Changeling Church: A Humanist Council Produced a Humanist Church; It Is Now Collapsing

Friends,

St. Matthew 7:24-27 reports Our Lord telling the parable of the man who built his house on rock as opposed to the man who built his house on sand. The Vatican II Church built itself on sand, i.e. Humanism. Kennedy Hall has reported on this Humanism aspect to Vatican II, and his podcast is well worth listening to. (See below for link.)

But is the Vatican II Church coming to its end because it was ill founded on an almost pure Humanism? A "Man is the measure of all things" humanism that draped itself in a bit of Catholic bunting? It is a great insight. Are not the most important segments of its most important decrees just that? Humanism with Catholic bunting? 

This Vat II Church bears a boat-load of issues, problems and wounds: most self-inflicted. And its agonized spasms often drive one to ask: "Is the Church suicidal, or what?" What are we to make of it trying to kill of the most exciting, laity-driven reform since time-out-of-mind: the TLM revival, and madly sacking orthodox bishops while promoting the heterodox (to be polite) into high office? All this self-flagellation drives millions away from the Church.

How odd a situation we are in that we have to demand of the Church to stop its self-destruction, cease being incoherent, and most of all to stop robbing us of our Catholic inheritance. The Traditional Latin Mass IS our inheritance, our spiritual inheritance going back to the beginning. Give it back to us! Give us back our traditional prayers and liturgy and theology. It isn't something anyone – Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim, Humanist, Communist, etc. – has any right to take from us, any more than the Confederacy had the right to strip the South's poor whites of their American citizenship (then kill them for four years to keep the theft in place).

The Church's self-demolition exists because the Vatican II Church was founded on Humanism, not the Gospel, not Church Tradition that embodies the Gospel. To conjure Irish folklore, it is a Changeling Church. At first, it was more Catholic than not, but slowly, then more quickly, like a Changeling, since 1964 it has shown itself to be NOT the Church we thought it was. 

"The True Spirit of Vatican II and Apostasy"

Find Kennedy Hall's excellent podcast on this Humanist revelation here. "The True Spirit of Vatican II and Apostasy". As such, I would argue that this is quite true and thus this historical Church version we have to suffer through, a Humanist-grounded ecclesiastical "avatar", quite naturally didn't take three-score and ten to crumple in upon itself. It's a house built on sandy Humanism.

Note that by "Vatican II Church" I mean, in the first instance, merely the Church of our time, but in the second instance, I mean a Church veering off the course set by Tradition (which, as Archbishop Lefebvre said, IS the Deposit of Faith), and which is now morphing into the notorious "Ape of the Church" foretold by Archbishop Fulton Sheen: a.k.a. the Synodal Church.

1. The Vatican II Council began the Vatican II Church. 
2. That Council infamously pretended to be only a "pastoral council" (said ad nauseam) but since it ended, Modernists have treated it as the Dogmatic Council of ALL TIME. 
3. It remains the ONLY Council of any import. The others? What Councils? There's only THE Council. (Paul VI and John Paul II both lauded it in this manner via hyper absurd praise.)
   
4. Holding high its voluminous writings and decrees, its verbose, rambling documents that no one can read (I've thoroughly read short ones like Nostra Aetate and Dignitatis Humanae: effusive efforts at wrapping heresy in twaddle) that sound – give or take – sorta Catholic...
   
5. ...But reading seriously, one realizes that as always, and here literally, the Devil is in the details.

Modernism = Evolution

The basic argument of Modernism is evolution. This remains very well hidden (much of the time) by the Neo-Modernists. But the core idea of it is that people evolve, as taught by Darwin, that hammer-wielding, animal skull-crushing atheist who invented eugenics. 

• Our relationships, duties, family structures, cultures also evolve. 
• No timeless truths exist. "Truth" is an illusion. 
• Our understanding of the world, via the new religion, "science", evolves us. (Just read Yuval Noah Harari, and other such futurist mavens.)
  
• And certainly, in terms of religion, our theology evolves, our sense of the divine develops in all sorts of ways.
  
• That's the attraction of this to so many: they get to "Invent Church". Sound familiar?
  
• Finally: the penultimate revelation is that God Himself evolves. He is not the God of Hebrews 13:8-9 "Jesus Christ, yesterday, and today: and the same for ever. Be not led away with various and strange doctrines." Or of course Exodus 3:14 "God said to Moses: I AM WHO AM. He said: Thus shalt thou say to the children of Israel: HE WHO IS, hath sent me to you." 
• But the ultimate revelation of all that only gets revealed to the highest Gnostic geniuses is that God Himself doesn't exist; i.e. that we make Him up. (This is so Freemasonic, isn't it?)
  

All of the above shows how literally "Gnostic" evolution and humanism both are; how Gnostic so much of modernity is. So, Humanism (Christian veneer or not) always remains "Man is the measure of all things", and certainly the measure of God. In other words: God is completed, fulfilled, perfected through the perfection of man. Kennedy Hall mentions this as well.

History

The Vatican I Church was a tough, no-nonsense Church, really; a sort of Katholische Festung that survived Napoleon, Marx, loss of the Papal States, and two World Wars. It had its problems, sure, but basically it was doing great. So, for many: Modernists, yes, and always the Masons, many Protestants, certainly the Communists of all stripes, and even certain Jewish groups (such as got the Easter Good Friday Liturgy changed in 1955), it had to be bagged. Brought down. Stopped.

1. Note: These ecclesiastical "avatars" follow one another through history: the Counter-Reformation Church – one of the Church's high points in its 2,000-year history – existed from about 1540 to the Thirty Years War a century later...
2. ...when the Bourbon dynasts of France, Spain and Italy replaced it with the Bourbon Church until 1789, when in turn, the French Revolution ended the Bourbon Church (and many of the Bourbons). 
3. Each avatar has its essential mood or cast of spirit, its good points and its failures, its great saints and its sinners. The Vatican I Church really began with Pope Pius VII's resistance to Napoleon, and thereafter it continued to resist the modern world.
   

