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There can be little doubt the Catholic Church for forty years has been denigrating and rejecting its own past. Rather than affirming the pride former ecclesiastics took in Catholicism's confrontation with its adversaries, the modern Church now apologizes for its own history and gives its enemies fodder for more attacks. This can be attributed to one reason only: a loss of faith in traditional Catholicism itself.

The result is evident everywhere--particularly in the language that theologians now use. There has been a radical change of definitions of essential Catholic terms, for instance--for words such as "Eucharist", or "Sacrament" or "Sacrifice". There is also an official absence among theologians of words like "Hell" or "Heaven" or "soul"; notice how they prefer the use of terms such as "presbyter" for "priest" or "diaconia" for "service" or "eucharist" for "Mass." The very meaning of the word "faith" itself has shifted. It now means a feeling of communion with God, an experience of the divine--and has lost its rational justification grounded in Catholic doctrines. This is why no one in Rome will discuss the New Mass doctrinally with the SSPX and why the Vatican is insisting on "regularization" without any basis in doctrinal agreement--which would reveal its own present course of contradicting Traditional teachings. Kasper pushes this attitude while dealing with the Protestant churches, seeking a unity based on spiritual feelings outside of doctrinal consensus.

Can anyone doubt there is some hidden intention behind these attitudes and changes in verbal usage? Romano Amerio in Iota Unum gives many examples of usages which contravene even essential dogmas of the Church. For instance, he shows how the dogma of the virginity of Mary is qualified in such a way by modern theologians as to negate its actual meaning. He cites J. H. Nicolas in La Virginite de Marie, who states that doubt is possible "not concerning the dogma itself, the dogmatic credentials of which are not contested by anyone, but as to its exact object, which does not necessarily include the miracle of giving birth without rupture of the body." This kind of affirmation-denial double-speak is typical.

The New Mass itself does this in subtle ways. While including Christ's words of Consecration in its Canon, it nevertheless fails to acknowledge the result--the Real Presence of Christ--by any word or rubric. Catholics are urged instead to ignore the Real Presence by not kneeling for Communion and by receiving Communion in the hand. After the actual Consecration, in fact, the missal text immediately--and oddly--shifts its attention away from the Real Presence to Christ's Virtual Presence in the assembly. Add to this the fact that tabernacles have been removed from their central positions in most churches, and it will be clear that something purposeful is happening to traditional Catholic belief in the dogma of Transubstantiation. Nothing has been crudely or overtly denied, it is true, yet this dogma--and others--have been subtley suppressed and the faith of Catholics has been gravely undermined.

But there have also been overt and radical contradictions to traditional Catholic teachings. For instance, Rome now teaches that the Church Christ founded actually only "subsists" in the Catholic Church. The verb "is", which clearly and unambiguously established identity, has been replaced by the verb "subsist"--which means to exist "under something else". This sunders such a clear identity--though the severence is subtle and only those attuned to other modernist subversions would notice. But whatever else and whereever else Christ's Church may be, it is now said to be not precisely the same thing as the Catholic Church, though it is said to exist somehow "fully" in the Catholic Church while at the same time existing in other churches as well. This is a major break with past Catholic teachings.

Other doctrines have shifted. For instance, the Council of Trent's unambiguous insistence that the Mass must never be celebrated primarily as a commemorative meal has been rejected. The Novus Ordo Mass clearly violates this anathema. Likewise, the Lutheran idea of justification is now considered wholly acceptable, whereas before it had been denounced as heretical; likewise the teaching that the Jews need to be converted to Christ and that they have historically rejected the true Messiah. Modern theologians as well as Rome itself reject these traditional teachings.

But there is even something more revolutionary going on. Under Modernism a clear tendency to shift the meaning of Catholicism away from its transcendental goal of supernatural life to a more secularized purpose is consistently evident. The loss of the very idea of dogmatic truth is now not only widespread among the faithful, but it is even defended in theological circles as well. Here, for instance, is the Bishop of Autun, cited by Amerio in his classic study: "Today I state clearly how glad I am to see my Church, which has too often been seen as always sure of itself, the master and judge of all truth, breaking that image in order to pen itself up, to understand, to welcome other people's thinking, to recognize its own limitations, and to carry out at last a 'truth-finding operation'; which is quite a different thing from explaining and defending 'truths.'"

