I Am Christian (roman Catholic)
Here is an essay by a traditional Catholic bishop on the doctrinal errors of Vatican II. It might change your mind as to how you think you are a true, practicing Catholic. (In 2 parts)
The Doctrinal Errors of the Second Vatican Council
By Bishop Mark A. Pivarunas, CMRI
In order to comprehend sufficiently the doctrinal errors which have emanated from the Second Vatican Council, it is necessary to review the very foundation of our holy religion.
As Catholics, we firmly believe in Divine Revelation, that Almighty God has revealed truths to mankind in regard to what man must believe and how he must live in order to fulfill his purpose here on earth.
Of the many religions in the world today, which religion has been revealed by God Himself? There can be no doubt that there is but one religion which has been revealed by Almighty God through Jesus Christ, His only begotten Son, the Eternal Word made Flesh. This is the foundation of our holy Faith, as Pope Pius XI taught in his encyclical, Mortalium Animos (1929):
“God, the Creator of all things, made us that we might know Him and serve Him; to our service, therefore, He has a full right.... He willed, however, to make positive laws which we should obey, and progressively, from the beginning of the human race until the coming and preaching of Jesus Christ, He Himself taught mankind the duties which a rational creature owes to his Creator. “God, Who at sundry times and in divers manners spoke in times past to the fathers by the prophets, last of all in these days hath spoken to us by His Son” (Heb. 1:1, seq.). Evidently, therefore, no religion can be true save that which rests upon the revelation of God, a revelation begun from the very first, continued under the Old Law, and brought to completion by Jesus Christ Himself under the New. Now, if God has spoken — and it is historically certain that He has in fact spoken — then it is clearly man’s duty implicitly to believe His revelation and to obey His commands.”
And how do we know that there is but one religion revealed by God? What evidence has been manifested by God to demonstrate the divine origin of Christianity?
The answer is miracles and prophesies, these supernatural events which prove the divine origin of Christianity. As we read in St. Pope Pius X’s Oath Against Modernism (1910):
“I accept and acknowledge the external proofs of revelation, that is, divine acts and especially miracles and prophecies as the surest signs of the divine origin of the Christian religion and I hold that these same proofs are well adapted to the understanding of all eras and all men, even of this time.”
No other religion in the world has the supernatural proof that Christianity has.
“These surest proofs of the divine origin of the Christian religion” manifest to all men the religion by which God wills to be worshiped and make it obligatory for man to seek the true religion and practice it.
Pope Leo XIII taught in Satis Cognitum (1896):
“It was thus the duty of all who heard Jesus Christ, if they wished for eternal salvation, not merely to accept His doctrine as a whole, but to assent with their entire mind to each and every point of it, since it is unlawful to withhold faith from God even in regard to one single point.”
And just as it is certain as there is one religion revealed by God, it is also certain that there is but one true Church founded by Jesus Christ. The one true Church of Christ is the Catholic Church; this is a historical fact, confirmed by Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition. No other church can be historically traced back to Jesus Christ and His Apostles; no other church is confirmed by Sacred Scripture and Tradition.
Pope Boniface VIII in his Bull Unam Sanctam (1302) infallibly taught:
“We are compelled in virtue of our faith to believe and maintain that there is only one Catholic Church, and that one apostolic. This we firmly believe and profess without qualification. Outside this church there is no salvation and no remission of sins. Thus the spouse proclaims in the Canticle, ‘One is my dove: my perfect one is but one. She is the only one of her mother, the chosen of her that bore her’ (Cant. 6:8). Now this chosen one represents the one mystical body whose head is Christ, and Christ’s head is God. In her there is ‘one Lord, one faith, one baptism’ (Eph. 4:5). For at the time of the deluge there existed only one ark, the figure of the one Church.”
Pope Leo XIII in his encyclical Satis Cognitum (1896) reiterated this doctrine:
“There is clear and abundant proof in Sacred Scripture that there is one genuine Church of Jesus Christ... According to factual history, then, Jesus Christ did not plan and establish a Church made up of a number of organizations that were genetically similar, yet separate and without those bonds of unity which make the Church one and indivisible as we profess in the Creed, ‘I believe in one Church.’... When Jesus Christ spoke of this mystical structure, he spoke of one Church only which he called his own: ‘I will build my Church’ (Matt. 16:18). Since no other church besides this one was founded by Jesus Christ, no other church which could be imagined can be the true Church of Christ.”