But all had the Traditional Latin Mass. Let me repeat that: ALL Catholic Church versions had the Latin Mass, the core elements of which go back to the "Dreamtime" of the early Faith. (Read 1 Corinthians, starting at 11:17.) All had the traditional theology. All stood fundamentally for orthodoxy. Certainly, none of these Church avatars, even the relatively corrupt earlier one in the 1000s, has ever produced a series of popes failing the basic Deposit of Faith. I don't mean popes exhibiting basic moral failings in themselves: many at certain times were great sinners. I mean failing to hold the traditional and ancient universal (Catholic) teaching such as the Vatican II Church has consistently veered away from – and of course NONE of them produced a Jorge Bergoglio. Not remotely.

Bottom Line

Watch the Kennedy Hall podcast. Take notes. He's working from a book, Prometheus, published by Angelus press. Note Pope Paul VI's speech that ended the council. At 8:05 into the podcast, Mr. Hall reads from Paul VI, "This entire Council may be reduced to its definitive religious significance which is none other other than a powerful and friendly invitation to the humanity of today and to find God once more through the path of Brotherly Love." Kennedy Hall comments that the entire council is reduced to "the spirit of fraternity", and that this sounds like Bergoglio. And Paul does, doesn't he? Remember Bergoglio's disastrous roll out of a "fraternity" event at the Vatican some months ago? No one came? Bergoglio has always hustled fraternal Humanism, as Elizabeth Yore writes here at Lifesite News. Kennedy Hall opines, "People think Pope Francis is really liberal; Pope Francis is not really that much different than Paul VI." Neither, ultimately, were John Paul II and Benedict XVI. Mr. Hall discusses this, and how Benedict's idea that the ancient Vetus Ordo and the modernist Novus Ordo would "enrich" each other. That's pure Hegelism, Kennedy points out: thesis, antithesis, and a resulting synthesis. (From this Humanistic insight I'm discussing, one would think great minds like JP2 and B16 would have seen the Novus Ordo for the pallid, Humanistic, horizontal liturgy it is. Maybe they did, but then they were true papal Humanists, apparently.)

Therefore, comprehending the reality of the Humanist Council and its Humanist tendrils wriggling through the Church's subsoil, we are seeing today the necessary, and I mean NECESSARY denouement of the Vatican II Church and its fully Humanist creed. How else could it have ended? It has produced a great multitude of Apostates. Tens of millions. Although many join other churches, separating themselves from the Holy Sacraments necessary for salvation that way, the majority leave the Church, as Mr Hall says, not to join Protestant churches, but to just stop religious practices. "Self-satisfied prigs" the kids in the Narnia Chronicles would label them. No wonder the murderous Anthony Fauci doesn't feel the need to attend Mass, as he's pontificated recently. That freak thinks he's been perfected. Totally immersed in all his post-Vatican II education (much of it Jesuit), he's a true "self-satisfied prig," a "know it all" snot who has obtained a higher plane of existence. Fauci thought nothing of killing millions. Humanists do that. (Doesn't this sound like Yuval Noah Harari and so many of "our betters" who want to refashion the world? It's hardly a Catholic-only failing.)

Good riddance, Vatican II Church; the Synodal Church, the "Ape of the Church" is next up. Yet it won't have Catholics in it. Many middle-of-the-road Catholics of today, mainly those who insist the Second Vatican Council was great and necessary, and who insist Bergoglio is pope, will under the wheels of the Synodal bus just stop practicing the Faith. That is, after all, the goal of the Modernists. But alas, notice how they're so often closing parishes and taking down good church buildings as they "clear outta town", closing them forever? That's to make sure no TLM can replace them. They want to leave a desert and sow it with salt, because, after all, they've achieved a nigher Gnostic enlightenment than the troglodytes they're leaving behind.

Doesn't that sound Masonic-like? Hmmm. 

           AnP

A Most Excellent rebuke of the U.S. Bishops at The Federalist

Read the article at The Federalist here.

It is anonymous.

The American bishops’ decision to withhold the Sacraments from the church faithful, and withhold the holy priests whose very purpose is to render them to the church faithful, forsakes the examples of the saints, forsakes the vows of the church, and runs exactly contrary to Christ’s chastisement of the pharisees and His challenge to the apostles to “put out into the deep.”

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops issued guidance early in the pandemic that bishops cancel public Mass, and the bishops have followed, with some closing their churches to all sacraments and even private prayer. As April drew to a close, the USCCB issued new guidance that bishops should begin to reopen the church.

Most remain quiet, but some of the country’s 177 dioceses and archdioceses have indicated they will follow or trail the secular authorities in their phased reopenings. The reality, however, is that the USCCB has no actual canonical authority over individual bishops. Nor should the bishops bow to civil authorities to separate the faithful from Christ’s gifts, as most but not all have.

The bishops have allowed themselves to be led astray and cowed, even reprimanding priests on behalf of the civil authorities for quietly serving their parishes. The faithful take notice. And this must end.

Each of the sacraments was uniquely instituted by Christ for the purpose of extending and granting His grace to the faithful, regardless of situation or circumstance. Indeed, if there is anything that can and should be extended to the faithful in troubled times it is God’s grace, and the means of doing so are those sacraments.

A wonderful thing about the sacraments is they are not “goods” or possessions to be alternately withheld or bestowed, freed or loosed by bishops. They are Christ’s means of gifting His grace, the faithful need them, and it is the bishop’s responsibility and solemn obligation to provide for them. Christ’s instruction to “Do this in remembrance of me” is not qualified by any “except for when’s.”

Consider the very sacrament of Holy Matrimony. At its critical moment the spouses-to-be “promise to be faithful to you, in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, to love you and to honor you all the days of my life.”

St. Paul, in his first-century epistles, writes that the church is the bride of Christ. He reveals this miraculous truth to us for us to understand and for us to wonder, and it would do well for the bishops to understand and to wonder themselves. They might begin with the promises of the spouses and understand their role as leaders who make, and are obligated to keep, the promises of the bride to the bridegroom, Christ Himself.

Are the bishops being faithful in bad times and in sickness to honor Christ all the days of their lives? There fear and risk management in the bishops’ collective retreat to the chanceries; love and honor, not so much.

In thinking of the church’s duty in times and places of rampant pestilence, consider St. Teresa of Calcutta. Were she alive today, the bishops would be rebuked by her excellent example without her needing to utter a word.

Or consider St. Damien of Molokai, St. Roch, and St. Aloysius Gonzaga. In the face of disease these priests got to holy work fulfilling the promises of the church. They are venerated as saints not for their knowledge of canon law, deference to secular leaders or lethargy, but for their faith and action.

