Heresy and Liberalism

Liberalism is a heresy in the doctrinal order because heresy is the formal and obstinate denial of all Christian dogmas in general. It repudiates dogma altogether and substitutes opinion, whether that opinion be doctrinal or the negation of doctrine. Consequently, it denies every doctrine in particular. If we were to examine in detail all the doctrines or dogmas which, within the range of Liberalism, have been denied, we would find every Christian dogma in one way or another rejected--from the dogma of the Incarnation to that of Infallibility.

"Nonetheless Liberalism is in itself dogmatic; and it is in the declaration of its own fundamental dogma, the absolute independence of the individual and the social reason, that it denies all Christian dogmas in general. Catholic dogma is the authoritative declaration of revealed truth--or a truth consequent upon Revelation--by its infallibly constituted exponent [the Pope]. This logically implies the obedient acceptance of the dogma on the part of the individual and of society. Liberalism refuses to acknowledge this rational obedience and denies the authority. It asserts the sovereignty of the individual and social reason and enthrones Rationalism in the seat of authority. It knows no dogma except the dogma of self-assertion. Hence it is heresy, fundamental and radical, the rebellion of the human intellect against God."

"When we come to the practical order, Liberalism is radical immorality. Morality requires a standard and a guide for rational action; it postulates a hierarchy of ends, and therefore of order, within whose series there is a subordination of means to the attainment of an ultimate purpose. It therefore requires a principle or fundamental rule of all action, by which the subject of moral acts, the rational creature, determines his course and guides himself to the attainment of his end. In the moral order, the Eternal Reason alone can be that principle or fundamental rule of action, and this Eternal Reason is God. In the moral order, the created reason, with power to determine its course, must guide itself by the light of the Uncreated Reason, Who is the beginning and end of all things. The law, therefore, imposed by the Eternal Reason upon the creature must be the principle or rule of morality. Hence, obedience and submission in the moral order is an absolute requisite of morality. But Liberalism has proclaimed the absurd principle of the absolute sovereignty of human reason; it denies any reason beyond itself and asserts its independence in the order of knowledge, and hence in the order of action or morality. Here we have morality without law, without order, freedom to do what one pleases, or what comes to the same thing, morality which is not morality, for morality implies the idea not only of direction, but also essentially demands that of restraint and limitation under the control of law. Liberalism in the order of action is license, recognizing no principle or rule beyond itself."

"But its most fatal shaft is in its plea for "liberality of mind." This, in its own eyes, is its cardinal virtue. "Intellectual freedom from dogmatism" is its boast, a boast in reality the mask of ignorance and pride. To meet such an enemy requires no ordinary courage, which must be guarded by a sleepless vigilance. When encountered, it is obligatory upon the Catholic conscience to resist it with all the powers of the soul. Heresy and all its works are sins; Liberalism is the root of heresy, the tree of evil in whose branches all the harpies of infidelity find ample shelter; it is today the evil of all evils."
(Liberalism is a Sin, Ch. 3)

"In this latter case, sin against faith, so grave in itself, acquires that degree of gravity which constitutes heresy. It then contains all the malice of infidelity and becomes an express protestation against the teachings of faith or an express adherence to a teaching which is condemned as false and erroneous by the Faith itself. Besides the deadly sin against faith itself, it is accompanied by hardness of heart, obstinacy, and the proud preference for one's own reason over the reason of God Himself. Hence, heretical doctrines--and works inspired by them--constitute the greatest of all sins, with the exception of formal hatred against God, of which only the demons in Hell and the damned are capable. Liberalism, then, which is heresy, and all the works of Liberalism, which are heretical works, are the gravest sins known in the code of the Christian law." (Liberalism is a Sin, Ch. IV)