Furthermore, Pope Pius XII in his encyclical Mystici Corporis (1943) summarized the teaching of his predecessors:
“If we would define and describe this true Church of Jesus Christ — which is the One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic Roman Church — we shall find no expression more noble, more sublime or more divine than the phrase which calls it ‘the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ.’”
Ever convinced of her divine origin, the Catholic Church has always condemned the erroneous belief that all religions are more or less good and praiseworthy and that it doesn’t matter to what church one belongs for men can find salvation in any church. This is the false doctrine of religious indifferentism which has been frequently condemned by the Catholic Church.
Pope Pius IX in his encyclical Singulari Quadam (1854) warned the Catholic hierarchy:
“We want your episcopal care and vigilance to be on the alert to keep away from men’s minds, with all possible effort, that opinion which is as unholy as it is deadly. We mean the opinion that a way of eternal salvation can be found in any religion whatever. With all the learning and ingenuity that is yours, teach the people entrusted to your care that the dogmas of the Catholic faith are not in the slightest opposed to the mercy and justice of God.
“It must, of course, be held as a matter of faith that outside the apostolic Roman Church no one can be saved, that the Church is the only ark of salvation, and that whoever does not enter it will perish in the flood.”
Ten years later Pope Pius IX issued his Syllabus of Errors (1864) in which he condemned the following propositions:
CONDEMNED PROPOSITIONS:
• “Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall have come to consider as true.”
• “Men can find the way of eternal salvation and reach eternal salvation in any form of religious worship.”
• “Good hopes, at least, must be entertained of the eternal salvation of all those who in no way belong to the True Church of Christ.”
• “Protestantism is nothing else than a different form of the same True Christian Religion, and in it one can be as pleasing to God as in the Catholic Church.”
The main problem with the various religions of the world is that they do not accept Divine Revelation, and in regard to the Protestant churches they do not accept all that Christ has commanded. Our Divine Savior commanded his Apostles to “teach all nations... teaching them to observe all that I have commanded” (Matt 28:19,20) and He added, “He who is baptized and believes will be saved and he who does not believe will be condemned” (Mark 16:16).
Pope Benedict XV stressed this in his encyclical Ad Beatissimi (1914):
“Such is the nature of Catholicism that it does not admit of more or less, but must be held as a whole or as a whole rejected: ‘This is the Catholic Faith, which unless a man believe faithfully and firmly, he cannot be saved’ (Athanasian Creed). There is no need of adding any qualifying terms to the profession of Catholicism: it is quite enough for each one to proclaim ‘Christian is my name and Catholic my surname,’ only let him endeavor to be in reality what he calls himself.”
So important is the necessity of the profession of the true Faith in its entirety that Pope Leo XIII taught in his encyclical Sapientiae Christianae (1890):
“To refuse to believe any one of them is equivalent to rejecting them all.”
Later on, the same pontiff, Pope Leo XIII, warned in Satis Cognitum (1896):
“There can be nothing more dangerous than those heretics who admit nearly the whole series of doctrines, and yet BY ONE WORD, as with a drop of poison, taint the real and simple faith taught by Our Lord and handed down by apostolic tradition. From this it is very easy to see that men can fall away from the unity of the Church by schism, as well as by heresy.”
Pope Pius XI reiterated this in Mortalium Animos (1929):
“For it is indeed a question of defending revealed truth. Jesus Christ sent His Apostles into the whole world to declare the Faith of the Gospel to every nation, and to save them from error...”
“Now if God has spoken — and it is historically certain that He has in fact spoken — then it is clearly man’s duty implicitly to believe His revelation and to obey His commands. That we might rightly do both, for the glory of God and for our own salvation, the only-begotten Son of God founded His Church on earth. None, we think, of those who claim to be Christians will deny that a Church, and one sole Church, was founded by Christ.”
