The Argument against
Ecumenism:
“dost
thou betray the Son of man with a kiss?”
Why
did Christ Die on the Cross?
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” 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
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.
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 (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
April 22, 2019
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