Communism & Woman

by MSGR. FULTON J. SHEEN

The proudest boast of Communism is that it has finally emancipated the woman. Marx writes: "Differences of age and sex have no longer any distinctive social validity. All are instruments of labor." The key word here is instrument which reduces a human being to the dignity of a monkey wrench. The assumption was that woman was free as soon as she became available for production. One of the paradoxes of our irrational world is that woman today is glorified when she produces an Atomic Bomb, but not when she can produce life. It is like praising violinists for producing sewer pipes instead of melodies. At the very beginning of the Communist Revolution in Russia a decree was passed declaring that all women between the ages of seventeen and thirty-two became the property of the State, and that the rights of husbands were abolished (Novaia Zhizn, No. 54, 1918 p. 2). In keeping with the idea that liberation means working in a factory rather than in a home, we read in a Soviet book published in 1935: "Women's labor has become one of the main sources from which industry could draw fresh supplies of workers. During the earlier years of the first Five Year Plan [in Russia], there were about six million housewives in the towns (Shaburova, Woman is a Great Power, 1935 edition, p. 32)." The women refused to accept what the Communists called "the emancipation for women from depressing domestic atmosphere" but they were ultimately forced into "emancipation" and began working in mines, sewers, and in the manipulation of pneumatic drills. This idea of the emancipation of women through industrialization is not altogether a Communist idea, but like many others has been derived from Western bourgeois capitalistic civilization which thought of the liberation of woman in terms of equality with men. The only difference is that the Communist merely carried the idea to its logical extreme, and if it scandalizes us now it is because our bourgeois world never understood the full implication of its error. The two basic errors of both Communism and a capitalistic liberal civilization on this subject were: 1) Women were never emancipated until modern times. Religion particularly kept them in servitude; 2) Equality means the right of a woman to do a man's work. First, it is not true that women began to be emancipated in modern times and in direct proportion to the decline of religion. The fact is that woman's subjection began in the seventeenth century with the break-up of Christendom and took on a positive form at the time of the Industrial Revolution. Under the Christian civilization women enjoyed rights, privileges, honors and dignities which have since been swallowed up by the machine age. In eighty-five Guilds in England during the Middle Ages, seventy-two had women members on an equal basis with men in such professions as barbers and sailors. They were probably just as outspoken as men because one of the rules of the Guilds was that "the sister as well as the brethren" may not engage in disorderly or contumacious debates. In Paris there were fifteen guilds reserved exclusively for women, while eighty of the Parisian guilds were mixed. Nothing is more erroneous historically than the belief that it was our modern age which recognized women in the professions. The records of these Christian times reveal the names of thousands upon thousands of women who influenced society and whose names are now enrolled in the catalogue of saints, Catherine of Sienna [a woman] alone leaving eleven large volumes of her writings. Up until the seventeenth century in England, women functioned in business perhaps even more than today. In fact, so many were in business that it was provided by law that the husband should not be responsible for her debts. Between 1553 and 1640 ten percent of the publishing in England was done by women. Because the homes did their own weaving, cooking and laundry it has been estimated that women in pre-industrial days were producing half the goods required by society. In the Middle Ages women were as well educated as men and it was not until the seventeenth century that women were barred from education. Then at the time of the Industrial Revolution all the activities and freedom of women were curtailed as the machine took over the business of production and men moved into the factory. As these disabilities continued woman felt the loss of her freedom, and rightly so, because she felt she had been hurt by man who robbed her of her legal rights, and she fell into the error of believing that she ought to proclaim herself the equal of man, forgetful that a certain superiority was already hers because of her functional difference from man. Equality then came to mean negatively, the destruction of all privileges enjoyed by specific persons or classes, and positively, as absolute and unconditioned sex equality with all men. This brings us to the second error in the bourgeois-capitalistic theory of women, namely, the failure to make distinction between mathematical and proportional equality. Mathematical equality implies exactness of remuneration; for example, two men who work at the same job at the same factory should receive equal pay. Proportional equality means that each should receive his pay according to his function. In a family, for example, all children should be cared for by the parents, but it does not mean that because sixteen year old Mary gets an evening gown with an organdy trim the parents should give seventeen year old Johnnie the same thing. Women in seeking to regain some of the rights and privileges they had in Christian civilization thought of equality in mathematical terms or in terms of sex. Feeling themselves overcome by a monster called "man" they identified freedom and equality with the right to do a man's job. All the psychological, social and other advantages which were peculiar to women were ignored until the inanities of the bourgeois world reached their climax in Communism where a woman was emancipated the moment she went to work in a mine. The result has been that woman's imitation of man and her flight from motherhood has developed neuroses and psychoses which have reached alarming proportions. The Christian civilization never stressed equality in a mathematical sense, but only in the proportional sense, for equality is wrong when it makes the woman a poor imitation of man. Once she became man's mathematical equal, he no longer stood when she came into a room, no longer gave her a seat in a bus, and no longer took off his hat in an elevator. The other day in a New York subway a man gave a woman his seat and she fainted. When she was revived she thanked him, and he fainted. Modern woman has been made equal with man, but she has not been made happy. She has been emancipated from a clock and thereby no longer free to swing, or as a flower has been emancipated from its roots, only to wither and die. She has been cheapened in her search for mathematical equality in two ways: by becoming a victim to man by becoming only the instrument of his pleasure, ministering to his needs in a sterile exchange of egotism. A victim to the machine by subordinating the creative principle of life to the production of non-living things, which is the essence of Communism. This is not a condemnation of a professional woman, because the important question is not whether a woman finds favor in the eyes of a man, but whether she can satisfy the basic instincts of womanhood. If it were the man that made a difference to a woman and all that wifehood and motherhood entail, then the least womanly of all women would be found in convents. The fact is, however, that nowhere else are more normal and certainly happier women to be found on this earth. One might add also, that nowhere else are there so many young women, for a peculiar quality about the spiritual life is that it keeps a woman young. Cosmetics, mud baths, sneezeless soaps are lacking, but they manage to keep young and unwrinkled because they are at peace. What makes the difference in woman is not therefore a man, but whether a certain God-given qualities which are specifically hers are given adequate and full expression. These qualities are principally, devotion, sacrifice and love. They need not necessarily be expressed in a family, or even in a convent. They can find an outlet in the social world, in the care of the sick, the poor, the ignorant —in a word— in the seven corporal works of mercy. It is sometimes said that the professional woman is hard. This may in a few instances be true, but it is not because she is in a profession, but because she has alienated her profession from contact with human beings in a way to satisfy the deeper cravings of her heart. It may very well be that the revolt against morality, and the exaltation of sensuous pleasure as the purpose of life, are due to the loss of the spiritual fulfillment of existence. Having been frustrated and disillusioned, such souls first become bored, then cynical, and finally, suicidal. Wherein lies the solution? In a return to the Christian concept wherein stress is placed not on equality but equity.

