Reposted here from The Catacombs archives: 


Dear friends, 

I am always loathe to reference sedevacantist sources. However, it has long been the custom here on The Catacombs that if an article exposes or speaks the truth, it shouldn't be ignored just because of who the author is/was [e.g. St. Thomas Aquinas referencing Aristotle]. With this in mind, we repost the following article, adapted to filter out the sedevacantist references. Please keep in mind that Bishop Tissier de Mallerais' study on the 'Hermeneutics' of Joseph Ratzinger highlight many of the points made below though not [to my memory] this particular example.

Quote:Nor does Paul VI here offer to introduce an “ordinary” form of Mass, which has its complement in the “extraordinary” form of the St. Pius V Missal — that’s a distinction that Benedict XVI simply made up in order to “synthesize”, in somewhat Hegelian fashion, the two contradictory ideas that the New Mass replaced the Missal of St. Pius V and that there can be only one Roman rite of Mass at a time. 

…It is no stretch to predict that what will come out of this “co-existence” of the “two forms” of “one and the same rite” will, at the end of the day, result in a total butchering of the 1962 Missal, so that, eventually, Benedict XVI can stop the nonsense of “two forms” of “one rite” and simply synthesize them together (here comes Hegel again), and the result will probably be a New Mass with a bit of Latin and a little more incense, or some sort of a hybrid missal like the one that was already in use in 1965. (“‘One and the Same Rite’?”, Novus Ordo Watch, Oct. 12, 2007)

Quote:Pope Benedict saw his role as that of a reconciler. The adherents of Tradition and the adherents of the progressivist wing [of the Church] both equally hold the view that the Second Vatican Council and the reform of the Mass constitute a genuine rupture with Tradition. It is true that in terms of doctrine the notion of [the Mass as] sacrifice was still being upheld, but in many cases this was no longer true in practice: We now celebrate a meal. Pope Benedict tried to transcend any such confrontation by opting for a hermeneutic of continuity, saying: The old and the new Ordo [=order of Mass] are two different forms of the same rite. That was a bold thesis for anyone who uses his eyes and ears. I view it as a diplomatic formula [which Benedict advanced] to help heal the obvious rupture. Based on this, Pope Benedict then expressed his hope that the old and the new Ordo would be able to influence each other, perhaps in order to arrive at a synthesis of old and new Ordo in accordance with the Hegelian model of dialectics. However, this would require the old Ordo to be celebrated in a great many places — otherwise there could hardly be a fruitful exchange concerning it. Moreover, one would have to accept that the old [rite of] worship cannot change — it would surely then have to be the Novus [=new] Ordo which gradually moves towards the sacredness of tradition so that the commonality of both forms can be recognized. (“‘Liturgie heißt: Gott agiert'”, Die Tagespost, June 2, 2017. Translation by Novus Ordo Watch.)

Taken from The Recusant - Issue 39 January 2016

In Spanish but vividly portrayed: 

Quote:"redemption became a political process [and therefore - we add - temporal and terrestrial or worldly] to which Marxist philosophy provided its general direction or basic orientation."

Quote:"starts from Kant's distinction between phenomena and noumena: we are not able to attain to ultimate reality in itself, since we can only see it through diverse 'lenses' by our own way of perception." Therefore, "the identification of a singular historical figure, Jesus of Nazareth, with 'reality' itself, that is, with the living God, is rejected out of hand as being a lapse back into myth: Jesus is expressly relativized as just one more religious genius among so many others. That which is absolute, or else He who is absolute, cannot present Himself in history, wherein are to be found only models, only ideal figures which refer us to something utterly different, to that which we cannot apprehend or know as such in history. From this it is clear that the (Catholic) Church also, her dogmas and sacraments, cannot have any value of absolute necessity."

Quote:"But is this allegation true? From where can I get the impression that an action is just, if l have no idea of what is just…Praxis alone is no light…Knitter...asserts that the criterion allowing him to distinguish between orthopraxy and pseudo-praxy, is man's liberty. But he still must explain, in a practical and persuasive manner, just what is liberty and what it is that leads man to his real liberation."

Quote:"In the last analysis, Hick's relativism is based upon a rationalism [i.e., the error of those who reject all revelation and give assent to nothing but what can be attained by the natural power of their own reason] which, in the Kantian fashion, pretends that metaphysics [i.e., that branch of philosophy dealing with the first principle of things] cannot be known or grasped by human reason."