Pope Pius XII in his encyclical Mystici Corporis (1943) summarized the teaching of his predecessor in this regard:
“Only those are really to be included as members of the Church who have been baptized and profess the true faith and who have not had the misfortune of withdrawing from the body or for grave faults been cut off by legitimate authority. ‘For in one Spirit,’ says the Apostle, ‘we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Gentiles, whether slaves or free’ (1 Cor. 12:13). As, therefore, in the true Christian community there is only one body, one Spirit, one Lord and one baptism, so there can be only one faith (see Eph 4:5). And so if a man refuses to listen to the Church, he should be considered, so the Lord commands, as a heathen and a publican (see Matt. 18:17). It follows that those who are divided in faith or government cannot be living in one body such as this and cannot be living the life of its one divine Spirit”
Having considered these truths of our holy Catholic Faith, we turn our attention to the doctrinal errors of the Second Vatican Council.
The primary doctrinal error of this false council is religious indifferentism; to demonstrate this, we quote from the very documents which it promulgated. In the Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to Non-Christian Religions, Nostra Aetate, (October 28, 1965) we find the clear contradiction of the first Commandment of God, “I am the Lord, thy God, thou shalt not have strange gods before me”:
“From ancient times down to the present, there has existed among divers peoples a certain perception of the hidden power that hovers over the course of things and over the events of human life; at times, indeed, recognition can be found of a Supreme Divinity, and of a Supreme Father, too. Such a perception and such a recognition instill the lives of these peoples with a profound religious sense.
“Thus, in Hinduism men contemplate the divine mystery and express it through an inexhaustible fruitfulness of myths and a searching philosophical inquiry. They seek release from the anguish of our condition through ascetical practices or deep meditation or a loving, trusting flight toward God.”
Hinduism is a pantheistic (the world is god) as well as a polytheistic (many gods) religion. It recognizes various gods in the created world. The world and everything in it, including man, is god. Among the various Hindu divinities, there are three of great importance — Brahma, the creator; Vishnu, the preserver; and Shiva, the destroyer. Hindus worship many animals as gods. Cows are the most sacred, but they also worship monkeys, snakes and other animals. How can Hindus make a “loving, trusting flight to God” when they worship false gods?
Continuing from the Declaration Nostra Aetate:
“Buddhism in its multiple forms acknowledges the radical insufficiency of this shifting world. It teaches a path by which men, in a devout and confident spirit, can either reach a state of absolute freedom or attain supreme enlightenment by their own efforts or by higher assistance.”
Buddhism teaches nothing about God; all beings are essentially equal; all things are changing constantly, except the Law alone by force of which good actions produce a reward, and bad actions bring forth punishment; therefore man does not differ essentially from other beings; he is subjected to a metempsychosis (the rebirth of the soul at death into the body of either a human or an animal form — reincarnation) until he acquires perfection in nirvana.
How can the Conciliar Church speak of “supreme enlightenment” in Buddhism? How can there be any enlightenment without knowledge of the true God and with the false belief of reincarnation?
Also from Nostra Aetate:
“Upon the Muslims, too, the church looks with esteem. They adore one God, living and enduring, merciful and all-powerful, Maker of heaven and earth and Speaker to men.... Though they do not acknowledge Jesus as God, they revere Him as a prophet.”
Once again we can recognize the utterly contradictory position of the Council. It praises the Muslims because “they revere Him (Jesus) as a prophet;” yet, they deny His divinity which Jesus Christ openly declared and most powerfully demonstrated by His miracles (especially His Resurrection). If the Muslims revere Jesus as a prophet, how can they claim that He is not divine. Prophets speak the truth from God, and Jesus Christ proclaimed Himself the Son of God!
Again, from Nostra Aetate:
“Likewise, other religions to be found everywhere strive variously to answer the restless searchings of the human heart by proposing ‘ways,’ which consist of teachings, rules of life and sacred ceremonies.
“The Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true and holy in these religions... The Church therefore has this exhortation for her sons: prudently and lovingly, through dialogue and collaboration with the followers of other religions, and in witness of Christian faith and life, acknowledge, preserve and promote the spiritual and moral goods found among these men, as well as the values in their society and culture.”
Here we find the apostasy from the Catholic Church to the Conciliar Church of Vatican II! No longer will the Conciliar Church seek to convert the world to Christ; it will now promote the “good” found in those other religions; yet, what good is in the worship of false gods? The Declaration does not list any particular area of goodness of these false religions. How can one witness to the Christian faith while he promotes the “good” of false religions? This is an impossibility!