That a Catholic bishop should utter such words is itself astonishing. What is this but an expression of the crisis in the Church's own self-understanding? Hitherto she alone had known herself to be the proprietor of the meanings of Sacred Scripture. Now, having broken her ties with her own sacred tradition, she finds herself one among many other searchers for truth. Here is another modernist theologian, Varillon, in the French Jesuit review Etudes: "Today's faith in its adult state can do without dogmas; it is big enough to be able to discover God by personal contact. Faith should not be founded on revealed truths, but on events unfolding in history."

This is the very essence of modern philosophy--that all truth is relevant and changing--and it is the heart and soul of existential and phenomenological theory. It has led to enormous changes in Biblical exegesis, for instance, even among the scholars of the Pontifical Biblical Institute--which had been the Vatican organ which published its revolutionary theory that there was no need for the Jews to convert. Perhaps the greatest shift of meaning has been to prescind from the historicity of Gospel accounts and to slip into poetic interpretations instead, translating the New Testament into mere spiritual feelings and denying historicity based on factual events. This is Cardinal Kasper's approach to the Resurrection, for instance, and to even Christ's claim to Divinity--that these doctrines must be "spiritually" understood as inspiring, but not necessarily based on historical realities. Despite such openly heretical teachings, however, Kasper was rewarded the cardinalate by JnPII.

So it is not true, as you suppose, that nothing has changed. We are in the midst of a revolution--and it is not yet over. You need to recognize this and decide which side you're on.

Per your request to respond. I think this is the post you were referring to on another thread.

I disagree. The past forty years have been spent soberly examining the Church's past. I reject the notion that any Doctrine has been altered, and the pope affirms and affirms that with every encyclical he issues. The only apologies the Church has offered have been for the excesses that members of the church may have been guilty of. The Church has not apologized for it's Doctrine.

Catholic ecclesiastics continue to confront their adversaries regularly. The bishop of Sacramento's principled stand regarding Gray Davis' support for abortion and Cardinal Arinze's remarks at the Georgetown commencement excercises are but two of the most recent examples. From Leonid Brezhnev to George W. Bush, the pope has a long history of opposing that which is inconsistent with Church Teaching. He has not displayed the timidity you suggest. That anti- Catholicism is alive and well and growing lends creedence to the fact that the Church remains and grows as a moral force and is indeed confrontational.

I don't know why you think that the past was somehow more Catholic acting. For every John Vianney in France, there were perhaps a thousand lazy, cowardly, inarticulate, unmotivated, distracted, undisciplined, poorly educated, worldly clerics just as there are now.

The result is evident everywhere--particularly in the language that theologians now use.

I don't know what the problem is with clarifying definitions and making them accessable to people in rapidly changing cultures. If you are perturbed by theologians, don't read them. The Catholic Catechism should be your definitive guide.

#1328, addresses your qualms about "sacrifice", "eucharist", and "mass". "The inexhaustible richness of this sacrament is expressed in the different names we give it." Inexhaustible richness!

The very meaning of the word "faith" itself has shifted. It now means a feeling of communion with God, an experience of the divine--and has lost its rational justification grounded in Catholic doctrines.

I'll take your word for it, but rather than say shifted, why not expanded? Don't the saints "experience the divine?" Are we not called to be saints? Is not an ever greater knowlege of God desirable?

This is why no one in Rome will discuss the New Mass doctrinally with the SSPX and why the Vatican is insisting on "regularization" without any basis in doctrinal agreement--which would reveal its own present course of contradicting Traditional teachings.

My sense is that there is nothing to discuss Doctrinally. The Vatican's position is since there has been no Doctinal change, there is no Doctrinal change to discuss. I think that will prove to be the stumbling block for the poor souls mired in the schism. I mean, how do you discuss a delusional proposition? It would be absurd to treat these claims as true. Impossible for the Church of Truth to take them seriously. I think it important to examine why the Church does not need to discuss these allegations. Either the Church is wrong or the SSPX is wrong.

Maybe more later.