Quote:Man cannot believe in the absolute but he may experience. God is not a Person...but consists in the spiritual energy which propagates itself in the Whole…Man's redemption consists in ridding himself of his I...and returning to the Whole. The (pagan) 'gods' are back. They now appear more believable than God. We must bring up to date those primordial [pre-Christian] rites by which the I is initiated into the mystery of the Whole and liberated of itself." 

Quote:"Nowadays, we have grown weary of wordy liturgies, [but how can one simply reduce Catholic liturgy to words?] approaching New Age orientations: people are now looking for noisy and ecstatic experiences."

Quote:How come classical theology has proven itself so little prepared to face these (modernist) events and circumstances? And where are its weak points which have robbed it of its strength and efficiency?

Quote:...to exegesis in order to justify their destruction of Christology: according to these two, exegesis would seem to have proven that Jesus never considered Himself to be the Son of God, God Incarnate, but that it was only some while later that His disciples laid claim to and first referred to His divinity [an argument which modernists have borrowed and still borrow from their rationalist "separated brethren"] . Moreover, both of them claim to take their inspiration from philosophical evidence. Hick assures us that Kant has irrefutably demonstrated that the absolute, or He Who is the Absolute [since God, for some of these heretics, is not even a Person] cannot be known in history and cannot, as such, be found therein.

Quote:I believe that the problem of exegesis as well as the limits and possibilities of our reason, that is to say, the philosophical premises of the Faith, actually constitute the painful and grievous weak point of today's theology, through which the Faith - as also, more and more, the faith of ordinary folk - continues to fall victim to the current crisis.

Quote:...exegesis seems to have proven that Jesus never considered Himself to be the Son of God, God Incarnate, but that it was only some while later that His disciples laid claim to and first referred to His divinity, can in no way at all, appeal to exegesis in a global manner, as if all of their suppositions constitute an indubitable result universally recognized by all exegetes….But it is true that if we look at modern exegesis as a whole, we can come away with an impression quite similar to that of Hick and Knitter.

Quote:If many exegetes think as do Hick and Knitter, "reconstructing" in the same way the recorded history of Jesus Christ [that is, by their denial of Jesus Christ's divinity] it is due to the fact that they share their philosophy. It is not exegesis which proves philosophy but it is rather philosophy which brings about exegesis."

Quote:...the presuppositions welling up from the Kantian theory of conscience are making themselves...felt...like a spontaneous key to hermeneutics guiding the development and progress of critique,...ecclesiastical or Church authority cannot simply impose that we must find in Holy Scriptures a Christology of divine filiation.

Quote:Others, in fact, do recognize the Catholic Church...; they do not, however, admit its nature and its rights of a perfect society with its authentic power of legislation, of judging and punishing. They only recognize her faculty of exhortation, of persuasion, and of governing those who spontaneously and willingly make themselves subject to her. (See on "withdrawal" of authority since Vatican Council II, in Iota Unum by Romano Amerio.)

...ecclesiastical authority cannot simply impose that we must find in Holy Scriptures a Christology of divine filiation [i.e., that Jesus Christ is also the Son of God], Church authority can and must, however, make an appeal [it is all in this word! to kindly "appeal"] to critically evaluate the underlying philosophy of the method we choose to adopt.

Quote:The problem of exegesis coincides, to a great extent, with the problem of philosophy. Philosophical difficulties - that is to say, those difficulties with which human reason directed in a positivist sense has been struggling - have now become difficulties of our Faith.

Quote:I believe that neo-scholastic rationalism [the sane and sound one that does not fly in the face of Faith, but on the contrary, serves it] has failed in its bid of trying to reconstruct the “preambula fidei" through a purely rational certainty.

Quote:....it is indeed possible to prove with absolute certainty the divine origin of the Christian religion by means of the sole use of the natural light of human reason (Humani Generis).

Quote:[From Kantian agnosticism] they infer two things: that God is not directly subject to scientific study; and that God has never revealed Himself as a Person in history. After all of this, what is there left of natural theology, of the reasons for belief (or credibility) and of outside revelation? ...They [the modernists] have purely and simply suppressed them (Pascendi).

Quote:In conclusion, as we contemplate our present-day religious situation, of which I have tried to throw some light on some of its elements, we may well marvel at the fact that, after all, people still continue believing in a Christian manner, not only according to Hick's, Knitter's as well as others' substitute ways or forms, but also according to that full and joyous Faith found in the New Testament of the Church of all time.