This recognition of all the religions of the world has been the consistent theological theme of the Conciliar Church, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI. In his catechesis “The Seeds of the Word in the Religions of the World” (September 9, 1998), John Paul II stated:
“The Holy Spirit is not only present in other religions through authentic expressions of prayer. ‘The Spirit’s presence and activity,’ as I wrote in the encyclical letter Redemptoris Missio, ‘affects not only individuals but also society and history, peoples, cultures and religions.’”
“Normally, ‘it will be in the sincere practice of what is good in their own religious traditions and by following the dictates of their own conscience that the members of other religions respond positively to God’s invitation and receive salvation in Jesus Christ, even while they do not recognize or acknowledge Him as their Savior.’”
Not only does this catechesis of John Paul II proclaim the doctrinal error condemned by Pope Pius IX in his Syllabus of Errors:
CONDEMNED PROPOSITIONS:
“Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall have come to consider as true.”
“Men can find the way of eternal salvation and reach eternal salvation in any form of religious worship.”
...but also it smacks of the modernism so vehemently condemned by Pope St. Pius X in his Oath Against Modernism (1910):
“.. .Fifthly, I hold with certainty and sincerely confess that faith is not a blind sentiment of religion welling up from the depths of the subconscious under the impulse of the heart and the motion of a will trained to morality; but faith is a genuine assent of the intellect to truth received by hearing from an external source. By this assent, because of the authority of the supremely truthful God, we believe to be true that which has been revealed and attested to by a personal God, our Creator and Lord.”
Faith is a supernatural virtue by which men firmly believe all that God has divinely revealed; faith is NOT some “blind sentiment of religion welling up” in an individual as John Paul II falsely taught.
One of the natural consequences of religious indifferentism is the equally erroneous belief of false ecumenism. Those who profess religious indifferentism promote dialogue and common worship not only between the various Christian churches but also the various religious of the world.
As the contagion of religious indifferentism and false ecumenism began to spread with particular devastation, Pope Pius XI condemned these erroneous beliefs in no uncertain terms in Mortalium Animos (1929):
“With this object, congresses, meetings and addresses are arranged, attended by a large concourse of hearers, where all without distinction, unbelievers of every kind as well as Christians, even those who unhappily have rejected Christ and denied His Divine Nature or mission, are invited to join in the discussion. Now, such efforts can meet with no kind of approval among Catholics. They presuppose the erroneous view that all religions are more or less good and praiseworthy, inasmuch as all give expression, under various forms to that innate sense which leads men to God and to the obedient acknowledgment of His rule. Those who hold such a view are not only in error, they distort the true idea of religion, and thus reject it, falling gradually into naturalism and atheism. To favor this opinion, therefore, and to encourage such undertakings is tantamount to abandoning the religion revealed by God...
“This being so, it is clear that the Apostolic See can by no means take part in these assemblies, nor is it in any way lawful for Catholics to give to such enterprises their encouragement or support. If they did so, they would be giving countenance to a false Christianity quite alien to the one Church of Christ. Shall we commit the iniquity of suffering the truth, the truth revealed by God, to be made a subject for compromise?
“... Can the object of faith, then, have become in the process of time so dim and uncertain that today we must tolerate contradictory opinions? If this were so, then we should have to admit that the coming of the Holy Ghost upon the Apostles, the perpetual indwelling of the same Spirit in the Church, nay, the very preaching of Jesus Christ, have centuries ago lost their efficacy and value. To affirm this would be blasphemy.
The Doctrinal Errors of the Second Vatican Council
By Bishop Mark A. Pivarunas, CMRI
In order to comprehend sufficiently the doctrinal errors which have emanated from the Second Vatican Council, it is necessary to review the very foundation of our holy religion.
As Catholics, we firmly believe in Divine Revelation, that Almighty God has revealed truths to mankind in regard to what man must believe and how he must live in order to fulfill his purpose here on earth.