The bishops, our shepherds, are culpable for more than mere inaction, however, for the closing of churches and suppression of the sacraments are their willful acts. Heaven takes notice.

Christ called Himself the Good Shepherd, saying, “The Good Shepherd gives his life for his sheep. But the hireling, and he that is not the shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees. […] And the hireling flees because he is a hireling and he has no care for the sheep.”

It is not rash to observe that the bishops have fled the pasture and their individual — yes, individual — flocks. They have demonstrated their status as hirelings whose own the sheep are not. None of this is lost on the sheep. The odd thing is that in doing so, the bishops have herded each other together and thus the shepherds are proven to be sheep themselves. Sheep in shepherds’ clothing.

Bishops: Roust your individual selves, take up your crooks and return to the work of the Good Shepherd, for Christ’s sake – and for the sake of His church.

The author is a faculty member at a university associated with the Roman Catholic Church.

This byline marks several different individuals, granted anonymity in cases where publishing an article on The Federalist would credibly threaten close personal relationships, their safety, or their jobs. We verify the identities of those who publish anonymously with The Federalist.

Original Sin, Catholic vs. Protestant

I came across an Israeli blogger who wrote: 

" Original sin "? We view it as a heinous doctrine that distorts human relations and has no basis in the original Bible.

I blogged back:

Whoa, now. There's Original Sin and there's Original Sin. You mean old-fashioned Protestant Original Sin or the Catholic definition. They're quite different. This is important to understand.

Many Christian denominations are, I guess, "light" on it today, but then that's because Protestant Christianity distorted it "back in the day" of Luther and Calvin (i.e., Calvin's "Total Depravity"). They insisted Man is absolutely fallen, a pile of junk, that anything and everything we do or think or are or be is putrid; or as Luther had it, a pile of manure, and salvation was only possible by God covering the putrid individual with His Grace, like a snow fall over the manure -- and thus one was never changed in one's nature, but remained a manure pile covered with snow into Eternity -- for example, being that way in Heaven itself -- forever. This is a belief 20th century Protestant "Mere Christian" C.S. Lewis politely discounted and successfully criticized in his 10th Letter to Malcolm, Chiefly on Prayer.

Roman Catholicism had nothing like that in mind in its Original Sin doctrine. The idea is that Adam and Eve's fall disconnected our natures from the way God had made us, in which we could run directly on His Grace, whole and one with Him, perfectly at peace with our different desires, controlling our appetites as we could control our thoughts, perfectly. But because of the Fall, we lost that perfect control and at oneness with God while we kept (this is important) our human dignity as being His servants made in the image and likeness of God, as well as our intellectual, rational being abilities. (The only time in the Old Testament that "imagine" is used positively, I believe -- that God made us in His image.)

In any event, we lost that ability to conform ourselves directly and fully -- in will as well as body -- with God. So therefore we need that proper nature restored, a life-long process starting with Baptism, an individual's passage through the Red Sea of sin to the Promised Land beyond, wherein we than can indeed do God's will, as He intended.

This following metaphor is good: A (classical, hard-core) Protestant says we're a car wreck that can't be repaired, but can still enter Heaven as a piece of rusting junk; a Catholic says God can and will repair the car, BETTER than new, through the sacraments.

Hope this gives you a fuller understanding of various ideas on Original Sin, of which different versions exist. G.K. Chesterton (sometimes accused of antisemitism, but I understand some scholars have debunked that), said, "Original Sin is the only Church doctrine you can prove by merely opening the daily newspaper." If anyone ever said anything that was true, that was it.

• 
  

Enlightenment, de-lightenment: The Fix Is in in Western Thought

For a Protestant, "Faith" means a "leap of faith" (see Søren Kierkegaard for an explanation of that). Catholic Faith, on the other hand, is the willing acceptance of divine revelation and the witness of the Church because they are true. They're reasonable, in fact.

For example, St. Paul says in 1 Cor 15 that 500 of the brothers saw the Risen Christ at one time -- and 500 was the size of an Athenian jury when a man was on trial for his life, so Ft. Paul is saying he has evidence that would pass the legal system of the greatest city-state of the Ancient World. 

Faith as "blind faith," a leap in the dark, is based purely on self will, or rather self desire. One wants something to be true whether it is or not and one is willing to jump into the dark for it.

"Man is the Measure of All Things" is a Renaissance idea. I think the real "black hat" in Western Culture is none other than Nick, Niccolo Machiavelli. René Descartes and his Mechanical Physics was the "icing on the cake" that sealed the doom of Western Man, and that was highlighted by the wide acceptance of the teachings of that true and certain idiot, David Hume. Humie should be read only to be laughed at and yet today he's considered the dean of the Enlightenment (my understanding is the Enlightenment meant to be enlightened that God didn't exist).

And a prime directive of the Enlightenment was to come up with a metaphysical materialistic way to explain life on Earth. None other than a certain Erasmus was a leading proponent of such an idea during the Enlightenment, and this particular Erasmus came up with a theory of evolution very much like the one his grandson would come up with thereafter. Yes, I refer to none other than Erasmus Darwin and his grandson Charlie. 

In other words, "the fix is in" in Western thinking going back now some hundreds of years. There's a long, old, complicated story being unwound right now. Vatican II and its despicable "spirit" is on a tip of the pimple that has to be popped, if I may be excused for being vulgar.

An Préachán

Part II Catholic and Protestant Differences Section II

PART II Section II
A More Detailed Background

For those who might desire more detail than the PART II Section I Overview:

Johann Eck (a Dominican friar) debated Martin Luther (and others) during the famous (and wide-ranging) Leipzig Debate in June and July of 1519. Luther had started the Reformation in 1517 (if we set aside the story of Jan Hus in Bohemia 100 years before 1517) by nailing his 95 Theses on a church door on 31 October 1517, in Wittenberg, Saxony. (Initially, of course, he had no idea how far it all would go;  but he was certainly a “man on a mission”.)

Most Protestants today probably never heard of Luther, though his name has been in the news because of the 500-year anniversary. But then, most "Protestants" wouldn't call themselves that, just "Christians". So in a sense, going into detail about Martin Luther is flogging a dead horse, one that isn't even there. But for the curious, I'll relate a few facts about him. He's sort of the King Lear of the Protestant Reformation, so important in its beginning, colorful, powerful, full of bombast, yet cast aside by smarter men (Zwingli first, then Calvin) and finally left behind by the tides.