Quote:I would say that it is because it finds a correspondence in man's nature…..There is, in man, an insatiable desire for the infinite. None of the answers we have sought is sufficient [but must we take his own word for it, or must we go through the exercise of experiencing all religions?]. God alone [but Whom, according to Card. Ratzinger, human reason cannot prove to be truly God], Who made Himself finite in order to shatter the bonds of our own finitude and bring us to the dimension of His infinity [...and not to redeem us from the slavery of sin?] is able to meet all the needs of our human existence.

Quote:All theologies are nullified, because all are regarded as equivalent; the heart or kernel of religion is located in feelings or experiences, as the Modernists held at the beginning of this century (Amerio, op. cit., p.542).

• The WHO has turned global health security into a dictatorship, where the director general has assumed sole power to make decisions by which member states must abide
  

• According to a long-term World Health Organization insider, Bill Gates’ vaccine alliance, GAVI, is directing the WHO
  

• GAVI is headquartered in Switzerland. In 2009, GAVI was recognized as an international institution and granted total blanket immunity, including immunity against criminal sanctions. It is also exempt from paying taxes
  

• In 2017, Gates asked to be part of the WHO’s executive board — like a member state — because of his funding. While the “one-man nation-state of Gates” was not officially voted in, it appears he may have been granted unofficial power of influence
  

• Swissmedic, the Food and Drug Administration of Switzerland, has entered into a three-way contract agreement with Gates and the WHO. It appears other WHO member states have entered into this three-way agreement as well
  

Quote:… when a new influenza virus appears against which the human population has no immunity, resulting in several, simultaneous epidemics worldwide with enormous numbers of deaths and illness.

Quote:Herd immunity is the indirect protection from an infectious disease that happens when a population is immune either through vaccination or immunity developed through previous infection.

Quote:‘Herd immunity’, also known as ‘population immunity’, is a concept used for vaccination, in which a population can be protected from a certain virus if a threshold of vaccination is reached. Herd immunity is achieved by protecting people from a virus, not by exposing them to it.

Vaccines train our immune systems to create proteins that fight disease, known as ‘antibodies’, just as would happen when we are exposed to a disease but — crucially — vaccines work without making us sick.

Vaccinated people are protected from getting the disease in question and passing it on, breaking any chains of transmission. With herd immunity, the vast majority of a population are vaccinated, lowering the overall amount of virus able to spread in the whole population.

Quote:Herd immunity', also known as 'population immunity,' is the indirect protection from an infectious disease that happens when a population is immune either through vaccination or immunity developed through previous infection.

WHO supports achieving 'herd immunity' through vaccination, not by allowing a disease to spread through any segment of the population, as this would result in unnecessary cases and deaths.

Herd immunity against COVID-19 should be achieved by protecting people through vaccination, not by exposing them to the pathogen that causes the disease.

Quote:This means that the probability that a person who has a positive result (SARS-CoV-2 detected) is truly infected with SARS-CoV-2 decreases as prevalence decreases, irrespective of the claimed specificity.

Most PCR assays are indicated as an aid for diagnosis, therefore, health care providers must consider any result in combination with timing of sampling, specimen type, assay specifics, clinical observations, patient history, confirmed status of any contacts, and epidemiological information.

Taken from The Liturgical Year by Dom Prosper Gueranger (1841-1875)

Quote:The Church’s intention in this day’s lesson is to encourage us to earnestness and perseverance in our penance. Here we have an idolatrous city, a haughty and debauched capital, whose crimes have merited the anger of heaven. God threatens it with his vengeance: yet forty days, and Ninive and its inhabitants shall be destroyed. How came it that this threat was not carried into effect? What was it that caused Ninive to be spared? Its people returned to the God they had left; they sued for mercy; they humbled themselves and fasted; and the Church concludes the Prophet’s account by these touching words of her own: “And the Lord our God had mercy on his people.” They were Gentiles, but they became his people because they did penance at the preaching of the Prophet. God had made a covenant with one only nation—the Jews; but he rejected not the Gentiles, as often as they renounced their false Gods, confessed his holy name, and desired to serve him. We are here taught the efficacy of corporal mortification; when united with spiritual penance, that is, with the repentance of the heart, it has power to appease God’s anger. How highly, then, should we not prize the holy exercises of penance put upon us by the Church during this holy Season! Let us also learn to dread that false spirituality which tells us that exterior mortification is of little value: such doctrine is the result of rationalism and cowardice.

