Vatican II: the Great Apostasy
and
The Myth called Ecumenism

 

 
 

 

Why ... Why did Christ Die on the Cross ...

if ANY “religion” whatsoever will bring you Salvation?

 

This question — and any conceivable answer to it — is the most compelling argument against any speculative proposition that could logically lend itself to the project of what we have come to understand as “ecumenism” (a word first coined in 1948) — the novel and ultimately implausible notion that was the principal motivation behind the convocation of the Second Vatican Council. It is an unavoidable question that is absolutely unanswerable in terms consistent with the entirely specious — or better yet, factitious — “ecumenical” project:
 

WHY was it NECESSARY for Christ to die on the Cross —

if  ANY religion, belief, cult, or superstition suffices

to bring man to God, offers salvation, and ultimately leads men to Heaven?

 

Why do we — indeed, how could we — maintain the indispensability of the Holy Catholic Church — in other words, on what grounds do we maintain that it is necessary — rather than merely redundant and ultimately superfluous — if any and every other religion is the sufficient means to the salvation of souls and the attainment of Heaven?

Francis — the pre-eminent product and culmination of Vatican II — recently and finally made this clear — indeed even signed a document with one of Islam’s Grand Imams declaring that:

“The pluralism and the diversity of religions, color, sex, race and language are willed by God in His wisdom, through which He created human beings,” … “This divine wisdom is the source from which the right to freedom of belief and the freedom to be different derives. Therefore, the fact that people are forced to adhere to a certain religion or culture must be rejected, as too the imposition of a cultural way of life that others do not accept.”

Two years earlier he had emphasized this radical insistence on ecumenism through a different tack, the absolutely clear terms of which by now we are all familiar:

“It is not licit that you convince them of your faith; proselytism is the strongest poison against the ecumenical path.” ¹

For Francis, it is not the proclamation of the Gospel and the conversion of souls to Jesus Christ and His Holy Catholic Church that is paramount — and mandated by Christ when He told His Apostles “Go therefore and teach all nations; baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Teach them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you.” (St. Matthew 28.19-20) — but the heretical program of Ecumenism that is central to Christianity.

 

Again, we ask yet again:

Why, then, was it necessary for Christ to die on the Cross —

if “any religion” suffices to bring man to God, offers salvation, and ultimately leads men to Heaven?

The answer to this question had apparently been peripheral to the “Council Fathers” and the answer to it still eludes the sophistic casuistry of Catholic and Protestant theologians alike, as it had in their collaborative construction of the Council and the spurious documents that emerged from it.

At first the heresy of ecumenism was confined to nominally “Christian denominations” — but as the many ineluctable contradictions unfolded, it increasingly and necessarily moved beyond Christianity to encompass all religions — and no religion at all.

Let us be as forthright as possible: why — for what possible reason — was it necessary for Jesus Christ to suffer and die on the Cross … if — if — there was another way, another religion, in fact any religion that suffices (including that of the Canaanite god Moloch who required child sacrifice, and the Aztec god Huitzilopochtli — who also required human sacrifice), to say nothing of the Trimurti of the Hindus, Allah of the Muslims, Mormonism, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Gnosticism, etc. or, in fact, no religion at all as Francis’s argument implies?
 

“THE ‘god’ OF SURPRISES?”

Absurdity may, in fact, be a prerogative of Francis’s fabricated “god of surprises” — but it is not the same God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; not the God revealed in His Incarnate Son, and certainly not the God worshipped in the Catholic Church.

If it was not necessary for Christ to die on the Cross to redeem man from his sins and so open Heaven to men — then His immolation on Calvary was purely gratuitous — He suffered and died needlessly — God the Father capriciously and wantonly crucified His Only-Begotten Son. The Crucifixion was pointless, and the agony of His Mother of no consequence. This is the necessary conclusion to the spurious attempt to both initiate and implement all that is inherently irreconcilable in the disastrous project of “ecumenism”. Any other religion would have been sufficient without Christ and the Cross!