In any event, during the course of this Leipzig debate, Luther admitted he would have to accept the Bible over a Church Council.

• At that moment I would think a number of gasps would have been heard from every corner of the room.
• Obviously, if you lay a Bible on the desk in front of you, it won’t open of itself and begin teaching you in a voice of its own. 
• Even if you open it and prod it a bit, it will just lie there. 
• Someone has to actually READ it and draw their own conclusions, or read it with associated learning materials containing his own denomination’s take on what the Bible would speak about if it could.

So by his assertion, did not Luther clearly set himself against a parliament of learned clergymen? (And one hopes an assembly of wise ones, but at least as a group having a collective understanding and insight, as any congress would).

• You see the hubris? 
• It’s actually staggering. 
• Martin Luther knew better than a Council with members from all sorts of backgrounds and indeed, from different nations, collectively possessing an extremely wide-ranging experience “skill set” regarding the Christian Faith. 
• Yet such a senate of elders could not collectively be smarter than he himself, Martin Luther, a 36-year-old academic who had been trained in a small, in-bred academic circle in two provincial universities in Thuringia and what is now Saxony-Anhalt.

It has to be one of the most hubristic statements ever made.

And as the apple never falls very far from the tree, so Protestantism asserts any individual can read the Bible for himself and chart his own Salvation course. Or at least Luther talked that up, but soon found it didn’t work very well. We’ll discuss that more in Part III, the section on the Bible. Here I’ll just point out the curious fact that Protestant Bible Societies have pushed Bibles on all sorts of folks, even leaving them in motel rooms (as do the Gideons, a group I myself am thankful for). Yet most folks getting these Bibles are not very educated in such a field as Biblical Studies. So it’s an odd thing to do when you consider that learned Protestants themselves have recourse to Protestant Bible commentaries, of which many have been published. They don’t push the commentaries, though, on the people who would need them most. Interesting.

• Compare that attitude to Romans 10:15 “How then shall they call on him, in whom they have not believed? Or how shall they believe him, of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear, without a preacher?” Or that great scene in Acts 8, (Acts 8:31 ‘"How can I," he said, "unless someone guides me?" And he invited Philip to come up and sit with him.”)

Significance

Luther’s astoundingly arrogant claim is where things get complicated. The Holy Bible is a wide selection of books, a portable library, and this library's volumes were written over thousands of years by a people living quite differently than people do today.

• So, naturally enough, some of its books are easier to read and understand than others, and among the New Testament authors, you also have the same reality. 
• St. Paul is hard-to-read, often leaving one clueless, and often seemingly contradicting himself (much to the delight of atheists in debate). 
• St. James is easy to read; couldn’t be easier. Yet I’ve read exegesis (Biblical commentary and explanation) done by Lutherans that stand James on his head. (And quite plausibly, too; I mean, they seem to make a good case for themselves, until you go back and read James himself again. The effect is startling.)

Now, Luther was a 34 in 1517 (his birthday was November 10), having studied theology and advancing through the academic ranks in about 7 years (he had earlier briefly studied to be a lawyer, and all his early higher education was at Erfurt, a city worth visiting today, both for its Lutheran heritage and the fact it is one of the best preserved medieval towns in Germany). He had begun to teach theology in 1508 (age 25) and made chair of the theology department of the newly established Wittenberg University in 1512 (age 29). These ages and dates of Luther are important here because they show how young he was and how much of a total academic he was. In other words, as an Augustinian friar never removed from the Cloister, Luther had no pastoral experience, living in a parish and dealing with everyday people. Nor, beside a short trip to Rome, did he travel much. So, as they didn’t have the Internet in those days, Luther’s world was a bit small. (Today his area of Germany makes up the states of Thuringia and Saxony-Anhalt.)

Indeed, the medieval University of Erfurt (closed in 1816 by the Prussians and reopened in 1994 after German re-unification), was in Luther’s young days a center of Nominalism, a late medieval school of thought that stressed God as essentially unknowable, remote, and imperious. (Sort of like the Islamic conception of Allah, actually; the idea was to stress the Sovereignty of God, something Calvin would become famous for.)

• Luther embraced Nominalism (which rejected Aristotle – and thus Thomas Aquinas – and he, Luther, used to say that William of Occam, a major 14th century Nominalist, was his master teacher. 
• It’s more than fair to say Herr Doctor Martin’s education was very one-sided.

Biblical Background to the Church’s Authority

Ironically enough for “Bible-only Christians”, as noted in Section one of this Part II of the differences between Catholicism and Protestantism, the Living Magisterium predates the actual New Testament. In Acts of the Apostles, chapter 15, St. Luke records the Council of Jerusalem. This council met around 50 A.D. and before the New Testament was written. (St. Matthew might well have written his earliest version of his Gospel by then, in either Aramaic or Hebrew, and St. Paul probably had begun writing, as well.)

• But before the Council of Jerusalem, while Jesus was still on Earth, He had clearly mandated a hierarchical system. He had chosen 12 Apostles, which not only mirrored the 12 tribes of Israel, but also the ancient Israelite kings, who often had 12 councilors (again representing the 12 tribes). 
• Christ also signaled out three men of the Apostles, Peter, James and his brother John. They were at the raising of Jairus’s daughter (Mark 5:37, etc.) and at Christ’s Transfiguration (Matthew 17:1–8, Mark 9:2–8, Luke 9:28–36) and the Second Epistle of Peter refer to the latter (2 Peter 1:16–18) as perhaps does the first chapter of the Gospel of John (John 1:14).
• Also, beyond the Twelve, there were a group of Seventy that St. Luke mentions; he might have been on of them (see Luke 10).

Now, the famous scene in Matthew, where in the region of Caesarea Philippi, Jesus gives Peter the Keys of the Kingdom in Matthew 16:17-19, every Jew present, and every Jew who heard of it later, would recognize Jesus as acting like an ancient Israelite king. Those kings had a special advisor who was given the keys of the palace and thus became a Grand Vizier or prime minister. Jesus actions could be taken – by the Jews who knew the old stories – that Peter was being given a very special place, indeed. A unique one.