Equality is law. It is mathematical, abstract, universal, indifferent to conditions, circumstances and differences. Equity is love, mercy, understanding, sympathy — consideration of details, appeals, and departures from the fixed rules of courts which law has not yet embraced. Applying this to women, we are saying that equity rather than equality should be the basis of all the claims of women. It goes beyond equality by claiming superiority in certain aspects of life. Equity is the perfection of equality, not a substitute. It has the advantages of recognizing the specific difference between man and woman, which equality does not have. As a matter of fact, they are not equal in sex; they are quite unequal, and it is only because they are unequal that they complement [complete] one another. The violin and the bow are not equal. Each has a superiority of function. Man and woman are equal inasmuch as they have the same rights and liberties, the same final goal of life and both have been redeemed by the Blood of Our Divine Savior -- but they are different in function. It is that truth which solves the problem. One of the greatest of the Old Testament stories reveals this difference. While the Jews were under Persian captivity, Aman, the prime minister of King Assuerus, asked his master to slay the Jews because they obeyed the law of God rather than the Persian law. When the order went out that the Jews were to be massacred, Esther was asked to approach the wicked King and plead for her people. There was a law that no one should enter the King's presence under the penalty of death, unless the King extended his scepter as a permission to approach the throne. That was the law. But Esther said: "I will go in to the King, against the law, not being called, and expose myself to death and to danger (Esther 4: 6)." Esther fasted an prayed and then approached the throne. Would the scepter be lowered? The King held tout the golden scepter, and Esther drew near and kissed the top of it, and the King said to her: "What wilt thou, Queen Esther? What is thy request? (Esther 5:3)." This story has been interpreted through the Christian ages as meaning that God will reserve to Himself the reign of justice and law, but to Mary, His Mother will be given the reign of mercy. During the Christian ages, Our Blessed Mother bore a title which has been forgotten, but it is revived in two modern non-Catholic writers, Henry Adams and Mary R. Beard. Adams described the Lady of Equity in the Cathedral of Chartres. Over the main altar sits the Virgin Mary, the Lady of Equity, with the Holy Child on her knees, presiding over the courts, listening serenely to pleas for mercy in behalf of their sins. As Mary Beard beautifully put it: "The Virgin signified to the people moral, human or humane power, as against the stern mandates of God's law." And we might add, this is the woman's special glory — mercy, pity, understanding, intuition of human needs, call it anything you please. When women step down from the role of the Lady of Equity and her prototype Esther, and insist only on equality, they lose their greatest opportunity to change the world. Law has broken down today. Jurists no longer believe in a Divine Judge behind Law. Obligations are no longer sacred. Even peace is based upon the power of Three Nations rather than on the Justice of God. Shall women, in this day of the collapse of justice equate themselves with men in rigid exactness, or shall they rally to Equity, to mercy and love and give to a cruel and lawless world something that equality cannot give? Whence shall come a devotion to causes, if women who are capable of greater devotion than men, insist on a cold equality? How shall wars be stopped and the taking of young life, if women, like men, trust only in law? If women recognized the truth hidden in the Lady of Equity, love might be restored to homes and families. The reason there is little love now is because in the human order there is never any love between equals. There may be justice, but no affection. If man is the equal of woman, then she has rights, but, what heart ever lived on rights? All love demands inequality or superiority. The lover is always on his knees, the beloved must always be on a pedestal. Whether it be man or woman, the one must always consider himself or herself as undeserving of the other. Even God humbled Himself in His Love to win man, saying He came not to be ministered unto, but to minister. And man, in his turn approaches that loving Savior in Communion with the words: "Lord, I am not worthy." Not then because women enter professions do some harden and become frustrated. Professional careers do not of themselves defeminize women; otherwise the Church would not have raised political women to sainthood, as was the case with St. Elizabeth and St. Clotilde. The cause of tragedy in woman today is that by stressing equality, they have lost those specifically feminine qualities which have given her superiority of function. These qualities are devotedness and creativeness. No woman is happy unless she has someone for whom she can sacrifice herself, not in a servile way but in the way of love. Added to the devotedness is her love of creativeness. A man is afraid of dying, but a woman is afraid of not living. Life to a man is personal; life to a woman is otherness. She thinks less in terms of perpetuation of self and more in terms of perpetuation of others — so much so that in devotedness she is willing to sacrifice herself for others. To the extent that a career gives no opportunity for either she becomes de-feminized. If these qualities cannot be given an outlet in a home and a family, they can nevertheless find other substitutions in works of charity, in the defense of virtuous living, in the defense of right as other Claudias when their political husbands as Pilates rely only on expediency, then her work as a money earner becomes a prelude and a condition for the display of equity which is her greatest glory. The level of any civilization is the level of its womanhood. This is because there is a basic difference between knowing and loving. In knowing something you bring it down to the level of your understanding. But in loving we always go up to meet the demand of the one loved. If you love music you have to submit to its laws and disciplines. When man loves woman, it follows the nobler the woman the nobler the love; the higher the demands by the woman, the more worthy a man must be. That is why a woman is the measure of the level of our civilization. It is for our age to decide whether woman shall claim equality in sex and the right to work at the same lathe, or whether she will claim equity and give to the world that which no man can give. In these pagan [irreligious] days when women want to be only equal with men, they have lost respect. In Christian days when men were strongest, woman was respected. As the author of Mont. St. Michel puts it: "The twelfth and thirteenth centuries were a period when men were at their strongest; never before or since have they shown equal energy in such varied directions, or such intelligence in the direction of their energy; yet these marvels of history — these Plantagenets; these Scholastic philosophers; these architects of Rheims and Amiens; these Innocents, and Robin Hoods, and Marco Polos; these crusaders who planted their enormous fortresses all over the Levant; these monks who made the wastes and barrens yield harvests — all, without apparent exception, bowed down before the woman. Explain it how you will! Men rushed like sheep to escape the butcher, and were driven to Mary; only too happy in finding protection and hope in a being who could understand the language they talked, and the excuses they had to offer . . ." As Abelard said of her: "After the Trinity you are our only hope . . . you are placed there as our advocate; all of us who fear the wrath of the Judge, fly to the Judge's mother who is logically compelled to intercede for us and stands in the place of a mother to the guilty." To the Lady of Equity once again modern women must look, as even those who have the Faith must see fulfilled in her those spiritual functions which no priest can perform; queen, mother and woman. If woman wants to be ever a revolutionist , then the Lady is her guide for she sang the most revolutionary song ever written — The Magnificat, the burden of which was the abolition of principalities and powers, and the exaltation of the humble. She breaks the shell of woman's isolation from the world and puts woman back into the wide ocean of humanity as she who is the Cosmopolitan Woman gives the Cosmopolitan Man, for which giving all generations shall call her blessed. But she was the inspiration to womanhood, not because She claimed there was equality in sex, for peculiarly enough this was the one equality she ignored, but because of a transcendence in function which made her superior to a man inasmuch as she could encompass a man, as Isaias foretold. Great men we need like Saint Paul with a two-edged sword to cut away the bonds that tie down the energies of the world, and men like Saint Peter who will let the broad stroke of their challenge ring out on the shield of the world's hypocrisy, and great men like Saint John who with a loud voice will arouse men from the sleek dream of unheroic repose. But we need woman still more; women like Mary of Cleophas who will raise sons to lift up white hosts to a Heavenly Father; women like Saint Magdalene who will take hold of the tangled skeins of a seemingly wrecked and ruined life and weave out of them the beautiful tapestry of saintliness and holiness; and women, above all, like Mary, the Lady of Equity, who will leave the lights and glamours of the world for the shades and shadows of the Cross where saints are made. When women of this kind return to save a world with equity, then we shall toast them, we shall salute them not as the modern woman, once our superior now our equal, but as the Christian woman — closest to the Cross on Good Friday, and first at the tomb on Easter Morning. God loves you!

[Taken from]

Characters of the Intervention: Ottaviani

Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani was the principle signer and revisor of the critical study of the New Mass, which he and Cardinal Bacci were to present to Paul VI against the Protestant New Mass. Alfredo was a man of achievement, being educated at the Pontifical Roman Seminary and the Pontifical Roman Athenaeum S. Apollinare, graduating a doctor in philosophy, theology, and canon law, and was ordained on 18 March, 1916. Pope Pius XII delegated Ottaviani the positions of Pro-Secretary of the Holy Office and created Cardinal Deacon of Santa Maria on 12, January, 1953, and six years later Fr. Ottaviani was made Secretary of the Holy Office of the Roman Curia during which time he signed the decree of excommunication against Fr. Feeney [not surprising, concerning his views on religious tolerance]. On April 19, 1962, Alfredo Ottaviani was consecrated to the bishopric by Angelo Roncalli, Giuseppe Cardinal Pizzardo, and Benedetto Cardinal Aloisi Masella and was appointed Titular Archbishop of Berrhoea.

During the second Vatican Council Ottaviani was a principle character and associate of the conservative party of bishops, including Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, CSSp, critical of the changes that were taking place. Cardinal Ottaviani was also a present elector participating in the 1963 papal conclave, which elected Giovanni Cardinal Montini as Paul VI, and, on June 30 as Protodeacon, he announced Montini's election and crowned him with the triregnum.

Two years later Ottaviani was named Pro-Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, formerly the Holy Office, which he resigned on January 6, 1968, and, one year later he presented, with the support of Cardinal Bacci, the revised letter, translated by Fr. Guerard Des Lauriers, of the cardinals and theologians, critical of the novus ordo missae, to Paul VI, now known as the Ottaviani Intervention.

Photographs of Saint John Bosco

What a blessing from God it is to have actual photographs recording the holy images of certain saints from the previous two centuries.

Don Bosco is a perfect example of one of those saints.

Those who have read any of the lives of Don Bosco know well the stories of his boys confessions to him.

Invincible Ignorance Does Not Save

Invincible or Inculpable Ignorance Neither Saves nor Damns a Person

by Father Michael Müller, C.Ss.R.

