“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in the clothing of sheep, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.” (Matthew 7:15)
Posted on 08/27/2024 8:48:28 AM PDT by ebb tide
“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in the clothing of sheep, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.” (Matthew 7:15)
In the wake of Blase Cupich’s invocation at last week’s Democratic National Convention, some Traditional Catholics have criticized the bishop for hiding his pectoral cross. While the impulse to criticize Cupich is seldom wrong, his scandalous behavior in this particular instance invites us to ask a question that may make us less censorious: do we really mind if heretics like Cupich conceal their supposed Catholic identity? To ask the same question differently, do we really mind if the ravenous wolves abandon the clothing of sheep? To best answer these questions, it is necessary to go back to St. Pius X’s battle against the precursors of today’s ravening wolves.
As we know, St. Pius X condemned the Modernists with his 1907 encyclical, Pascendi Dominici Gregis. In varying degrees, today’s ravening wolves are the philosophical and theological heirs of the Modernists, whom St. Pius X identified as enemies of the Church:
“Though they express astonishment themselves, no one can justly be surprised that We number such men among the enemies of the Church, if, leaving out of consideration the internal disposition of soul, of which God alone is the judge, he is acquainted with their tenets, their manner of speech, their conduct. Nor indeed will he err in accounting them the most pernicious of all the adversaries of the Church. For as We have said, they put their designs for her ruin into operation not from without but from within; hence, the danger is present almost in the very veins and heart of the Church, whose injury is the more certain, the more intimate is their knowledge of her.”
St. Pius X wrote that although only God can judge the internal dispositions of souls, we should consider the Modernists to be "the most pernicious of all the adversaries of the Church.” Then, as now, these enemies are more pernicious because they try to ruin the Church from within.
The devil’s greatest coup in the Vatican II revolution was not inserting heterodox ideas into the Council’s documents (as bad as that was) but persuading some of the best Catholics to defend those heterodox ideas in the name of obedience.
St. Pius X’s encyclical on Modernism is difficult for many of us to understand today but his Oath Against Modernism condemns the same errors in a way that almost all of us can grasp. One passage in particular condemns essentially every error we see from Francis, Cupich, and the rest of today’s ravening wolves:
“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. I also condemn every error according to which, in place of the divine deposit which has been given to the spouse of Christ to be carefully guarded by her, there is put a philosophical figment or product of a human conscience that has gradually been developed by human effort and will continue to develop indefinitely.”
Obviously Francis does not believe this, but it is also evident that the entire Vatican II revolution depends upon a rejection of this clear statement that the truths of the Faith do not evolve to have new meanings. So either St. Pius X was correct, or today’s ravening wolves are correct — they cannot both be correct.
The devil’s greatest coup in the Vatican II revolution was not inserting heterodox ideas into the Council’s documents (as bad as that was) but persuading some of the best Catholics to defend those heterodox ideas in the name of obedience. By defending erroneous notions of ecumenism, religious liberty, collegiality, and ecclesiology, the advocates for Vatican II have effectively taken sides against St. Pius X’s Oath Against Modernism, with predictably disastrous results.
Unfortunately, even those who combat the novelties of Vatican II can still be infected with Modernism to the extent that they do not understand and reject the notion that truth can evolve. This is because both Catholics and Modernists can adhere to the same religious idea, at least superficially. Both, for instance, might believe that women cannot be ordained to the priesthood. A Catholic would believe that this is the case because it is an immutable truth given to us by God. Conversely, the Modernist could believe it is an accurate description of the currently prevailing religious sentiment, which could change as we become “more enlightened.” They are both right about the particular idea — that women cannot become priests — but there is an infinite gap between the way in which the Catholic and Modernist understand the basis for the idea being correct.
Skeptics may deny that this phenomenon truly exists today but the ongoing Synod on Synodality is an irrefutable sign that it does. To illustrate, how many bishops have condemned the Synod on grounds that it is based entirely on the “heretical misrepresentation that dogmas evolve and change from one meaning to another different from the one which the Church held previously”? We hear Catholics criticize the Synod for various bad ideas we have seen since it began in October 2021, but the entire premise of the Synod is diabolical and must be condemned in no uncertain terms. As noted in one of the first Remnant articles on the Synod, Catholics could not accept the Synod even if it managed to restore truly Catholic beliefs and practices:
“Even if the process yielded a church which resembled the Catholic Church during her most glorious years, it would still be sinister because it would be a church created by the consensus of men rather than the authority, wisdom, and love of God.”
Thankfully, the Synod on Synodality does not show any promise of restoring true Catholic belief and practice, so we will not be deceived in this regard. Indeed, we should truly be thankful that the diabolical Synod is so obviously bad because it may lead some souls to finally wake up to see that the enemies about whom St. Pius X warned have been working unopposed for the past sixty years. Francis’s Synod on Synodality has not tremendously increased the amount of anti-Catholic evil in Rome, but it has made that evil more evident to those with eyes to see.
Francis and his Synod on Synodality should be the wake-up call for all Catholics of good will to see that the “wrong-turn” occurred when John XXIII and others effectively rejected St. Pius X’s Oath Against Modernism.