This passage from the Prophet Jonas is also intended for the Catechumens, whose baptism is so close at hand. It teaches them to have confidence in this merciful God of the Christians, whose threats are so terrible, but who, notwithstanding, turns from his threats to forgive the repentant sinner. These Catechumens, who had hitherto lived in the Ninive of paganism, were here taught that God, even before sending his Son into the world, invited all men to become his people. Seeing the immense obstacles their Gentile ancestors had to surmount in order to receive and persevere in the grace offered them, they would bless God their Savior for having, by his Incarnation, his Sacrifice, his Sacraments, and his Church, facilitated salvation for us who live under the New Testament. True, he was the source of salvation to all preceding generations: but with what incomparable richness is he the source of ours? The Public Penitents, too, had their instructions in this Epistle. What an encouragement for them to hope for pardon! God had shown mercy to Ninive, sinful as it was, and sentenced to destruction: he would, therefore, accept their repentance and penance, he would stay his justice, and show them mercy and pardon.

Quote:The enemies of Jesus sought to stone him to death, as we were told in yesterday’s Gospel; today they are bent on making him a prisoner, and send soldiers to seize him. This time, Jesus does not hide himself; but how awful are the words he speaks: I go to Him that sent me: you shall seek me, and shall not find me! The sinner, then, who has long abused the grace of God, may have his ingratitude and contempt punished in this just but terrific way—that he shall not be able to find the Jesus he has despised; he shall seek and shall not find. Antiochus, when humbled under the hand of God, prayed, yet obtained not mercy. After the Death and Resurrection of Jesus, while the Church was casting her roots in the world, the Jews, who had crucified the Just One, were seeking in each of the many impostors, who were then rising up in Judea, and fomenting rebellions, which led to the destruction of Jerusalem. Surrounded on all sides by the Roman legions, with their temple and palaces a prey to flames, they sent up their cries to heaven, and besought the God of their fathers to send, as he had promised, the Deliverer! It never occurred to them that this Deliverer had shown himself to their fathers, to many even of themselves; that they had put him to death, and that the Apostles had already carried his name to the ends of the earth. They went on looking for him even to the very day when the deicide city fell, burying beneath its ruins them that the sword had spared. Had they been asked what it was they were awaiting, they would have replied that they were expecting their Messias! He had come and gone. You shall seek me, and shall not find me! Let them, too, think of these terrible words of Jesus, who intend to neglect the graces offered them during this Easter. Let us pray, let us make intercession for them, lest they fall into that awful threat of a repentance that seeks mercy when it is too late to find aught save an inexorable Justice.

But what consoling thoughts are suggested by the concluding words of our Gospel! Faithful souls, and you that have repented! listen to what your Jesus says, for it is to you that he speaks: If any man thirst, let him come to me and drink. Remember the prayer of the Samaritan woman: Give me, O Lord, to drink of this water! This water is divine grace: come and drink your fill at the fountains of your Savior, as the Prophet Isaias bids you. This water gives purity to the soul that is defiled, strength to them that are weak, and love to them that have no fervor. Nay, our Savior assures us, that he who believes in Him shall himself become as a fountain of living water, for the Holy Ghost will come upon him, and this soul shall pour out upon others of the fulness that she herself has received. With what joy must not the Catechumen have listened to these words, which promised him that his thirst should soon be quenched at the holy Font! Jesus has made himself everything to the world he has come to save: Light to guide us, Bread to nourish us, a Vine to gladden our hearts with its fruit, and lastly, a Fountain of Living Water to quench our thirst.

Quote:“not to deprive us of the possibility of continuing to have recourse to the fruitful integrity of that Missale Romanum of St. Pius V so highly praised by Your Holiness and so deeply loved and venerated by the whole Catholic world.”

Quote:On April 3, 1969, the apostolic constitution Missale Romanum presented a new order of the Mass. Archbishop Lefebvre gathered together a group of 12 theologians who wrote under his direction, "A Short Critical Study of the Novus Ordo Missae" often called the "Ottaviani Intervention". Cardinals Ottaviani and Bacci wrote indeed an introduction and presented the study to Paul VI. Since no response came from the Vatican, the archbishop announces to his small group of seminarians, June 10, 1971, that he refuses to accept this new protestantized liturgy:

Quote:'How can I agree to abandon the Mass of All Time or to admit to place it at the same level as the Novus Ordo, created by Annibal Bugnini, with the participation of Protestants to make of it an equivocal supper that eliminates totally the Offertory, and touches the very words of the Consecration.'"

Quote:The Lord’s Supper or Mass is a sacred meeting or assembly of the People of God, met together under the presidency of the priest, to celebrate the memorial of the Lord.[4] Thus the promise of Christ, “where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them,” is eminently true of the local community in the Church" (Mt. 18, 20).

