Catechism on Auctorem Fidei

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Ambiguity Condemned by Pope Pius VI in 1794

A Short Catechism by Fr. Hewko: Auctorem Fidei - The Author of the Faith

Transcript
I would like to cover briefly with you this great encyclical Auctorem Fidei written by Pope Pius VI. It is a Bull. Why he wrote it was that in 1786 there was in Italy the town of Pistoia there was a Council held by a Bishop, and he introduced novel ideas, he introduced heretical ideas in this Council that he held.

So it was kind of like an advertiser of Vatican II way back in 1786. So Pope Pius VI got wind of it. He tried to appeal to this Bishop to change, to denounce the errors of this Council and the Bishop delayed, delayed, delayed. So Pope Pope Pius VI says I have waited long enough. The wolves are attacking the flock, I must act now. He pulled out the twenty odd six gun and he started shooting at those wolves and the errors that oppose Catholic teaching.

He begins this Bull written in 1794, August 28th just right after the French revolution. Right at the outbreak - in fact during 1974 there were big wars going on in the Vendee, and in Flanders, the Freemason armies are marching in trying to crush the Catholic Church. They've got the clergy, the priests who took the constitution... they say the Latin Mass in all the parish Churches but the Catholic people will not go to those Latin Masses because they know they are said by priests who compromise the faith. And that is a lesson for us, we don't go to Masses - to priests who, in any way accept Vatican II and the new Mass. You cannot go.

So:

"Pius, Bishop Servant of the servants of God greetings, and my apostolic blessings to all the Christian faithful. The Apostle Paul commands us, who look on Jesus as the author and finisher of the faith, to consider diligently the nature and magnitude of the opposition against Him."

Then he goes on to say that there is a huge conspiracy against the Catholic Church and there always will be a conspiracy to destroy the work of Our Lord Jesus Christ. So the Pope says a greater zeal is upon me to look after the flock. This is a really great Pope who loves the Church. Loves our Lord Jesus Christ. He's protecting the flock. Not like these Vatican II Popes who allow the wolves to tear up the whole flock of our Lord and drag them to hell by their jaws.

Then he says:

"In fact, when a leader of God's holy Church under the name of priest turns the very people of Christ away from the path of truth. (He's talking about this bad bishop in Pistoia) toward the peril of erroneous belief and when this occurs in a major city then clearly the distress and anxiety is multiplied."

In other words, the Pope is saying: this Bishop is teaching heresy and holding a council against our will and causing havoc in the Catholic Church. Well his errors must be condemned.

And then he goes on and he says:

"So, the Pope says a greater zeal is upon me to look after the flock."

He is a really great Pope. And then he goes on and he says 'This bishop - at first he was good. We entrusted him with this diocese and then he turned evil. and he embarked on confusing, destroying and utterly overturning this diocese by introducing troublesome novelties under the guise of a sham reform.'

[...] Remember, novelties in Catholic language - whenever you hear of a novelty it is equivalent to heresy. When you deal with the Catholic faith if anything is new it equals heresy in Catholic language. St. Thomas Aquinas says the same thing. 'Anything that is novel is heretical because in the Catholic church nothing is new, nothing. It's always beautiful. Always the same. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday today and forever.'

And so he continues and then the Pope quotes St. Zosimus, a former pope:

"..those things that of great importance call for a weighty examination."

So now this Pope steps into the boxing ring and he's going to clean house. Here he goes. Listen to this:

"They knew the capacity of innovators in the art of deception."

So, these are artful. This bishop and these catholic clergy are slippery snakes he says:

"In order not to shock the ears of Catholics, the innovators sought to hide the subtleties of their tortuous maneuvers by the use of seemingly innocuous words such as would allow them to insinuate error into souls in the most gentle manner. Once the truth had been compromised, they could, by means of slight changes or additions in phraseology, distort the confession of the faith that is necessary for our salvation, and lead the faithful by subtle errors to their eternal damnation. This manner of dissimulating and lying is vicious, regardless of the circumstances under which it is used. For very good reasons it can never be tolerated in a synod of which the principal glory consists above all in teaching the truth with clarity and excluding all danger of error."

This is powerful. This condemns Vatican II. This condemns the doctrinal declaration of April 15th, 2012 signed by a Bishop (Fellay). It condemns double meaning language and fuzzy weasel-words. It condemns that when you talk about the Catholic faith. This also condemns those five Eleison Comments (of Bishop Williamson's) that say the new Mass gives grace. It is the same slippery language that is used to insinuate error.

Listen to this: Pope Pius VI - again this is 1794 condemning Vatican II doctrinal declaration [...]