• Read Isaiah 22, especially the verses 21-23, particularly verse 22, “And I will lay the key of the house of David upon his shoulder: and he shall open, and none shall shut: and he shall shut, and none shall open.”

Or simply read through St. Paul’s writings with an eye toward how often the Apostle himself asserts his own authority. It’s on every page, almost every sentence. Galatians 2:9 “And when they had known the grace that was given to me, James and Cephas (Peter) and John, who seemed to be pillars, gave to me and Barnabas the right hands of fellowship: that we should go unto the Gentiles, and they unto the circumcision…”.

• He, Paul, has AUTHORITY, and so do the others, Peter, James, John – they’re recognized as leaders of the Church, indeed, overseers, or episkopos – and their recognition of Paul reinforces him authority. They are the Church’s overseers, or (singular) episkopos. 
• Our English word for episkopos is “bishop”.

Or see St. John in his Gospel, in Chapter 20:21-23, where he writes, ‘…Again Jesus said to them, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent Me, so also I am sending you.” When He had said this, He breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven; if you withhold forgiveness from anyone, it is withheld.”’

• All these passages point to the Biblically-based fact that the early Church had a hierarchy, and was understood by everyone in the Church to have a hierarchy, one that had Authority. This is even proven by St. Paul’s boasting how he stood up to Peter and James.

Throughout the early Church, then, the episkopos of each city would refer back to the chain of bishops before him, going back to an Apostle. When the Gnostics disputed Church teaching, the Catholics, or those of the “Universal” Church (Catholic means universal) would say, “Our bishop is so-and-so, who succeeded Bishop Such-and-such, who followed Bishop X who was a student of the Apostle John (or Peter, or whomever). Where is your bishop list back to the Founder? By what right do YOU teach what the Faith is?”

• And of course they couldn’t argue that.

In the same way, one could argue with Protestants: “Where do YOU get your Authority from? What’s the line of YOUR bishops?”

But there of course the whole Protestant Project falls apart. It has no such history. It's all individuals, each believing what he will (sort of like Progressive Catholics, actually!). Against this ecclesial corporate history it does have arguments, ranging from “You’re wrong! Peter and James and the rest with just buddies or relatives of Jesus! He set up no organized body!” to the older, long-standing, “Well, Jesus set up the Church but then came the Great Apostasy, when everyone fell away from the Faith, except for a minority who are nameless but to God.”

In the end, in our current state of civilizational crisis, all this might seem too trivial to matter. But knowledge is a good in itself, true knowledge. And we're having a civilzation crisis precisely because people don't know this information.

An Préachán

Part II Catholic and Protestant Differences: Authority, Section 1

PART II

Authority

Section I

Why the Protestant Rejection of Catholic Authority Exists, and Why It Is Relevant Today

The Protestant rejection of papal and the wider Church authority occurred because Martin Luther and the other early Reformers couldn’t get the Catholic Church (either the pope or Church Councils) to accept the novel Protestant teachings about how Salvation worked. (N.B. Each Reformer had a somewhat different take on it, but more or less basically agreed with each other. See Part III of this series.) So Luther and Co. had to either recant – formally give up their ideas – or split from the Church. They chose to split. 

• The technical term for a Church split is Schism.

Basic Facts About How Authority Works in Catholicism and Protestantism

Protestants reject the authority of both the Pope and the bishops in Communion with him, whether that unity is expressed in a general way or in a Church Council.

• In other words, Protestants reject the Authority of the “Living Magisterium” (the pope and bishops of the current day) AS WELL AS the popes and bishops of each generation back to the Apostles – the collected writings, rulings, and theology of which are collectively called “Sacred Tradition” (Holy Tradition in the Orthodox Churches).
• For Catholics, Sacred Tradition serves much like English Common Law, something binding, yet itself slowly woven together over centuries, a built-up body of doctrine. It serves as a very strong support for the Living Magisterium, and when the Living Magisterium goes against it, as today with Pope Francis, there’s no mistaking were the heresy lies.

Protestantism, on the other hand, although individual denominations have certainly built up doctrine over the last 500 years, still claims to accept only the “Word of God,” the Holy Bible, as its real Authority. (They call Sacred Tradition "the works of men".) Each Protestant generation has to ask, “Show it to me in the Word of God!” as the old-time preachers would say.

• For Catholicism, however, the Bible forms the third branch of mutual support and teaching. Sacred Tradition is 2000 years of the Living Magisterium commenting on the Bible, yet both the Magisterium and the Tradition are older than the Bible itself.
• For example, when the Council of Jerusalem was held, as described in Acts of the Apostles, the New Testament had yet to be written. The Living Magisterium of the time decided an issue authoritatively – a black-and-white decision with no fudging or wordy misdirection as a modern Progressive would produce – and thus created a tradition of clear-cut and binding legislation, all done without recourse to a written Holy Scripture.
• Any review of Sacred Tradition shows no early Church Father taught the Protestant view of salvation; it is truly novel (or was as of 500 years ago).
• Summation: the history of Protestantism shows the dangers of rejecting clear dogmas and the Authority by which these are arrived. Today there are 20,000 some odd (depending on how they're counted) Protestant Denominations. Obviously, the Living Magisterium, Sacred Tradition, and Holy Scripture all three go together and cannot be separated, or only at great peril to the Church. Some modern theologians talk against strict adherence to such clear-cut, long-standing dogmas, calling it a “prepositional faith”, which they claim is Pharisaical: a legalistic religion rather than a religion of “love”. Pope Francis seems to be of that school. (He calls Traditionalists and Canon Lawyers and so on “Pharisees.” But a religion without dogma is a mushy thing enslaved to whatever social currents ripple though human society at any given time. It is "popular" precisely because it doesn’t direct vertically to God, but downward toward the whims of popular opinion. “Fundamentalist” Protestants have no more use for “mushiness” than Traditionalist Catholics do. Church "mushiness" is a mainline Protestant or Progressive Catholic platform: its adherents believe it make belief easier, whereas it easily makes belief impossible.

Protestant Authority

In contrast, accepting only the Bible as it does, Protestantism has thus tended to stress the authority of the individual. “Read the Bible for yourself” is its Authority Motto – though individual pastors can, if they have the right mix of charisma and chutzpah, dominate their flock more than any priest can do.