• the Action of Christ and of the People of God;
  
• the Lord’s Supper or Mass;
  
• the Paschal Banquet;
  
• the Common participation in the Lord’s Table;
  
• the memorial of the Lord;
  
• the Eucharistic Prayer;
  
• the Liturgy of the Word and the Eucharistic Liturgy;
  
• etc.
  

Quote:“The center and culminating point of the whole celebration now has a beginning, namely the Eucharistic Prayer, a prayer of thanksgiving and of sanctification” (no. 54, pr.).

• of the genuflections (no more than three remain to the priest, and one, with certain exceptions, to the people, at the Consecration);
  
• of the purification of the priest’s fingers in the chalice; of the preservation from all profane contact of the priest’s fingers after the Consecration;
  
• of the purification of the vessels, which need not be immediate, nor made on the corporal;
  
• of the pall protecting the chalice;
  
• of the internal gilding of sacred vessels;
  
• of the consecration of movable altars;
  
• of the sacred stone and relics in the movable altar or upon the mensa—when celebration does not occur in sacred precincts (this distinction leads straight to “eucharistic suppers” in private houses);
  
• of the three altar cloths, reduced to one only;
  
• of thanksgiving kneeling (replaced by a thanksgiving, seated, on the part of priest and people, a logical enough complement to Communion standing);
  
• of all the ancient prescriptions in the case of the consecrated Host falling, which are now reduced to a single, casual direction: “reverenter accipiatur” (no. 239);
  
• all these things only serve to emphasize how outrageously faith in the dogma of the Real Presence is implicitly repudiated.
  

Quote:“The altar or table of the Lord, which is the center of the whole Eucharistic liturgy” (no. 49, cf. 262).

Quote:also that the altar must be the center of the assembly of the faithful so that their attention is drawn spontaneously toward it"(ibid).

• Christ,
  
• the priest,
  
• the Church,
  
• the faithful present.
  

• the very serious omission of the phrase “Per Christum Dominum Nostrum,” the guarantee of being heard given to the Church in every age (John 14, 13-14; 15; 16; 23; 24;
  
• the all-pervading “paschalism,” almost as though there were no other, quite different and equally important aspects of the communication of grace;
  
• the very strange and dubious eschatologism whereby the communication of supernatural grace, a reality which is permanent and eternal, is brought down to the dimensions of time: we hear of a people on the march, a pilgrim Church—no longer militant against the Potestas tenebrarum — looking toward a future which having lost its link with eternity is conceived in purely temporal terms.
  

Quote:The Latin texts will now have to be translated into the languages of the various peoples: the "Roman" style will have to be adopted to the individuality of the local Churches: that which was conceived beyond time must he transposed into the changing context of concrete situations in the constant flux of the Universal Church and of its myriad congregations.

Quote:“Should anyone presume to tamper with this, let him know that he shall incur the wrath of God Almighty and of his Blessed Apostles, Peter and Paul” (Quo Primum, July 13, 1570).[31]

Taken from Fr. Goffine's Explanations of the Epistles and Gospels for the Sundays, Holydays, and Festivals throughout the Ecclesiastical Year, 36th edition, 1880

Quote:EPISTLE. (Heb. ix. 11 — 15.) Brethren, Christ being come, a high-priest of the good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is. not of this creation, neither by the blood of goats or of calves, but by his own blood, entered once into the Holies, having obtained eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats and of oxen, and the ashes of a heifer being sprinkled, sanctify such as are denied, to the cleansing of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who, by the Holy Ghost, offered himself without spot to God, cleanse our conscience from dead works, to serve the living God? And therefore he is the Mediator of the new testament; that by means of his death, for the redemption of those transgressions which were under the former testament; they that are called may receive the promise of eternal inheritance.

EXPLANATION. St. Paul here teaches, that Christ as the true high-priest of the New Testament, through His Precious Blood on the altar of the cross, has indeed made perfect satisfaction for sins, but that the sinner must also do his own part, by cooperating with Christ to make himself less unworthy of participating in His passion and merits, and to appropriate to himself its fruits. This is done when he diligently and devoutly assists at the unbloody Sacrifice of the Mass by which the fruits of the death on the cross are attributed to us; when, according to the will of the Church, he purifies his conscience by true contrition and confession; and when he seeks by trust in Christ's merits to render some satisfaction for his sins through voluntary penance and faithful following of Christ.

ASPIRATION. Grant us; O meek Jesus, Thy grace, that through perfect sorrow for our sine and the exercise of good works we may become participators in the merits of Thy bitter passion.