Here we should recall the party that is often left out of these considerations: God. Everything about Modernism offends God because it is an attack on the truth that God entrusted to His Church. Prior to Vatican II, Pius XII and his predecessors tried to honor God by combatting Modernism. John XXIII not only gave up that fight but appointed previously censured Neo-Modernists as Council experts. Taylor Marshall described this travesty in his Infiltration: The Plot to Destroy the Church from Within:
“The engineers of Vatican II were Karl Rahner, Edward Schillebeeckx, Hans Küng, Henri de Lubac, and Yves Congar. All five men were held under suspicion of Modernism under Pius XII.”
Everything that has flowed from this betrayal has been tremendously offensive to God. God does not reward us for insulting Him and rejecting the truth He gives us. In fact, He punishes us when we do that and, in this case, the punishment happens to involve the reality that for sixty years we have had Modernists freely propagating all the evils that St. Pius X tried to prevent.
And so the Synod should wake us up to the need to reject the Vatican II revolution. We need to reject everything about it and we need to expose and oppose those enemies who still carry out the evil Modernist attacks on the Church. Thus, instead of criticizing Cupich for hiding his pectoral cross, perhaps we should applaud him for helping the world recognize that he does not actually represent the Catholic Church other than in his capacity as a deceitful enemy trying to destroy it.
For better or worse, it has become increasingly difficult to assert the need to oppose the Church’s enemies without addressing the claims of the sedevacantists. As noted in a previous article, St. Robert Bellarmine’s defense of the Church against Protestants who argued that Catholics had no recourse against a pope who would try to destroy the Church gives us a truly Catholic rebuttal to the sedevacantist contention that we can solve this problem by having individual Catholics declare that Francis is not the pope:
“I respond: No wonder, if the Church remains without an efficacious human remedy, seeing that its safety does not rest principally upon human industry, but divine protection, since God is its king. Therefore, even if the Church could not depose a Pope, still, it may and must beg the Lord that He would apply the remedy, and it is certain that God has care for its safety, that He would either convert the Pope or abolish him from their midst before he destroys the Church. Nevertheless, it does not follow from here that it is not lawful to resist a Pope destroying the Church; for it is lawful to admonish him while preserving all reverence, and to modestly correct him, even to oppose him with force and arms if he means to destroy the Church.” (De Controversiis, On the Church: On Councils, On the Church Militant, On the Marks of the Church, p. 220)
Who can begin to assert a reasonable Catholic objection to any of this? It is premised entirely on two realities: God is in charge of His Church, and we cannot solve the problem of a heretical pope merely by calling him an anti-pope and not officially removing him from the office he purports to hold. If the Church cannot depose a heretical pope, then Catholics must beg God to intervene. In the meantime, Catholics must oppose the heretic.
In this light, we should encourage Cupich to not only hide his cross but also to stop identifying as a Catholic bishop unless and until he rejects his errors and converts.
Besides, God is evidently permitting all of these evils so that some good can come from them. Those who imagine that the problem is solved in even a minor way by calling Francis an anti-pope seem to miss the reality that almost the entire clergy is infected with the Modernist errors. Francis and his Synod on Synodality should be the wake-up call for all Catholics of good will to see that the “wrong-turn” occurred when John XXIII and others effectively rejected St. Pius X’s Oath Against Modernism. Professor Raymond B. Marcin expressed this as well as possible in a 2018 Remnant article:
“Jesus Himself has told us what must be done, in no uncertain terms, about unfruitful trees, and presumably about unfruitful councils: ‘Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit, shall be cut down, and shall be cast into the fire.’ The simple, yet astonishingly difficult-to-accept, implication is that ‘the clouds, the storms, the darkness’ that even Pope Paul VI saw besetting the Church, and that still beset the Church today (exemplified and multiplied by the once-unthinkable sex scandals), must continue until the Church repudiates all the changes and innovations wrought by the Council participants’ abandonment of their oath-bound obligations to oppose Modernism.”
Why would we expect God to allow us to solve the papacy problem by saying there is no pope when we do not actually address the fundamental (yet easy to understand) evil that has led to all the problems since the Council? First things first: we should do what every Catholic can do by rejecting error, and then perhaps we will find that God intervenes to remedy our problem with the papacy. In this light, we should encourage Cupich to not only hide his cross but also to stop identifying as a Catholic bishop unless and until he rejects his errors and converts. Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us!
Ping
If you are a demonrat, you can’t be a Christian.
Hard to watch a great Church in its death throes while the laity sleeps.
A fish rots from the head down. Catholicism today and many Christian denominations have succumbed to the spirit of this world - in a word, have compromised and even embraced the values of this world.
"For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. " - 2 Timothy 4:3-4
The Catholic church has endure ungodly leaders in its past. The Catholic church has reformed itself when it found itself off course.
May the Holy Spirit burn apostacy from Christ's Church! May the Lord's people put Him above all things and people that attempt to take His place.
"I also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hell will not overpower it." - Matthew 16:18
Or, the lampstand has been removed.
Yes.
But the deluded have indeed been led astray. The organization and awareness of those in the counterrevolution (i.e., the good guys) in the church are much further along than when Vatican 2 was new and the Mass was first said in English here in the 1960s.
To have a Roman Catholic Bishop provide a benign and reassuring invocation to the DNC just past, without severely chastising them for their hardened barbarism and apostasy, is indeed a new low.
One "crying out to Heaven for vengeance." Shame on the Bishop who did it.
No worse then Notre Dame U.in the USA,covering the Crucifix
at their Chapel for a visit from barak huzzain nobama...
Thought that was Georgetown? Or was it both? It definitely happened. Remember Notre Dame honoring Obama.
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