"Moreover, if all this is sinful, it cannot be excused in the way that one sees it being done, under the erroneous pretext that the seemingly shocking affirmations in one place are further developed along orthodox lines in other places, and even in yet other places corrected; as if allowing for the possibility of either affirming or denying the statement, or of leaving it up the personal inclinations of the individual – such has always been the fraudulent and daring method used by innovators to establish error. It allows for both the possibility of promoting error and of excusing it."

See the confusion, there is traditional language, then there's novelty, then there's traditional language again, so people can read it and say well, 'It has a Catholic meaning'. You've got a double tongue here. Scripture says God hates the double tongue. Bishop Fellay admitted that the Doctrinal Declaration can be doubly interpreted. And Bishop Williamson also makes comments defending that the new Mass gives grace and Eucharistic miracles. We have to say it is gravely misleading. It is causing a civil war among many traditional Catholics over a question that shouldn't be an issue. Whether the new Mass gives grace or not is a dead issue. A bad tree gives bad fruit. And then Vatican II - the bishops at Vatican II, with Cardinal Ratzinger among them, they admitted that 'we used ambiguous language deliberately' so that afterwards we can take the phrases, run with the ball - that is implement the errors of Vatican II's heresies.

Pope Pius VI continues:

"It is a most reprehensible technique for the insinuation of doctrinal errors and one condemned long ago by our predecessor St. Celestine who found it used in the writings of Nestorius, bishop of Constantinople, and which he exposed in order to condemn it with the greatest possible severity."

Anybody remember the heresy of Nestorius? He said Mary is not the Mother of God. He said Mary is the mother of the MAN of Jesus Christ but not God. This heresy is that there are two Persons in Christ. The truth is that there are two natures in Christ and only one person. The attack was Mary who was the Mother of God. He was condemned by St. Celestine.

"Once these texts were examined carefully, the impostor was exposed and confounded, for he expressed himself in a plethora of words, mixing true things with others that were obscure; mixing at times one with the other in such a way that he was also able to confess those things which were denied while at the same time possessing a basis for denying those very sentences which he confessed. In order to expose such snares, something which becomes necessary with a certain frequency in every century, no other method is required than the following: Whenever it becomes necessary to expose statements that disguise some suspected error or danger under the veil of ambiguity, one must denounce the perverse meaning under which the error opposed to Catholic truth is camouflaged."

We can take the Eleison Comments and do the same. Camouflaged language to say the new Mass gives grace, has Eucharistic miracles. It is deadly for souls. If the new Mass gives grace what are we doing telling people to stay away from it? It is very misleading. And Bishop Fellay also in the Doctrinal Declaration accepts Vatican II; accepts the new Mass; accepts the new profession of faith that. Archbishop Lefebvre condemned, the new Mass, the new sacraments and rejects the new Mass is legitimate. If you say the new Mass is legitimate, you're saying that it's good for souls. [....] So, don't be surprised if the new Mass is being said in an SSPX chapel. Of course, the priest says he will never say the new Mass. The Campos priests in Brazil in 2003 they also said the same thing. Oh, we're never going to say the new Mass. Now today those same priests are saying the new Mass with altars facing the people. Giving communion in the hand. It can happen, it has happened, and it will happen again in the future.

The Pope quotes:

"For we, along with Augustine and the Fathers of Milevis, prefer and desire that men who teach perverse things be healed in the Church by pastoral care rather than be cut off from Her without hope of salvation, if necessity does not force one to act."

So this good pope is saying 'Ok, but with this Bishop Nestoria, we tried to be patient, we tried to appeal to him, to condemn this heresy, to revoke his heresies and no nothing came, so now I'm have to act ...and pull out the rifle. It is not a matter of the danger of only one or another diocese. This is very important because people were saying, well its just one diocese the diocese of Nestoria, so just clean up the mess with Nestoria.' But this Pope says,

“Any novelty at all assails the Universal Church.”

Any novelty at all attacks the Catholic church. Its universal. That's why no bishop or priest can sit back when there is heresy being taught. Archbishop Lefebvre - remember he stood up to defend the Catholic Faith and all the modernist clergy attacked him; tried to tear him to pieces. They attacked the seminary in Écône because the enemies of Christ did not want priests in the line of the traditional popes in the mind of Archbishop Lefebvre. They don't want that. There is such a fierce hatred of OLMC in Kentucky. All we want to do is continue the work of Archbishop Lefebvre and hold his position. Tell the pope to come back to tradition. It's our job. It's very clear. The Virgin Mary sealed this when she prophesied his (Archbishop Lefebvre's) coming 300 years beforehand.