Of the many religions in the world today, which religion has been revealed by God Himself? There can be no doubt that there is but one religion which has been revealed by Almighty God through Jesus Christ, His only begotten Son, the Eternal Word made Flesh. This is the foundation of our holy Faith, as Pope Pius XI taught in his encyclical, Mortalium Animos (1929):
“God, the Creator of all things, made us that we might know Him and serve Him; to our service, therefore, He has a full right.... He willed, however, to make positive laws which we should obey, and progressively, from the beginning of the human race until the coming and preaching of Jesus Christ, He Himself taught mankind the duties which a rational creature owes to his Creator. “God, Who at sundry times and in divers manners spoke in times past to the fathers by the prophets, last of all in these days hath spoken to us by His Son” (Heb. 1:1, seq.). Evidently, therefore, no religion can be true save that which rests upon the revelation of God, a revelation begun from the very first, continued under the Old Law, and brought to completion by Jesus Christ Himself under the New. Now, if God has spoken — and it is historically certain that He has in fact spoken — then it is clearly man’s duty implicitly to believe His revelation and to obey His commands.”
And how do we know that there is but one religion revealed by God? What evidence has been manifested by God to demonstrate the divine origin of Christianity?
The answer is miracles and prophesies, these supernatural events which prove the divine origin of Christianity. As we read in St. Pope Pius X’s Oath Against Modernism (1910):
“I accept and acknowledge the external proofs of revelation, that is, divine acts and especially miracles and prophecies as the surest signs of the divine origin of the Christian religion and I hold that these same proofs are well adapted to the understanding of all eras and all men, even of this time.”
No other religion in the world has the supernatural proof that Christianity has.
“These surest proofs of the divine origin of the Christian religion” manifest to all men the religion by which God wills to be worshiped and make it obligatory for man to seek the true religion and practice it.
Pope Leo XIII taught in Satis Cognitum (1896):
“It was thus the duty of all who heard Jesus Christ, if they wished for eternal salvation, not merely to accept His doctrine as a whole, but to assent with their entire mind to each and every point of it, since it is unlawful to withhold faith from God even in regard to one single point.”
And just as it is certain as there is one religion revealed by God, it is also certain that there is but one true Church founded by Jesus Christ. The one true Church of Christ is the Catholic Church; this is a historical fact, confirmed by Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition. No other church can be historically traced back to Jesus Christ and His Apostles; no other church is confirmed by Sacred Scripture and Tradition.
Pope Boniface VIII in his Bull Unam Sanctam (1302) infallibly taught:
“We are compelled in virtue of our faith to believe and maintain that there is only one Catholic Church, and that one apostolic. This we firmly believe and profess without qualification. Outside this church there is no salvation and no remission of sins. Thus the spouse proclaims in the Canticle, ‘One is my dove: my perfect one is but one. She is the only one of her mother, the chosen of her that bore her’ (Cant. 6:8). Now this chosen one represents the one mystical body whose head is Christ, and Christ’s head is God. In her there is ‘one Lord, one faith, one baptism’ (Eph. 4:5). For at the time of the deluge there existed only one ark, the figure of the one Church.”
Pope Leo XIII in his encyclical Satis Cognitum (1896) reiterated this doctrine:
“There is clear and abundant proof in Sacred Scripture that there is one genuine Church of Jesus Christ... According to factual history, then, Jesus Christ did not plan and establish a Church made up of a number of organizations that were genetically similar, yet separate and without those bonds of unity which make the Church one and indivisible as we profess in the Creed, ‘I believe in one Church.’... When Jesus Christ spoke of this mystical structure, he spoke of one Church only which he called his own: ‘I will build my Church’ (Matt. 16:18). Since no other church besides this one was founded by Jesus Christ, no other church which could be imagined can be the true Church of Christ.”
Furthermore, Pope Pius XII in his encyclical Mystici Corporis (1943) summarized the teaching of his predecessors:
“If we would define and describe this true Church of Jesus Christ — which is the One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic Roman Church — we shall find no expression more noble, more sublime or more divine than the phrase which calls it ‘the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ.’”
Ever convinced of her divine origin, the Catholic Church has always condemned the erroneous belief that all religions are more or less good and praiseworthy and that it doesn’t matter to what church one belongs for men can find salvation in any church. This is the false doctrine of religious indifferentism which has been frequently condemned by the Catholic Church.
Pope Pius IX in his encyclical Singulari Quadam (1854) warned the Catholic hierarchy:
“We want your episcopal care and vigilance to be on the alert to keep away from men’s minds, with all possible effort, that opinion which is as unholy as it is deadly. We mean the opinion that a way of eternal salvation can be found in any religion whatever. With all the learning and ingenuity that is yours, teach the people entrusted to your care that the dogmas of the Catholic faith are not in the slightest opposed to the mercy and justice of God.