(excerpted from The Catholic Dogma)

"But, suppose", some one will say, "a person, in his inculpable ignorance, believes that he is on the right road to Heaven, though he is not a Catholic; he tries his best to live up to the dictates of his conscience. Now, should he die in that state of belief, he would, it seems, be condemned without his fault. We can understand that God is not bound to give Heaven to anybody, but, as He is just, He certainly cannot condemn anybody without his fault."
Whatever question may be made still in regard to the great truth, in question is sufficiently answered in the explanation already given of this great truth4. For the sake of greater clearness, however, we will answer a few more questions. In the answers to these questions we shall be obliged to repeat what has already been said.

Now, as to the question just proposed, we answer with St. Thomas and St. Augustine: "There are many things which a man is obliged to do, but which he cannot do without the help of divine grace: as, for instance, to love God and his neighbor, and to believe the articles of faith; but he can do all this with the help of grace; and 'to whomsoever God gives His grace He gives it out of Divine Mercy: and to whomsoever He does not give it, He refuses it out of divine justice, in punishment of sin committed, or at least in punishment of original sin," as St. Augustine says. (Lib. de correptione et gratia, c. 5 et 6; Sum. 22. q. ii art. v.) "And the ignorance of these things of salvation, the knowledge of which men did not care to have, is, without doubt, a sin for them; but for those who were not able to acquire such knowledge, the want of it is a punishment for their sins", says St. Augustine; hence both are justly condemned, and neither the one nor the other has a just excuse for being lost." (Epist. ad Sixtum, Edit. Maur. 194, cap. vi., n. 27.)
Moreover, a person who wants to go east, but, by an innocent mistake, gets on a train going west, will, as soon as he finds out his mistake, get off at the next station, and take a train that goes east. In like manner, a person who walked on a road that he, in his inculpable ignorance, believed was the true road to Heaven, must leave that road, as soon as he finds out his mistake, and inquire for the true road to Heaven. God, in His infinite mercy, will not fail to make him find out, in due time, the true road to Heaven, if he corresponds to His grace. Hence we asked the following question in our Familiar Explanation:

"What are we to think of the salvation of those who are out of the pale of the Church without any fault of theirs, and who never had any opportunity to know better?"

To this question we give the following answer:

"Their inculpable (invincible) ignorance will not save them; but if they fear God and live up to their conscience, God, in His infinite mercy, will furnish them with the necessary means of salvation, even so as to send, if needed, an angel to instruct them in the Catholic Faith, rather than let them perish through inculpable ignorance." (St. Thomas Aquinas)

Liberal Objections

S. O. remarks about this answer, "that the author is not theologically correct, for no one will ever be punished through, by, or because of inculpable ignorance." In these words, S. O. impudently imputes to us what we never have asserted, namely, that a man will be damned on account of his inculpable ignorance. From the fact that a person tries to live up to the dictates of his conscience, and cannot sin against the true religion on account of being invincibly ignorant of it, many have drawn the false conclusion that such a person is saved, or, in other words, is in the state of sanctifying grace, making thus invincible ignorance a means of salvation. This conclusion is contra "latius hos quam permissæ". To give an example. Rev. Nicholas Russo, S. J., professor of philosophy in Boston College, says in his book, The True Religion and its Dogmas:
"This good faith being supposed, we say that such a Christian (he means a baptized Protestant) is in a way a member of the Catholic Church. Ignorance alone is the cause of his not acknowledging the authority of his true mother. The Catholic Church does not look upon him as wholly a stranger; she calls him her child; she presses him to her maternal heart; through other hands she prepares him to shine in the kingdom of Heaven. Yes, the profession of a creed different from the true one will not, of itself, bar the gates of Heaven before this Christian; invincible ignorance will, before the tribunal of the just God, ensure the pardon of his errors against faith; and, if nothing else be wanting, Heaven will be his home for eternity."
We have already sufficiently refuted these false assertions, and we have quoted them, not for the purpose of refuting them, but for the purpose of denying emphatically what follows after these false assertions, namely:

"This is the doctrine held by almost all theologians, and has received the sanction of our late Pope Pius IX. In his allocution of December 9, 1854, we read the following words: 'It is indeed of faith that no one can be saved outside the Apostolic Roman Church; that this Church is the one ark of salvation; that he who has not entered it will perish in the deluge. But, on the other hand, it is equally certain that, were a man to be invincibly ignorant of the true religion, he would not be held guilty in the sight of God for not professing it.' "

The True Teaching of Pius IX

Now, in which of these words of Pope Pius IX is any of the above false assertions of the Rev. N. Russo, S. J., sanctioned? In which words does Pius IX say that a Protestant in good faith is in a way a member of the Catholic Church? Does not Pius IX teach quite the contrary in the following words:

"Now, whoever will carefully examine and reflect upon the condition of the various religious societies, divided among themselves, and separated from the Catholic Church -- which, from the days of Our Lord Jesus Christ and His Apostles, has ever exercised, by its lawful pastors, and still does exercise, the divine power committed to it by this same Lord -- will easily satisfy himself that none of these societies, singly nor all together, are in any way or form that one Catholic Church which our Lord founded and built, and which He chose should be; and that he cannot by any means say that these societies are members or parts of that Church, since they are visibly separate from Catholic unity ...

"Let all those, then, who do not profess the unity and truth of the Catholic Church, avail themselves of the opportunity of this (Vatican) Council, in which the Catholic Church, to which their forefathers belonged, affords a new proof of her close unity and her invincible vitality, and let them satisfy the longings of their hearts, and liberate themselves from that state in which they cannot have any assurance of their own salvation. Let them unceasingly offer fervent prayers to the God of Mercy, that He will throw down the wall of separation, that He will scatter the darkness of error, and that He will lead them back to the Holy Mother Church, in whose bosom their fathers found the salutary pastures of life, in whom alone the whole doctrine of Jesus Christ is preserved and handed down, and the mysteries of heavenly grace dispensed."
Now does not Pius IX say in these words, very plainly and distinctly, that the "members of all other religious societies are visibly separated from Catholic unity; that in this state of separation they cannot have salvation; that, by fervent prayer, they should beseech God to throw down the wall of separation, to scatter the darkness of error, and lead them to the Mother Church, in which alone salvation is found."

And in his Allocution to the Cardinals, held Dec. 17, 1847, Pius IX says: "Let those, therefore, who wish to be saved, come to the pillar and the ground of faith, which is the Church; let them come to the true Church of Christ, which, in her bishops, and in the Roman Pontiff, the Chief Head of all, has the succession of apostolical Authority, which has never been interrupted, which has never counted anything of greater importance than to preach, and by all means to keep and defend the doctrine proclaimed by the Apostles at Christ's command ... We shall never at any time abstain from any cares or labors that, by the grace of Christ Himself, we may bring those who are ignorant, and who are going astray, to THlS ONLY ROAD OF TRUTH and SALVATION.'' Now does not Pius IX teach most clearly in these words that the ignorant cannot be saved by their ignorance, but that, in order to be saved they must come to the only road of truth and salvation, which is the Roman Catholic Church.