Now for a long time, from every side, the judgment of the supreme Apostolic See has not only been awaited but earnestly demanded by unremitting, repeated petitions. The good priests are begging 'Do something, Holy Father, this is a heresy that is leading souls astray'. God forbid that the voice of Peter ever be silent in that See, where, living and presiding perpetually, he presents the truth of the faith to those in search of it. A lengthier forbearance in such matters (in other words - any delay in condemning these heresies in such matters) is not safe, because it is almost just as much of a crime to close one’s eyes in such cases, as it is to preach such offenses to religion.

In other words, I will be sinning if I close my eyes to this. I think of these five Vatican II popes closing their eyes to the heresies of Vatican II....all the damage...

"Therefore, (says Pius VI,) such a wound must be cut away, a wound by which not one member is hurt, but the entire body of the church is damaged."

So this is one of the arguments that St. Thomas Aquinas would use ....if you've got a leg that's gangrene, the gangrene is spreading until it kills the whole body. What does the doctor do? He amputates the leg to save the body. So this good pope (Pius VI) is amputating this bad bishop (of Pistoia) to save the whole universal church.

"And with the aid of divine piety, We must take care that, with the dissensions removed, (that is the fighting removed) the Catholic faith be preserved inviolate, and that those whose faith has been proved may be fortified/strengthened` by our authority once those who defend perverse teachings have been recalled from error."

And then the good Pope adds in this Encyclical saying that:

"We have resolved to condemn and reprove several propositions, doctrines, and opinions of the acts and decrees of the Council of Nestoria, either those expressly taught or those conveyed through ambiguity, with their own appropriate notes and censures for each of them (as was said above), just as we condemn and reprove them in this our constitution, which will be valid in perpetuity - until the end of the world. They are as follows."

And now follows is a list of 83 condemned heresies and errors [See Denzinger, beginning with #1501]. So this is a Pope acting and doing his duty. Some day there will be a good Pope condemning the heresies and errors of Vatican II. He is going to condemn the whole thing because the whole thing is poison. Archbishop Lefebvre, in his great declaration said, 'Even though not every word and not every sentence of the documents of Vatican II may be heretical or formally heretical the whole thing is poison. It is saturated, marinated in the modern heresies'.

So there is this little brief summary of this great encyclical - this great Bull: Auctorem Fidei.

Archbishop Lefebvre quotes it very often. He says, how do we know Rome will come back to tradition? When the pope professes the teaching of Auctorem Fidei, the Syllabus of Errors, Pascendi, and Toleransibus condemning ecumenism, and all the other great encyclicals.

* * *

Pope Pius VI, Auctorem Fidei, August 28, 1794

“[The Ancient Doctors] knew the capacity of innovators in the art of deception. In order not to shock the ears of Catholics, they sought to hide the subtleties of their tortuous maneuvers by the use of seemingly innocuous words such as would allow them to insinuate error into souls in the most gentle manner. Once the truth had been compromised, they could, by means of slight changes or additions in phraseology, distort the confession of the faith which is necessary for our salvation, and lead the faithful by subtle errors to their eternal damnation.

This manner of dissimulation and lying is vicious, regardless of the circumstance under which it is used. For very good reason it can never be tolerated in a Synod of which the principal glory consists above all in teaching the truth with clarity and excluding all danger of error. Moreover, if all this is sinful, it cannot be excused in the way that one sees it being done, under the erroneous pretext that the seemingly shocking affirmations in one place are further developed along orthodox lines in other places, and even in yet other places corrected; as if allowing for the possibility of either affirming or denying the statement, or of leaving it up to the personal inclinations of the individual--such has always been the fraudulent and daring method used by innovators to establish error. It allows for both the possibility of promoting error and of excusing it.

It is as if the innovators pretended that they always intended to present the alternative passages, especially to those of simple faith who eventually come to know only some part of the conclusions of such discussions which are published in the common language for everyone's use. Or again, as if the same faithful had the ability on examining such documents to judge such matters for themselves without getting confused and avoiding all risk of error. It is a most reprehensible technique for the insinuation of doctrinal errors and one condemned long ago by our predecessor Saint Celestine who found it used in the writings of Nestorius, Bishop of Constantinople, and which he exposed in order to condemn it with the greatest possible severity.

Once these texts were examined carefully, the impostor was exposed and confounded, for he expressed himself in a plethora of words, mixing true things with others that were obscure; mixing at times one with the other in such a way that he was also able to confess those things which were denied while at the same time possessing a basis for denying those very sentences which he confessed. In order to expose such snares, something which becomes necessary with a certain frequency in every century, no other method is required then the following: Whenever it becomes necessary to expose statements which disguise some suspected error or danger under the veil of ambiguity, one must denounce the perverse meaning under which the error opposed to Catholic truth is camouflaged.”

Adapted from: Source

See also a short description of Auctorem Fidei in the 1917 Catholic Encyclopedia.

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A [powerful] reminder!