“It must, of course, be held as a matter of faith that outside the apostolic Roman Church no one can be saved, that the Church is the only ark of salvation, and that whoever does not enter it will perish in the flood.”
Ten years later Pope Pius IX issued his Syllabus of Errors (1864) in which he condemned the following propositions:
CONDEMNED PROPOSITIONS:
• “Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall have come to consider as true.”
• “Men can find the way of eternal salvation and reach eternal salvation in any form of religious worship.”
• “Good hopes, at least, must be entertained of the eternal salvation of all those who in no way belong to the True Church of Christ.”
• “Protestantism is nothing else than a different form of the same True Christian Religion, and in it one can be as pleasing to God as in the Catholic Church.”
The main problem with the various religions of the world is that they do not accept Divine Revelation, and in regard to the Protestant churches they do not accept all that Christ has commanded. Our Divine Savior commanded his Apostles to “teach all nations... teaching them to observe all that I have commanded” (Matt 28:19,20) and He added, “He who is baptized and believes will be saved and he who does not believe will be condemned” (Mark 16:16).
Pope Benedict XV stressed this in his encyclical Ad Beatissimi (1914):
“Such is the nature of Catholicism that it does not admit of more or less, but must be held as a whole or as a whole rejected: ‘This is the Catholic Faith, which unless a man believe faithfully and firmly, he cannot be saved’ (Athanasian Creed). There is no need of adding any qualifying terms to the profession of Catholicism: it is quite enough for each one to proclaim ‘Christian is my name and Catholic my surname,’ only let him endeavor to be in reality what he calls himself.”
So important is the necessity of the profession of the true Faith in its entirety that Pope Leo XIII taught in his encyclical Sapientiae Christianae (1890):
“To refuse to believe any one of them is equivalent to rejecting them all.”
Later on, the same pontiff, Pope Leo XIII, warned in Satis Cognitum (1896):
“There can be nothing more dangerous than those heretics who admit nearly the whole series of doctrines, and yet BY ONE WORD, as with a drop of poison, taint the real and simple faith taught by Our Lord and handed down by apostolic tradition. From this it is very easy to see that men can fall away from the unity of the Church by schism, as well as by heresy.”
Pope Pius XI reiterated this in Mortalium Animos (1929):
“For it is indeed a question of defending revealed truth. Jesus Christ sent His Apostles into the whole world to declare the Faith of the Gospel to every nation, and to save them from error...”
“Now if God has spoken — and it is historically certain that He has in fact spoken — then it is clearly man’s duty implicitly to believe His revelation and to obey His commands. That we might rightly do both, for the glory of God and for our own salvation, the only-begotten Son of God founded His Church on earth. None, we think, of those who claim to be Christians will deny that a Church, and one sole Church, was founded by Christ.”
Pope Pius XII in his encyclical Mystici Corporis (1943) summarized the teaching of his predecessor in this regard:
“Only those are really to be included as members of the Church who have been baptized and profess the true faith and who have not had the misfortune of withdrawing from the body or for grave faults been cut off by legitimate authority. ‘For in one Spirit,’ says the Apostle, ‘we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Gentiles, whether slaves or free’ (1 Cor. 12:13). As, therefore, in the true Christian community there is only one body, one Spirit, one Lord and one baptism, so there can be only one faith (see Eph 4:5). And so if a man refuses to listen to the Church, he should be considered, so the Lord commands, as a heathen and a publican (see Matt. 18:17). It follows that those who are divided in faith or government cannot be living in one body such as this and cannot be living the life of its one divine Spirit”
Having considered these truths of our holy Catholic Faith, we turn our attention to the doctrinal errors of the Second Vatican Council.
The primary doctrinal error of this false council is religious indifferentism; to demonstrate this, we quote from the very documents which it promulgated. In the Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to Non-Christian Religions, Nostra Aetate, (October 28, 1965) we find the clear contradiction of the first Commandment of God, “I am the Lord, thy God, thou shalt not have strange gods before me”:
“From ancient times down to the present, there has existed among divers peoples a certain perception of the hidden power that hovers over the course of things and over the events of human life; at times, indeed, recognition can be found of a Supreme Divinity, and of a Supreme Father, too. Such a perception and such a recognition instill the lives of these peoples with a profound religious sense.
