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
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
Remarkably — and sadly—
this is not a new, it is only stated with greater emphasis by
Francis, but was also — and for many Traditional Catholics, surprisingly
the mind of Benedict XVI:
“The Church
does not engage in proselytism. Instead, she grows by ‘attraction.”
(Benedict XVI at a meeting of Latin American and Caribbean bishops
in Aparecida, Brazil, in 2007)
We see that both
Francis and Benedict XVI were Ecumenists (we must remember that
Benedict XVI on October
27, 2011 committed the same folly andin the same venue as his predecessor
John Paul II
in
Assisi 27 Oct 1986)
— and both promoted and taught what is in contradiction to
the Great Commission (St. Matthew 28.16-20), a central
tenet of Catholicism (as well as other Christian denominations),
and the last words Christ spoke to His Apostles before His Ascension:
“Going therefore, teach
ye all nations; baptizing them in the name of the
Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Teaching
them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded
you.” (St. Matthew
28.19-20)
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
— rather, it is the heretical program of Ecumenism
that is central to Christianity.
To reiterate the
point:
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 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? Among the present-day pagan religions,
we find 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, Joseph Smith of Mormonism, Ahura Mazda of Zoroastrianism,
Gnosticism, the self-apotheosis in New Age Spirituality, etc.
— or, in fact,
no religion
at all. for as Francis openly states, “even atheists
go to Heaven.”
2
“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 much abused “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 we are now to believe that
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/
2
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/pope-francis-assures-atheists-you-don-t-have-to-believe-in-god-to-go-to-heaven-8810062.html
Geoffrey
K. Mondello
Editor
Boston Catholic Journal
Totally Faithful to the Sacred
Deposit of Faith entrusted to the Holy See in Rome
“Scio
opera tua ... quia modicum habes virtutem, et servasti verbum
Meum, nec non negasti Nomen Meum”
“I
know your works ... that you have but little power, and
yet you have kept My word, and have not denied My Name.”
(Apocalypse
3.8)
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