As a postscript I suggest that you not attempt to use the “ut unum sint” (“that they may be one” ) citation from Holy Scripture. There are too many citations to the contrary. Christ was clearly speaking of His Apostles:

“And now I am not in the world, and these are in the world, and I come to thee. Holy Father, keep them in Thy name whom Thou has given me; that they may be one, as We also are. While I was with them, I kept them in Thy name. Those whom Thou gavest me have I kept; and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition, that the scripture may be fulfilled.” (Saint John 17.11-12)

If you argue that the revelation of God is a gradually evolving and on-going process, a continual “up-dating” of His most holy will so that He, Who created the world, can keep pace with the times and man’s “evolving consciousness”— then Jesus is not the final Word of God after all:

“God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world.” (Hebrews 1.1-2)

The revelation of God was completed in His Son, and ended upon the death of the last Apostle, Saint John.

This is long-established Catholic Doctrine.

But now, we are to believe, God is going to speak through Francis and abolish this doctrine by revealing that Christianity (Catholicism) is not the only way to the Father despite what Christ Himself said:

“I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No man cometh to the Father, but by me.” (Saint John 14.6)

Francis’s proclamation — without precedent in Catholic history — is nothing less than a betrayal of Christ, the Teachings of Christ’s Church, the Sacred Deposit of Faith and is a grievous wound in our Holy Mother the Church whom he has also betrayed. It is heresy.

And if this is not heresy (specifically the heresy of Indifferentism) then nothing qualifies for the definition.

________________________

¹  https://www.lifesitenews.com/opinion/pope-to-teen-girl-proselytism-is-the-strongest-poison-against-the-ecumenica

 

Geoffrey K. Mondello
Editor
Boston Catholic Journal
 

   Printable PDF Version

Comments? Write us:  editor@boston-catholic-journal.com

 

 

---

This question can legitimately be asked — but without anticipating a positive response. Indeed, under the papacy of Francis, to be “as Catholic as the pope” is to be an uncertain, uncommitted Catholic, unsure of the credentials of the Catholic Church and uncertain of the morality historically predicated of Her and derived from Sacred Scripture. A non-creedal Unitarian Universalist would be more in keeping with the mind of Francis than Catholicism as it has been historically understood.

“Faced with cultural, ethnic, political and religious differences, we can close ourselves in a rigid defense of our so-called identity or open ourselves to the encounter with the other and cultivate together the dream of a fraternal society”, Francis pleaded.”
https://www.churchmilitant.com/news/article/francis-orban-trade-jibes-at-historic-meet

To clearly understand the predicament into which Francis’s papacy has placed us, we must first come to terms with what are called:

I.  God’s Active Will and

II. God’s Permissive Will

Let us look at paradigms of each.
 

•  God’s Active Will is always, in and of itself, absolutely good, for it is integral with God Himself Who is all-Good.
   

• God does not actively will “relative” goods — that is to say, goods limited by other considerations and apportioned only as possibility allows.
  
  • In Himself pure actuality (there is no potentiality in God: He cannot potentially be “more” than what He actually is), there is nothing that can constrain His active willing, as though He were compelled to will lesser goods within a spectrum of possible goods to which He is confined.
  
  • God is absolutely free — without limitation or confinement; for these concepts are impossible to predicate of God as omnipotent. Each and every expression of God’s active will is ordered to the unmitigated good. “God is light, and in Him there is no darkness.” (1 Saint John 1.5).
  
  • Our first paradigm would actually be two-fold: the Decalogue (the Ten Commandments: Exodus 20:2–17 and Deuteronomy 5:6–21) and the Sermon on the Mount (Saint Matthew, chapters 5- 7) in which we find the Active Will of God: “This is what I want you to do and to refrain from doing.” This is God’s express will.
   

The Permissive Will of God  

The most succinct definition of the next paradigm — the Permissive Will of God — is as follows:

In light of God’s conferring Free Will on man (God’s creation of man without this perfection would consequently be an imperfect creation by an all-good and all-powerful God, for freedom of will is an incontestable good — the privation of which results in an amoral world in which there is nothing meritorious and nothing blameworthy — much as we understand the operations of a machine that cannot do otherwise than its designer intended — a mere automaton to which we cannot ascribe any moral predicates.