Again, does not Pius IX most emphatically declare, in the words quoted above by the Rev. N. Russo, S. J., that "It is indeed of faith, that NO ONE can be saved out of the Apostolic Roman Church?" How, then, we ask, can the Rev. N. Russo, S. J. say in truth, that a Protestant in good faith, such as he described, is in a way a member of the Catholic Church? That the Catholic Church does not look upon him as wholly a stranger? That she calls him her child, presses him to her maternal heart, prepares him, through other hands to shine in the kingdom of God? That the profession of a creed different from the true one will not, of itself, bar the gates of Heaven before this Christian, etc.? How can this professor of philosophy at the Boston College assert all this, whilst Pius IX teaches the very contrary? And mark especially the scandalous assertion of the Rev. N. Russo, S. J., namely: "This our opinion is the doctrine which has received the sanction of our late Pope Pius IX" To prove his scandalous assertion, he quotes the following words of Pius IX: "It is equally certain that, were a man to be invincibly ignorant of the true religion, he would not be held guilty in the sight of God for not professing it."
If, in these words, Pius IX says what no one calls in question, that invincible ignorance of the true religion excuses a Protestant from the sin of heresy, does Pius IX thereby teach that such invincible ignorance saves such a Protestant? Does he teach that invincible ignorance supplies all that is necessary for salvation -- all that you can have only in the true faith? How could the Professor of philosophy at the Jesuit College in Boston draw such a false and scandalous conclusion from premises in which it is not contained?

Pius IX has, on many occasions, condemned such liberal opinions. Read his Allocution to the Cardinals, held Dec. 17, 1847, in which he expresses his indignation against all those who had said that he had sanctioned such perverse opinions. "In our times", says he, "many of the enemies of the Catholic Faith direct their efforts towards placing every monstrous opinion on the same level with the doctrine of Christ, or confounding it therewith; and so they try more and more to propagate that impious system of the indifference of religions. But quite recently -- we shudder to say it certain men have not hesitated to slander us by saying that we share in their folly, favor that most wicked system, and think so benevolently of every class of mankind as to suppose that not only the sons of the Church, but that the rest also, however alienated from Catholic unity they may remain, are alike in the way of salvation, and may arrive at everlasting life. We are at a loss, from horror, to find words to express our detestation of this new and atrocious injustice that is done to us."

Mark well, Pius IX uttered these solemn words against "certain men'', whom he calls the enemies of the Catholic Faith, -- he means liberal minded Catholics and priests, as is evident from other Allocutions, in which he says that he has condemned not less than forty times their perverse opinions about religion. Is it not, for instance, a perverse and monstrous opinion, when the Rev. N. Russo, S. J., says: "The spiritual element (of the Church) comprises all the graces and virtues that are the foundation of the spiritual life; it includes the gifts of the Holy Ghost; in other words, it is what theologians call the soul of the Church. (Now follows the monstrous opinion) This mysterious soul is not limited by the bounds of the exterior organization (of the Church); it can go far beyond; exist even in the midst of schism and heresy unconsciously professed, and bind to our Lord hearts that are connected by no exterior ties with the visible Body of the Church. This union with the soul of the Church is essential to salvation; so essential that without it none can be saved. But the necessity of belonging likewise to the Body of the Church, though a real one, may in certain cases offer no obstacle to salvation. This happens whenever invincible ignorance so shrouds a man's intellectual vision, that he ceases to be responsible before God for the light which he does not see?" The refutation of this monstrous opinion is sufficiently given in all we have said before. The very Allocution of Pius IX, from which the Rev. N. Russo quotes, is a direct condemnation of such monstrous opinions.
Now these modern would-be theologians are not ashamed to assure us most solemnly that their opinions are the doctrine held by almost all theologians, and yet they cannot quote one proof from Holy Scripture, or from the writings of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, to give the least support to their opinions.

The Rev. N. Russo and S. O. seem not to see the difference between saying: Inculpable ignorance will not save a man, and inculpable ignorance will not damn a man. Each assertion is correct, and yet there is a great difference between the two. It will be an act of charity to enlighten them on the point in question.

Neither Saves nor Condemns

Inculpable or invincible ignorance has never been and will never be a means of salvation. To be saved, it is necessary to be justified, or to be in the state of sanctifying grace. In order to obtain sanctifying grace, it is necessary to have the proper dispositions for justification; that is, true divine faith in at least the necessary truths of salvation, confident hope in the divine Savior, sincere sorrow for sin, together with the firm purpose of doing all that God has commanded, etc. Now, these supernatural acts of faith, hope, charity, contrition, etc., which prepare the soul for receiving sanctifying grace, can never be supplied by invincible ignorance; and if invincible ignorance cannot supply the preparation for receiving sanctifying grace, much less can it bestow sanctifying grace itself. "Invincible ignorance", says St. Thomas Aquinas, "is a punishment for sin". (De Infid. q. x., art. 1.) It is, then, a curse, but not a blessing or a means of salvation.
But if we say that inculpable ignorance cannot save a man, we thereby do not say that invincible ignorance damns a man. Far from it. To say, invincible ignorance is no means of salvation, is one thing; and to say, invincible ignorance is the cause of damnation, is another. To maintain the latter would be wrong, for inculpable ignorance of the fundamental principles of faith excuses a heathen from the sin of infidelity, and a Protestant from the sin of heresy; because such invincible ignorance, being only a simple involuntary privation, is no sin.
Hence Pius IX said "that, were a man to be invincibly ignorant of the true religion, such invincible ignorance would not be sinful before God; that, if such a person should observe the precepts of the Natural Law and do the will of God to the best of his knowledge, God, in His infinite mercy, may enlighten him so as to obtain eternal life; for, the Lord, who knows the heart and thoughts of man, will, in His infinite goodness, not suffer any one to be lost forever without his own fault."

Termites in the Woodwork

I picked this up from another site and it is very revealing regarding the prevalent in the Church after Vatican II, and I thought it prudent to bring this to light here at VITW for all of those interested in why there has been such a move towards modernism in recent years.



AA-1025 - The Memoirs of an Anti-Apostle


In the 1960's, a French Catholic nurse, Marie Carre, attended an auto-crash victim who was brought into her hospital in a city she purposely does not name. The man lingered there near death for a few hours and then died. He had no identification on him, but he had a briefcase in which there was a set of quasi-biographical notes. She kept these notes and read them, and because of their extraordinary content, decided to publish them. The result is this little book, AA-1025—The Memoirs of an Anti-Apostle, about a Communist who purposely entered the Catholic priesthood (along with many, many others) with the intent to subvert and destroy the Church from within. This little book, his strange yet fascinating and illuminating set of biographical notes, tells of his commission to enter the priesthood, his various experiences in the seminary, and the means and methods he used and promoted to help effect from within the auto-dissolution of the Catholic Church.