• Martin Luther himself wanted to be the sole interpreter of the Bible, even though he claimed anyone could interpret for himself. (That didn’t last very long! But the aura of it has stayed with Protestantism till today. For details, see Part III.) 
• Against the Church and all its “priestcraft”, Protestants like to invoke the Biblical passage (from 1 Timothy 3:15) that “For there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus.” 
• In other words, one doesn’t need a “church” per se to be saved. (Someone once said to G.K.Chesterton that the Irish were a “priest-ridden people”, to which G.K.C. immediately replied, “precisely because they do not want to be a Squire-ridden people.”)

Conversely, in the Catholic world, as noted above, the Holy Bible is one of three legs of support. Thus, today, the Catholic Church is in full crisis mode (I’d say about DefCon 3, and edging fast toward 2) because the current pope (and many of his supporters) are clearly presenting teachings – teachings popular in some quarters – that go against both the Bible and Sacred Tradition. However, tthey’re actually teaching “mainline Protestantism” and it is a natural development of the “Spirit of Vatican II to make the Church more Protestant-like; i.e., the program initiated 60 years ago is about to achieve what it was started for.

• This could eventually lead to a Schism as Traditionalist and “Conservative” Catholics “step back from the brink”, but two Catholic Churches would be better than what you have in Protestantism: the reliance on the Bible alone (i.e., Sola Scriptura) has resulted in 20,000 some different Protestant denominations.

• A fragmented state (Schism) that Catholics deplore, Protestants institutionalized.

For more info, see PART II Section II.

Catholicism and Protestantism's Irreconcilable Differences: Five Aspects to Discus

Catholicism and Protestantism: Five Aspects to Discus

The Irreconcilable differences between Protestantism and Catholicism: INTRODUCTION

Index

This is the Introduction to this series.

For Part II, section 1, the issue of Authority, click here.

For Part II, section 2, click here.

For Part III, How Salvation Works, click here.

For Part III, section 2, click here.

Jaroslav Jan Pelikan, the highly respected scholar who passed away in 2006, was a life-long Lutheran (his parents were Lutherans) till in his last decade he converted to Russian Orthodoxy. Known as a prolific author, Church historian, and liturgical expert, he had a knack for coming up with surprising images. One such was when he wrote to describe the Protestantism as a baby in the arms of its Catholic Church mother. Kind of arresting, that image. (Maybe just a bit too Stephen King, actually.) I grew up with Protestants and would never have thought of it. Certainly it reminds me of King Lear’s famous line, “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child.”

Differences

Different children of one mother, Protestant churches – whether those founded at the time of the Reformation or those ‘calved off” (like clouds) from those first Protestant churches, (generation upon generation of calving going on, by now, 500 years of it) – are all quite different from one another. Even so, however, all of them have certain basic “genetic traits” in common, as it were.

Therefore, five basic and completely irreconcilable differences between Catholicism and Protestantism exist, and these are found throughout the Protestant “metastasisophoria”. And while individual people of both can and do convert back and forth from one to the other (and even, sometimes, back again) the churches themselves cannot negotiate away (via modern ecumenicalism) these differences. They’re foundational. Baked into the cake. Mixed in the mortar.

The Differences are…

• First Point of Difference: Authority. What is the nature of Authority in Christian life? Who has it? The Church? Which church, or what individuals or groups within which church, and so on.
• Second Point of Difference: How Salvation Works. This difference arises from the first, as Martin Luther (and the other early Reformers) came up with novel ideas about how Salvation worked, and as the Church authorities rejected them, the Reformers in turn then broke with the Church in order to keep their own ideas “in play”.
• Third Point of Difference: How the Bible Is Read. Reading the Bible didn’t produce the crisis with Authority and the new ideas on Salvation, as one might think from 500 years of Protestant propaganda. Instead, the crisis in Authority resulted as a consequence of the new ideas; i.e., Luther read the Bible in such a way as to have it validate his own already-formed ideas about how Salvation works, rather than he himself somehow discovering how Salvation worked “locked away” or “hidden” in the Bible. (Protestants would strenuously disagree with this, as their whole program relies on it, but more more on that in the appropriate place.)
• Fourth Point of Difference: Church. What is it? What’s it for? Is it visible or invisible, an institution in history or a mystical body that history doesn’t record, but can only hint at.
• Fifth Point of Difference: The Rate of Change. Since its inception, Protestantism has been on an arc of change, dynamic, far-springing, ever-leaping change that steadily takes if farther and farther away from its Mother, Catholicism; and in all of its history, no Protestant Church ever evolved backward toward Catholicism, but always farther and farther away from it. By its very nature, then, it is irreconcilable with a Faith that is built upon a Rock, Unchanging, although ever manifesting itself anew in each age it finds itself in, but never changing doctrine, belief, or even (largely) its worship.

The Modern Mess Up
Now, that fifth point raises a word of caution, a warning, a caveat. And this is important, dear Reader.

• The Catholic heresy known as Modernism currently dominates the Holy Mother Church, and Pope Francis is its apogee. 
• But Modernism began among Catholic intellectuals in the later 19th century and it was energized and “idea-ized” by Protestantism, specifically the mid-19th century Protestant Tübingen School – and it consisted in large part of a relaxation of the Church’s perennially strict moral teachings – and the attempts to explain why these teachings could be changed.
• Protestantism can be said in general to have started out with the traditionally morally strict teachings, but from its beginning weakened them (Henry VIII being a classic example, or Luther’s infamous support for Phillip of Hesse, who wanted to marry one woman while still being married to another).

Also, and quite necessary for Modernism, the 19th century came saw the high tide of what’s called Higher Biblical Criticism, which was also a Protestant development (look up Historical Criticism or Adolf Harnack if you want) because Protestantism broke with the Church’s traditional interpretations of the Bible, rejecting the teaching authority of both the Living Magisterium and Sacred Tradition.

• But by doing so, the Protestants basically deflated the Bible as the sole rule of Faith for Protestants. 
• The Bible became a flat tire. 
• It could no longer carry the weight of Protestant belief. 
• Thus many “fundamentalist” churches were born; i.e., churches that rejected the more formal, more “educated” Protestantism because of its rejection of the Bible. Pentecostalism also developed at this time – the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th – and partly for the same reason. In either case, “Blind Faith” became the rule for these Churches.

