and intellectual ability to reflect on such a change would surely question whether they really needed to be following the Catholic Church’s difficult teachings.
Every Catholic who is serious about trying to oppose the diabolical disorientation spewing from Francis’s Synodal Church must repudiate the false ecumenism upon which it is built. Without this, every other effort to counteract Francis’s destructive efforts is not only destined to fail but will effectively fortify the unholy foundations that made his occupation of the papacy possible.
This, indeed, is what we have seen since Vatican II. Relatively few Protestants became Catholic after the Council, but there have been massive net outflows from Catholic pews because the religion of John Paul II is, by his own cheerful admission, a change from what the Catholic Church has always taught. But if the Church can change in this way, then it was never a truth-teller, and the Holy Ghost does not abide in it. The ecumenical movement therefore operates as a blasphemous anti-Pentecost in the Church, spreading confusion under the guise of unity.
Dom Guéranger’s commentary on Pentecost included an image that helps us visualize these great differences between the Catholic Church, in which the Holy Ghost still abides, and Francis’s Synodal Church, which is built upon the blasphemous foundations of false ecumenism:
“Since the confusion at Babel, there have been as many languages as countries; communication by word has been interrupted. How, then, is the word to become the instrument of the world’s conquest, and to make one family out of all these nations that cannot understand each other? Fear not: the [Holy Ghost] is all-powerful, and has provided for this difficulty. With the other gifts, wherewith He has enriched the hundred and twenty disciples, He has given them that of understanding all languages, and of making themselves understood in every language. In a transport of holy enthusiasm, they attempt to speak the languages of all nations; their tongue and their ear take in, not only without effort, but even with charm and joy, this plentitude of word and speech which is to reunite mankind together. The Spirit of love has annulled the separation of Babel; men are once more made brethren by the unity of language.” (p. 281)
The unadulterated and immutable Catholic Faith is the only language that can unite all men of good will. Tragically, the false ecumenism that has thrived since Vatican II distorts the Catholic Faith by trying to fit it to each man’s appetites and misconceptions. In so doing, the ecumenical foundation of the Synodal Church seeks to replace the miracle of Pentecost with the confusion of Babel.
Every Catholic who is serious about trying to oppose the diabolical disorientation spewing from Francis’s Synodal Church must repudiate the false ecumenism upon which it is built. Without this, every other effort to counteract Francis’s destructive efforts is not only destined to fail but will effectively fortify the unholy foundations that made his occupation of the papacy possible. Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us!