The Confessions of a Communist Agent On The Attempt to Destroy the Roman Catholic Church from Within

I. Introduction.

This is the story of a Communist agent who infiltrated into the Catholic Church in 1938, went to the Seminary, became a Priest who wielded enormous power behind the scene, participated in the Second Vatican Council, and without the intervention of Pope Paul VI himself he would have destroyed its works. He succeeded, however, in fostering the adoption of ambiguous Council documents which laid the ground work for future experiments by unsuspecting Prelates and Priests. These experiments based on the "Spirit of the Council" are destroying the 2,000-year Traditions of the Church, leading the Catholic faithful on the road to the Great Apostasy, and preparing the Church for the election of the Anti-Pope and for the reception of the coming Anti-Christ. He stated: "'The Spirit of the Council' has become for me a master-trump." The reader should observe that many harmful changes that the agent proposed have been implemented, some in direct disobedience to the the Pope, at the local dioceses throughout the world.

This agent had no name, only a code number AA-1025 given by the Russian Secret Police, meaning the Anti-Apostle number 1025. There had been 1024 agents like him before him. By now there must have been at least several thousands of them in the Catholic Church. Some must have risen to the rank of Archbishop and Cardinal, many of whom could have been heads of Departments in the Curia (Papal government) and religious Congregations. No wonder the 2000-year Traditions of the Church are being slowly demolished and replaced by heresies like Modernism, Arianism, Pelagian, Protestantism, Atheism, Liberation Theology. Nevertheless, Our Lord stated: "Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." (Matthew 16:18).

Further, Our Lord promised: "Behold, I am with you all days, even unto the consummation of the world." (Matthew 28:20). This should be understood literally, i.e. Our Lord Jesus Christ is living really and truly among the Catholic faithfull in His Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity every day on the Altar in the Mass and in all Tabernacles until the end of the world, even during the persecution of the Church by the Anti-Christ. One can cite many Eucharistic miracles throughout centuries to prove this. One of the most famous miracles if that of Lanciano, Italy in 8th century. There, the Host turned into flesh and wine blood. The Eucharistic flesh of Lanciano was examined by Dr. Linoli and Dr. Bertelli in Siena, Italy in 1971. They concluded that the flesh was striated muscular tissue of the myocardium (heart wall) of human origin, and the blood was of type AB. (cf. Joan Carroll Cruz, Eucharistic Miracles, Rockford, Illinois: Tan Books, 1987)...
As Our Lord said: "Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away." (Luke 21:33). Thus, the Church will never be destroyed as has been hoped by its enemies but always survive in her faithful remnant.

The Agent died in the hospital after a car accident. The nurse (Marie Carre) who attended him found the memoirs in his brief case. After she read it, she decided to publish the memoirs for the world to know why the Catholic Church has been undergoing destructive changes to the lament of its faithful. The English translation is published under the title AA 1025, The Memoirs of an Anti-Apostle by Éditions Saint-Raphael, 31, rue King Ouest, Suite 212, Sherbrooke, Québec, Canada, 1988.

Marie Carre gave him the name Michael. He stated in the memoirs that he was forced by some irresistible urge to write. He intended to destroy the memoirs so nobody could read it. But our Lord has stated that nothing can remain hidden. "For nothing is covered that shall not be revealed: nor hid, that shall not be known." (Matthew 10: 26). In this case, for the glory of God and for the consolation of the faithful, God wanted the memoirs to be revealed, and nobody could prevent it, including its author. This is another example that it is useless to fight against God Who declared: "See ye that I alone am, there is no other God besides me: I will kill and I will make to live: I will strike, and I will heal, and there is none that can deliver out of my hand." (Deuteronomy 32:39). It only hurts the persecutor as Our Lord told Saul (who later became St. Paul): "Saul, Saul, why dost thou persecute me? It is hard for thee to kick against the goad." (Acts 26:14).


...Finally, an example of ambiguity in the Documents of the Second Vatican Council can be seen from the following excerpts from The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy (Sacrosanctum Concilium, December 4, 1963, printed in A. Flannery, editor, Vatican Council II, the Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents, 1988 Revised Edition, Costello Publishing Company.) They contain a lot of "yes, but's:

21.... For the liturgy is made up of unchangeable elements divinely instituted, and of elements subject to change. These latter not only may be changed but ought to be changed with the passage of time, if they have suffered from the intrusion of anything out of harmony with the inner nature of the liturgy or have become less suitable.

23. In order that sound tradition be retained, and yet the way remain open to legitimate progress, a careful investigation -- theological, historical, and pastoral -- should always be made into each part of the liturgy which is to be revised.

36. (1) The use of the Latin language, with due respect to particular law, is to be preserved in the Latin rites. (2) But since the use of the vernacular, whether in the Mass, the administration of the sacraments, or in other parts of the liturgy, may frequently be of great advantage to the people, a wider use may be made of it, especially in readings, directives and in some prayers and chants.

37. Even in the liturgy the Church does not wish to impose a rigid uniformity in matters which do not involve the faith or the good of the whole community. Rather does she respect and foster the qualities and talents of the various races and nations....She sometimes even admits such things into the liturgy itself, provided they harmonize with its true and authentic spirit. (Comment: the good of the whole community becomes an important criterion equal to faith in determining whether the liturgy should be adapted (changed) to local customs! What if something is considered "good for community" but is against the tradition of the Church?)


II. Confession of the Communist Secret Agent

Michael was born in 1917 probably from Russian parents fleeing the Revolution. A Polish doctor and his wife found him wandering along the road at the age of three. The couple were devout Catholics but had no child of their own. They adopted him and loved him as their own. In his confession Michael relates that the Polish couple were very good to him, very generous, and full of affection. When he reached fourteen, his happy life changed. He overheard his parents mentioning that he was not their son. They were worried about obtaining a passport for him to go with them to Rome and Paris. He had been brought up to believe that they were his real mother and father. The revelation of his real status in the family shocked him and caused instant hatred for his parents. He decided to run away from home and met a friend who introduced him to his uncle who was a high-ranking official in the Russian Secret Police.

Michael had completed 6 years of study and by now was 20 years old. He was called to the office of The Uncle who told him: "I am now going to send you to practice a militant and international atheism. You will have to fight all religions, but principally the Catholic, which is better organized. To do so, you will enter a seminary and become a Roman Catholic priest.... to be able to enter a seminary, you will have to return to Poland, reconcile yourself with your adoptive family and present yourself to the bishop."

The Uncle added : "A secret agent has no blood in his veins, no heart, loves no one, not even himself. He is the thing of the Party, which will devour him alive and without warning. Keep this well in mind that, wherever you will be, we will watch you and get rid of you at your first imprudence. It is to be well understood that if you are in danger, even without it being your fault, you must not rely upon us. You will be disavowed... Hatred, except the hatred of God, at Lenin's example, does not enter into our services. I need that you be accepted by a true bishop of your native country, Poland. But, we do not intend to have you pursue your religious studies in that country. No, you will be sent to a country across the Atlantic, but this is confidential and you will simulate surprise when you receive that order. Yes, we are led to fear a European war with that fool who rules Germany. Therefore, it seems wiser to have you study somewhere else, Canada, for example. We have another motive also. It is that European Seminaries are much more strict than those of America."