As a consequence, man, possessing the perfection of free will, is free to choose what he wills, good or evil, and not what God wills. The same freedom may align man to God’s Express Will (he chooses to do what he knows God commands him to do — rather than that which he may otherwise be inclined to do — which is to say that his own will is freely aligned with the perfect will of God — before which he can plead no ignorance). What is more, God cannot revoke this perfect gift of free will without simultaneously abrogating that singular perfection with which He endowed man — and then re-create man as imperfect (without a free will).

 

Even a Pope is Given the Free Will to do what he wills — rather than What God wills

This is the great mystery of the power of free will. So indefeasible and necessary to man’s created perfection (as noted above), God even permits man’s repudiation of God Himself! It is absolutely autonomous, uncoerced, and intensionally ² (not “intentionally”) tautologous. ³

In a word, it is completely independent, self-referent, and completely free. However faithfully or unfaithfully a pope executes his Petrine Office is largely determined by the man. He may be good or he may be evil. In either case — even given the exalted office conferred upon him — he is withal and necessarily exercising his own free will. Even a pope is free to do what he wills, rather than what God wills. He can incorporate and exercise the legitimate responsibilities of his office, or he can be despotic and utterly ignore them, and with them, God. It is up to the man.

When the free will is consonant with God’s will it is holy, for God is holy. When the free will not consonant with God’s will it is evil (for there is nothing good apart from God. ⁴) It is quite simple, really.

WHY?
That God may actively or permissively will the Petrine Office to be occupied by the feckless despot Jorge Bergoglio as a scourge to a perverse and faithless generation, a generation which, unable to make God in their image, contrived to make His Vicar in their image instead — is altogether and increasingly likely.

We must equally remember two episodes, one from the Old Testament, and one from the New Testament in which we find God bringing good even out of evil:

In Genesis 15.18-20 we find the Patriarch Joseph thrown into a dry well to die by his eleven brothers, to whom he said when they were reunited, 

“You thought evil against me: but God turned it into good, that he might exalt me, as at present you see, and might save many people.

Pilate surely believed that it was in his power to crucify Christ or to free Him — but Jesus responds:

“Thou shouldst not have any power against Me, unless it were given thee from above.” (Saint John 19.11)

These are two striking examples of God’s Permissive Will — not simply respecting the free will He conferred upon man, but of His power to bring a seemingly impossible good out of the evil devices of men. Most often we do not see the end to which his benevolent, Permissive Will, is directed — and may not in this life at all. We are left with the assurance by Saint Paul:

“And we know that to them that love God, all things work together unto good, to such as, according to His purpose, are called to be saints.” (Romans 8.28)

It is true that Jorge has uttered some things good and true — but because one utters some things that are true and good, we cannot infer that the one saying them is himself good ... or true.
 

An Apposite and Frightening Paradigm

Here our paradigm is no one less than Satan, who himself quoted Scripture in the Temptations of Christ (Saint Matthew 4.1-11) What he said was true in his unsuccessful attempts to seduce Christ from redeeming the souls of men, but because he quoted directly from Holy Scripture itself in no way mitigates his evil.

Some things that Bergoglio (Francis) says are both good  and true (when comprehensible —  but far too many are arrogant, evil and unjust) — and just as Lucifer can take the form of an angel of light ^*, so Francis can take the form of an apostle of Christ!
 

Like Satan, Francis can quote Scripture, too …

______________________________

<sup>*“For such false apostles are deceitful workmen, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ. And no wonder: for Satan himself transformeth himself into an angel of light.” (2 Corinthians 13-14)

1</sup> https://www.churchmilitant.com/news/article/francis-orban-trade-jibes-at-historic-meet

2 An intensional definition gives the meaning of a term by specifying necessary and sufficient conditions for when the term should be used by denoting the properties that an object requires in order to be understood as a referent of the term. For example, an intensional definition of the word “bachelor” is an “unmarried man”.

3 a tautology is the uttering of the same thing twice in different words.

 ⁴ “Every best gift, and every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no change, nor shadow of alteration.” (Saint James 1.17)
 

Comments? Write us:  editor@boston-catholic-journal.com