Now, the Catholic Church formally rejected the attempts of Catholic Modernists to import all this unwanted Faith-killing misery into Mother Church, culminating in 1907 with several formal “smack-downs” of Modernism by Pope St. Pius X. But the movement, like various denizens of the order of Blattodea, survived “underground” to fight another day. In fact, they survived to take over the Church herself, beginning with the Second Vatican Council and culminating with Bergoglio.

So I’m writing here about Protestantism from a Catholic Traditionalist perspective. Jorge Bergoglio would send me in for a whipping, if not excommunication. But like Herod (“that fox”), Bergi’s days are numbered.

So in the next installment of this thread, I’ll discuss the Authority issue.

An Préachán

Magnum Principium and the Downfall of the Vatican II Church

(Subtitled: You are what you pray: lex orandi, lex credendi.)

Rejoice, Traditionalists! Rejoice oh ye seriously Conservative Magisterium Catholics!

A big (indeed, magnum) development has occurred that only a few see as important as it actually is. The new papal ruling on translations, Magunm Principium, will drive the rickety Vatican II Church over the cliff (for reasons detailed below), but most commentators of all stripes are discussing it as yet another twist in the long-running Vat2 soap opera known as the "Liturgy Wars".

• Well, lemme tell yez, if it is just another maneuver, it is the equivalent of Napoleon's invasion of Russia.

Some links: 
Here's the U.S. Magisterium house organ, the National Catholic Register on Francis' Magnum Principium.

For a Sort of mild Progressive-to-Leftist-Magisterium take on it, read John Allen of Crux. 

And Fr Z provides excellent comments on Magnum Principium from his "Long March Through the Institutions" War of Position Traditionalist Front here and here.

 

But we ought to be giving thanks to God for Pope Francis (as the writer Hilary White has often said) because Jorge Bergoglio, in his Pope Francis avatar, is pushing the Vatican II Church into the arms of its final destiny. Another JPII-type pope would have prolonged the agony we've been suffering since 1963. Not Francis, Argentine bull in the pansy flower shop that he is No way Jorge has put the Vatican II Church on the plank, and has just given it a shove with a cutlass in the back, pirate style.

Lex orandi, lex credendi.

"You are what you pray." What's made the Western Church the One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic Church is the Latin language and the common liturgy of St. Gregory the Great (more or less, it having variations within bounds that organically developed through the long ages before radio and TV). In other words, the basic Latin liturgy has lasted for centuries, as did the language, and that produced one Church, a Church full if fantastic saints, doctors, and clergy and laity of all sorts.

In the West.

In the East, the chasms of belief and prayer opened early on between those who prayed in Greek and those who prayed in Syriac (Christian Aramaic) and those who prayed in Coptic. Long before the 1054 A.D. split between Rome and Constantinople, the Syrians broke off from the Greeks, and the Copts from both. Obtuse theological questions were in play, of course, but the language differences were fatal.

Thus it was the the actual documents of Vatican II didn't call for the exclusion of Latin, just more use of the vernacular here and there. For to vote for a totally vernacular Church was to vote for extinction. History is filled with important examples. Only a fool or a Progressive who never bothers to ask, "Where will it all lead? What's the end game?" would run off blindly downfield clutching the vernacular ball insanely tight.

Dividing the Latin-Rite Church up into vernaculars could only lead to separate (but equal? Riiigght!) Churches.

What Magnum Principium Does

It's the exact equivalent of the Anglicans tossing out their old Common Prayer Book. That decision split the "You are what you pray" principle. It severed the main connecting link between all the myriad types of Anglican Churches, and the "low", "high", and "broad" laity within each church.

Anglicanism has been disintegrating ever since. It's in a death spiral.

The Pope's new fatwa does exactly the same, in slow motion. ("Motu proprio" is the Latin, but "Fatwa" as a certain Semitic charm.) Magnum allows bishops' conferences to decide on translation matters, (i.e., all worship services, etc., in Latin translated being into the local lingo), with only a final review by the formerly powerful Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, headed by Cardinal Sarah.

• But the good Cardinal has long been reduced to a figurehead; now his entire congregation is essentially a rubber stamp. (Were it to be staffed by clerical heroes, Bergoglio would see that it was quickly un-staffed of those types and restaffed by his sort of "Si, si!" yes-men. (Actually, it was El Bergo who appointed Cardinal Sarah to the Congregation in late 2014.)
• This is a change from formerly, when JPII and especially B16 worked to make the decisions centered under the watchful eye of a Vat2 conservative in the Vatican hierarchy. These popes did so precisely because the liturgical chaos of the 1960s and the dull, tawdry, oh-so-mundane Novus Ordu Mass was ripping the guts out of Catholicism. Had Albino Luciani lasted very long in the papacy, there might not be a Catholic Church today (oh, there's always a remnant, of course; we'd all probably be in the SSPX today).
• Now, that Congregation of Cardinal Sarah's can approve of a new translation, or not; if not, however, can they issues detailed suggestions as they did before? We'll find out.

 The Misuse of Synods and Those Awful National Bishop Conferences.

• It's death to the Vatican II Church because lex orandi, lex credendi. Always.
• In ten years the various national churches in the West, (the Germans, the French, the English, and so on) will have quite different liturgies. In this, they'll mirror what's happened to the Anglicans.

In a quarter of a century, we'll have separate national Churches, just like the Orthodox have had for some time now They have 14 separate autocephalous "self-ruling" Churches, and Westerners will be getting along no better with each other than the Orthodox do: (Excerpt from link: Four Patriarchates, which encompass the numerical majority of the Orthodox population worldwide, have refused to attend and acknowledge their previous agreement on the date and place of the Council.)

• (As for myself, I used to think this would take a century to fully mature, these separate "national" churches, or at least a half century; but I think so no longer)
• For the Historical Church, the Catholic Church in the West and the various Orthodox in the East, not to mention the Copts in the South, how one prays is what one is, lex orandi, lex credendi: we're defined by our prayers, especially the most important prayer, the Liturgy of the Holy Eucharist, which ontologically makes Our Lord Christ literally present. "Cult" makes Culture. A culture founded on the cult of Ba'al is going to be quite different from one founded on the worship of YHWH, obviously enough. (Oh, wait, in the U.S. some 45 million babies have been aborted since about ten years after Vat2 ended. So maybe old Ba'al is still worshiped after all?)
  