The Uncle gave further instructions to Michael: "The ten persons who will be directly under your orders will never know you. To reach you, they will have to pass through me. Thus you will never be denounced. We already have in our service numerous priests in all countries where Catholicism is implanted, but you will never know one another. One is a bishop. Maybe you will enter into contact with him, it will depend upon the rank that you reach. We have spies everywhere and particularly old ones who follow the press of the whole world. A compendium will be sent to you regularly. We will easily know when your own ideas have made their way into peoples' minds. See, an idea is good when some idiot writer presents it as one of his own. Nobody is more conceited than a writer. We rely much on such writers and we do not have to train them. They work for us without knowing it or rather without wanting to."

Michael proposed to the Uncle: "As soon as. I entered the seminary, I was supposed to try to discover how to destroy all that was taught to me. But to do so, I should have to study attentively and intelligently, that is without passion, the History of the Church. I would particularly never lose sight of the fact that persecutions only make martyrs of whom Catholics have had reason to say that they are seeds of Christianity. Therefore, no martyrs. I must never forget that all religions are based on fear, the ancestral fear, all religions are born from this fear. Therefore. if you suppress fear, you suppress religions....You must drive it to the head of men, and particularly in the head of Churchmen to search for, at any price, a universal religion into which all churches would be melted together. So that this idea could take form and life, we must inculcate in pious people, especially Roman Catholics, a feeling of guilt concerning the unique truth in which they pretend to live.... I was Catholic, and very Catholic, I mean, very pious and zealous until my fourteenth year, and I believe it to be rather easy to show Catholics that there are other holy persons among the Protestants, the Moslems and the Jews, etc... So that all men could enter it (this Universal Church), it could retain a vague idea of a God more or less Creator, more or less Good, according to times. Moreover this God will be useful only in periods of calamity. Then the ancestral fear will fill these temples, but in other times they will be rather empty."

The Uncle thought it over a good while, then he said to Michael: " I fear that the Catholic clergy will quickly notice the danger and be hostile to your project."

Michael said: "This is what has happened until now. My idea was launched by Non-Catholics and the Catholic Church has always closed its door to such a program. It is precisely why I want to study the way to make it change its mind. I know that this will not be easy, that we will have to work hard at it, during twenty or even fifty years but that we should succeed in the end."

The Uncle asked: " By what means ?"

Michael replied: "By numerous and subtle means. I look at the Catholic Church as if it were a sphere. To destroy it, you must attack it in numerous small points until it loses all resemblance to what it was before. We will have to be very patient. I have many ideas that might seem at first sight to be petty and childish, but I maintain that the entirety of those petty childishnesses will become an invisible weapon of great efficacity."

Eight days later, Michael met the Uncle's chief whom he described as a monster, a brute with a combination of brutality, coarseness, ruse, sadism, and vulgarity. The chief told Michael: "From now on, you are on the list of our active secret agents. You will give orders every week. I rely on your zeal. I readily admit that it will take a long time to destroy all religions from within, nevertheless, it is necessary that the orders which you will give find an echo, notably among writers, journalists a even theologians. It is to be understood that we have a team who watches the religious writings of the whole world and gives its advice on the utility of directives given by such or such an agent. Therefore, do your best to please. I have good hopes, because it seems to me that you have already understood it all by yourself. "



The following are Michael's own words on various issues:
On The Mass

"The professor also taught me a reasonable way to say mass, since in six years I would be obliged to say it. While waiting for a deep modification of the whole ceremony, he never pronounced the words of the Consecration. But so as not to be suspected, he pronounced words almost similar, at least according to the ending of the words. He advised me to do the same. All that made this ceremony look like a sacrifice should, little by little, be suppressed. The whole ceremony should represent only a common meal, as among Protestants. He even assured me that it should never have been otherwise. He also worked at the elaboration of a new Ordinary the Mass and advised me to do the same also, because it appeared to him to be altogether desirable to present to people a large number of diversified masses."

"It would do some good that a prophecy be sent throughout the world that would be the following : 'Some day, you will see married priests and mass said in vernacular tongues.' I remember with joy that I was the first one to say these things in 1938. That same year, I urged women to ask for the priesthood. And I advocated a mass, not parochial, but a family mass that would be said at home, by the father and mother, before each meal. "


On Holy Scripture

"In Rome, I had very interesting conversations with a professor who would be mine, when I would have received the priesthood. He was a member of our network. He was very optimistic. He had specialized in Holy Scripture and was working at a new translation of the Bible in English. The most astounding was that he had chosen a Lutheran pastor as his only collaborator. The said pastor, besides, was no more in accord with his own church which seemed old-fashioned to him."

"This collaboration, of course, remained secret. The aim of these two men was to rid humanity of all the systems which it had given itself through the Bible, and especially the New Testament had given itself through the Bible, and especially the New Testament. Thus, the virginity of Mary, the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist and His Resurrection, according to them were to be put in parenthesis and finally were to end up in a simple suppression. The dignity of modern man, in their eyes, was worth such a price."

"The modernization of God's Word often allowed to diminish the Church's obstinacy. And that was done in a very natural way. These new translations, besides, facilitated the Biblical dialogues upon which we laid great hopes.... One of my preferred dialogues concerned the Pope, because this personage is really an obstacle to me. When I say 'this personage', I mean also the texts upon which his title is based. Those texts are also as embarrassing for me as they are for the Separated Christians (as they say). I am very grateful to the one who thought that the word 'prevail' has become incomprehensible to the modern man and has replaced it by 'be able'. Instead of 'the gates of Hell will never prevail against it (the Church)', he has written : 'The gates of Hell will never be able to do anything against it.' This makes my meetings Biblical dialogues much easier, at least in French speaking countries. Each one notices very quickly that this prophecy, which pretends that hell can do nothing against the Church, is absolutely false, and every one breathes at ease, because thus withers away this secular belief in a divine protection which, definitely, would always favor the efforts of Catholics (to be understood: never those of Heretics!)..."


On the Protestantization of the Church

"It was during those days that I launched on the market (we could almost say) the programme that would allow Catholics to be accepted by Protestants .... Catholics had hoped too much for the return of Protestantism to the fold of the Mother Church. It was time that they should lose their arrogance. Charity made it a duty for them. When charity is at stake, I pretended, laughing up my sleeve, nothing wrong can happen."

"I prophesied with assurance, so that this would be repeated in the same tones, the suppression of Latin, of priestly ornaments, of statues and images, of candles and prie-dieu (so that they could kneel no more) .... And I also started a very active campaign for the suppression of the Sign of the Cross."

"I also prophesied, and we were then in 1940, the disappearance of altars, replaced by a table completely bare, and also of all the crucifixes, in order that Christ be considered as a man, not as a God. I insisted that Mass be only a community meal to which all would be invited, even unbelievers. And came to the following prophecy: Baptism, for the modern man has become ridiculously magical. Whether given by immersion or not Baptism must be abandoned in favor of an Adult Religion."

"Moreover, all that is permitted among Protestants, even if only in one sect, must be authorized among Catholics, that is the remarriage of divorcees, polygamy, contraception and euthanasia."


On the Eucharist

Michael encouraged Protestants to go to Catholic Mass and receive Holy Communion. This is because: "When Catholics will see Protestants receive Communion at their masses, without having been converted, they will longer have confidence in their antique 'Real Presence.' It will be explained to them that this Presence only exists in so far as it is believed. Thus they will feel themselves to be creators of all their religion and the most intelligent all them will know how to draw the required conclusions."

"To weaken more the notion of 'Real Presence' of Christ, all decorum will have to be set aside. No more costly embroidered vestments, no more music called sacred, especially no more Gregorian chant, but a music in jazz style, no more sign of the Cross, no more genuflections, but only dignified stern attitudes .... Moreover the faithful will have to break themselves the habit of kneeling, and this will be absolutely forbidden when receiving Communion .... Very soon, the Host will be laid in the hand in order that all notion of the Sacred be erased."

"In order to destroy all sacredness in the cult, the priest will be invited to say the whole Mass in vernacular and especially to recite the words of the Consecration as a narration, which they are in reality. He must not, above all, pronounce the following words: 'This is my Body, this is my Blood,' as if he really took the place of Christ Who pronounced them."

"Let everyone feel that the priest is reading a narration. Furthermore, there must never be question of a Sacrifice, that is, a Mass-Sacrifice, a non-bloody renovation of the Sacrifice of the Cross. No Protestant accepts this formula. Mass must only be a community meal for the greatest welfare of human fraternity."


On Marian Cult and Cult of The Saints

"At that time, I showed great energy to destroy the Marian cult. I insisted greatly upon the grief that Catholics and Orthodoxes caused to Protestants by keeping up their numerous devotions to the Virgin Mary. I pointed out that the dear separated brethren were more logical and wiser. This human creature about whom we know almost nothing becomes, in our Church, in some way, more powerful than God (or, at least, more gentle ).... I stressed upon the fact that many Protestants believe that Mary had other children after Jesus... Human oddness has no limit. All this strengthens my conviction, that to deny the virginity of Mary is the safest way to transform Christians into disciples of a man who would not at all be God. Who does not see how useful it is to kill Jesus of Nazareth before killing God?"

"I therefore advocated the suppression of the Rosary and of the numerous feast days reserved to Mary... As for all other things, it will be necessary to make a those who keep on reciting the Rosary feel guilty."

"Afterwards, to bluntly suppress the cult of the Saints. The Saints must disappear before God, although it is much easier to kill God than His Saints... Then, we will proceed to suppress Judgement, Heaven, Purgatory and Hell. This is all very easy... Many are well disposed to believe that the Goodness of God surpasses all crimes. AIl we have to do is to insist on this Goodness. A God Whom no one fears, quickly becomes a God about whom no one thinks. Such was the end to be reached. "

"Such is the compendium of the orders which I sent throughout the world."


On the Sacraments

"Afterwards, come the Seven Sacraments, which are all to be revised, all the more so that Protestants only have two. All Christians, of all denominations, have kept Baptism, but, for my part, it is the Sacrament that I would like to see disappear first. This seems relatively easy. It is too childish a Sacrament. Almost as childish as the Sign of the Cross and Holy Water."

"Of course, the Sacrament of Confirmation, which pretends to give the Holy Spirit and can be administered only by a bishop, must be suppressed with energy. This attitude will allow to denounce the dogma of the Holy Trinity as offensive to Jews and Moslems, as well as to certain new Protestant Sects."

"As for the Sacrament called Penance, it would be replaced by a community ceremony, which will only be an examination of conscience directed by a well trained priest, all of which would be followed by a general absolution, as in some Protestant Churches."

"As for the Sacrament of Extreme-Unction, we will have to find another word for it.... I would willingly choose the expression 'Sacrament of the Sick,' and to avoid the idea of Eternal Life, it would be allowed to offer this Sacrament, even in case of a light illness."

"As to the Sacrament of Holy Orders, which confers the power to exercise clerical functions, we will evidently have to keep it. In our Universal Church we will need priests who will be teachers of some Socialist doctrine.... And, of course, marriage will not be refused to the priests who ask for it, not any more than the Sacrament of Holy Orders will be refused to women."

"No, civil marriage only would be allowed. Thus, this Church, basely authoritative, could not forbid any more divorce and the remarriage of divorcees.... I know well that Jesus of Nazareth has spoken in opposition to this opinion. But I have already said elsewhere that we must know what to choose in his teachings that is suitable to modern man."


On the Universal Church

"First, to replace the word 'Catholic' by 'Universal', which means the same thing. But it is very important that word 'Catholic' should not hurt Protestant ears and would not incite the faithful of the Roman Rite to believe themselves Super-Christians .... It is very important that Christians become conscious of the scandal that is caused by the division of the Church. For, there are three kinds of Christianities: the Catholic, many Orthodox and some three hundred Protestant Sects."

"To emphasize the last prayer of Jesus of Nazareth, prayer that was never heard : 'Be one as my Father and I are One.' To cultivate a growing remorse particularly, among Catholics."

"To stress that Catholics are responsible for the division among Christians, because, by their refusal to compromise, they caused schisms and heresies. To come to a point that every Catholic will feel so guilty that he will wish to atone at any price. To suggest to him that he must himself endeavor to find all the means capable of bringing Catholics closer to Protestants (and also to others) without harming the Credo. To keep only the Credo. And again . . . attention. The Credo must undergo a very slight modification. The Catholics say: 'I believe in the Catholic Church.' The Protestants say: 'I believe in the Universal Church.' It is the same thing. The word Catholic means: Universal."

"Always drive minds towards a greater charity, a larger fraternity. Never talk about God, but about the greatness of man. Bit by bit, transform the language and the mentalities. Man must occupy the first place. Cultivate confidence in man who will prove his own greatness by founding the Universal Church in which all good wills shall melt together. To bring out that the good will of man, his sincerity, his dignity are worth more than a God always invisible. To show that the luxury and art found in Catholic and Orthodox Churches are intensely disliked by Protestants, Jews and Moslems. To suggest that this useless show must be suppressed for a greater welfare. To excite an iconoclastic zeal. Youngsters must destroy all this hodgepodge : statues, pictures, reliquaries, priestly ornaments, organs, candles and votive lamps, stained glasses and Cathedrals, etc . . . etc..."



Clearly, this was and is being carried out in the wake of Vatican II, this is the plan being put into action in the Catholic Church in this age, these are the things present in the Churches these days, this is exactly what has happened, it is become a second Reformation and Catholics are being taught to be good little Protestants, "we must not say that the Church is the only way, that offends our separated bretheren, we cannot say that they cannot be saved, the spirit is present in their religions, and saves them through it", so that the dogmas of the Church are not necessary, but all men, even those not possessing the Catholic doctrines and sacraments can still make it, all in order to diminish them in fulfillment of the Protestantization of the Catholic Church.