• This fact about worship highlights the problem with the "Spirit of Vatican II worship: it was established in the "Me" decade, and worship of self is quite evident in how the Novus Ordu Mass "works". Think about it. None of the following, for example, were mandated by the actual Vatican II documents: a total replacement of the Latin for the vernacular; priest facing the people, not God or His altar; everyone speaking in rote, lamely worded prayers, all orchestrated, managed, and directed by their orchestra conductor, the "presider"; the goofy handshake, the smarmy songs, in the insipid "You're OK, I'm OK" homilies; even the soft, pastel colors and removal of the altar rail and receiving the Most Precious Body and Blood of God Himself in the hand, given by some "extraordinary minister! – in fact, it is much like taking (or giving) a tip. About as sacred as passing out gum.

Bottom Line

Fact is, the various language-family churches currently making up the One, Holy Catholic Apostolic Church have had a growing number of differences since Vatican II, all implemented primarily by the Mass being in the many vernaculars in the first place.

• And that is Protestant, the very essence of Protestantism. 
• For the first thing the 16th century Protestant revolutionaries did was to translate the Mass into the local vernacular and turn the priest around to face the people
• The next thing was to abolish the Mass and the priesthood, and have ministers of various sorts.

Many, many people have noticed and commented on how "Protestant" the Vatican II Church seems to be. Well, that was a feature, not a bug. Ad THE Bug, that "Grace of Ba'al", Hannibal Bugnini himself, said,

• “We must strip from our Catholic prayers and our Catholic liturgies everything which can be the shadow of a stumbling block for our separated brethern, that is, Protestants."
   L’Osseratore Romano, 19 March 1965, quoted in Michael Davies 

So what was set in motion 60 years ago has a new champion, Pope Francis. His Magnum will explode those trends now, moving up the timetable, and you'll see the Francophone Catholics being in horror of the Germans, the Anglos fighting among themselves for which English version should dominate (if any one version should dominate at all), and the same with the Latins.

Already the "Roman Catholic" Church is fragmenting! The Germans basically were threatening B16 with going into Schism "back in the day". Were somehow an actual Trad Catholic to become pope tomorrow, the Germans would go into Schism the day after.

And each N.O. parish will be "celebrating liturgy" even more differently than now. Traveling Catholics have a good bit of homework to do to find a parish that worships in a way they're used to.

• But of course it is important to point out that many N.O. parishes might go the other way, offer more TLMs just to bring some sanity to their worship...
• Many might turn the priest around to face God and His Altar (at last! It only took 60 years to figure that one)
• But most of all, the Trad Catholics, clinging to and worshiping the TLM, will be the ONLY Catholics left in 50 years. As I noted at OnePeterFive, the rest will be grunge rock bands.

P.S. One Commentator Got It Right

I'm sure more than one did, but the one I read was commenting on a Fr. Z column. "Austen" wrote

Austin says:

9 September 2017 at 10:14 AM

Putting the vitally important liturgical questions aside for a minute, the decentralisation that Father notes is a clear and present danger.

I am a former Anglican. Having no central authority, our communion was ripped apart by rogue provinces (led by the Americans) which unilaterally changed liturgical norms, then discipline, and then doctrine. The weight of having one rich and powerful progressive province distorted the whole communion and pulled it in a revisionist direction until the tension grew too great and the communion was ripped apart.

It is clear that the Germans wish to resume their role, assumed at the Council, of being the Church’s progressive pressure bloc. If they persist, other like-minded conferences, in Latin America particularly, will join them. The US church will be horribly divided. There may be international schism.

Pope Francis is on record as saying that he may go down in history as the one who divided the church. Given his admiration for Luther, and the force of his policies, it appears that this is an ambition rather than an unfortunate corollary of his pontificate.

We are seeing an unprecedented crisis in the life of the Church. When the guarantor of orthodoxy and unity becomes an agent of dubious opinion and division, the whole edifice of the Church Militant is put at risk.

Spot on, Austen! He has a great understanding of what's happening to Anglicanism, and that's been beautifully written up by Fr. Ed Tomlinson. (Highly recommended.)  What's happening to the Catholic Church now has already devastated the Anglican Communion, as detailed here. Some points to consider:

1. Synodal government – or for Catholics, these "National Bishop Conferences" – are deadly to the Church. Church councils have met since the First Jerusalem Council, as detailed in the Acts of the Apostle. But such councils rarely meet, and they meet to decide some specific issue. Or they should. You can't govern by them. The U.S. has one president and other countries have a P.M. The chief executive. Yes, Countries had congresses and parliaments, but the general governing is done by one person, a person whom is held responsible for what happens, like the captain of a ship (same principle there, too). 
2. Bishops govern their local churches and the pope governs the bishops. Groups of bishops hiding behind a bureaucracy (i.e., national bishop conferences) are just a way to "pass the buck". For example, Paul VI called a council to ratify the new Mass, but they rejected it (that is, while a sizeable chunk of them voted to OK it, a majority voted against it, although they were divided into two groups: one wanting to reject it out right and one will to accept it only if changes were made. (They weren't.) Paul6 ignored it all (well, except to burst into tears, but he was always doing that).
3. Fr. Ed Tomlinson writes (my emphasis), "synodical governance ... led to a radical politicisation of the Church of England. With everything suddenly up for grabs, by virtue of majority vote, the factions no longer pulled together in unity but began to plot and lobby against each other. General Synod became a battleground on which theological opponents could be put to the sword. And it didn’t take long for the liberal lobby, strengthened by trends in society and over-represented on the bench of bishops, to realise synod worked in their favour."
4. Synods or Bishop Conferences are mere power blocks where, behind the scenes, battles rage.
5. We can see from the two "Synods on the Family" how Bergoglio and his associates, the "powers that be", cynically used the assembled bishops to press his own agenda. 
6. Conclusion: they should be reject...
7. ...And to the extent they're not rejected, the Church will just succumb more and more to the "politics" of it all.

 For what it's worth, this is my take on El Bergo's Magnum Principium.

Just remember: God is in charge, and doing "His thing" in His own way and in His own good time.

Amen to that!

An Préachán