“Thus, in Hinduism men contemplate the divine mystery and express it through an inexhaustible fruitfulness of myths and a searching philosophical inquiry. They seek release from the anguish of our condition through ascetical practices or deep meditation or a loving, trusting flight toward God.”
Hinduism is a pantheistic (the world is god) as well as a polytheistic (many gods) religion. It recognizes various gods in the created world. The world and everything in it, including man, is god. Among the various Hindu divinities, there are three of great importance — Brahma, the creator; Vishnu, the preserver; and Shiva, the destroyer. Hindus worship many animals as gods. Cows are the most sacred, but they also worship monkeys, snakes and other animals. How can Hindus make a “loving, trusting flight to God” when they worship false gods?
Continuing from the Declaration Nostra Aetate:
“Buddhism in its multiple forms acknowledges the radical insufficiency of this shifting world. It teaches a path by which men, in a devout and confident spirit, can either reach a state of absolute freedom or attain supreme enlightenment by their own efforts or by higher assistance.”
Buddhism teaches nothing about God; all beings are essentially equal; all things are changing constantly, except the Law alone by force of which good actions produce a reward, and bad actions bring forth punishment; therefore man does not differ essentially from other beings; he is subjected to a metempsychosis (the rebirth of the soul at death into the body of either a human or an animal form — reincarnation) until he acquires perfection in nirvana.
How can the Conciliar Church speak of “supreme enlightenment” in Buddhism? How can there be any enlightenment without knowledge of the true God and with the false belief of reincarnation?
Also from Nostra Aetate:
“Upon the Muslims, too, the church looks with esteem. They adore one God, living and enduring, merciful and all-powerful, Maker of heaven and earth and Speaker to men.... Though they do not acknowledge Jesus as God, they revere Him as a prophet.”
Once again we can recognize the utterly contradictory position of the Council. It praises the Muslims because “they revere Him (Jesus) as a prophet;” yet, they deny His divinity which Jesus Christ openly declared and most powerfully demonstrated by His miracles (especially His Resurrection). If the Muslims revere Jesus as a prophet, how can they claim that He is not divine. Prophets speak the truth from God, and Jesus Christ proclaimed Himself the Son of God!
Again, from Nostra Aetate:
“Likewise, other religions to be found everywhere strive variously to answer the restless searchings of the human heart by proposing ‘ways,’ which consist of teachings, rules of life and sacred ceremonies.
“The Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true and holy in these religions... The Church therefore has this exhortation for her sons: prudently and lovingly, through dialogue and collaboration with the followers of other religions, and in witness of Christian faith and life, acknowledge, preserve and promote the spiritual and moral goods found among these men, as well as the values in their society and culture.”
Here we find the apostasy from the Catholic Church to the Conciliar Church of Vatican II! No longer will the Conciliar Church seek to convert the world to Christ; it will now promote the “good” found in those other religions; yet, what good is in the worship of false gods? The Declaration does not list any particular area of goodness of these false religions. How can one witness to the Christian faith while he promotes the “good” of false religions? This is an impossibility!
This recognition of all the religions of the world has been the consistent theological theme of the Conciliar Church, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI. In his catechesis “The Seeds of the Word in the Religions of the World” (September 9, 1998), John Paul II stated:
“The Holy Spirit is not only present in other religions through authentic expressions of prayer. ‘The Spirit’s presence and activity,’ as I wrote in the encyclical letter Redemptoris Missio, ‘affects not only individuals but also society and history, peoples, cultures and religions.’”
“Normally, ‘it will be in the sincere practice of what is good in their own religious traditions and by following the dictates of their own conscience that the members of other religions respond positively to God’s invitation and receive salvation in Jesus Christ, even while they do not recognize or acknowledge Him as their Savior.’”
Not only does this catechesis of John Paul II proclaim the doctrinal error condemned by Pope Pius IX in his Syllabus of Errors:
CONDEMNED PROPOSITIONS:
“Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall have come to consider as true.”
“Men can find the way of eternal salvation and reach eternal salvation in any form of religious worship.”
...but also it smacks of the modernism so vehemently condemned by Pope St. Pius X in his Oath Against Modernism (1910):
“.. .Fifthly, I hold with certainty and sincerely confess that faith is not a blind sentiment of religion welling up from the depths of the subconscious under the impulse of the heart and the motion of a will trained to morality; but faith is a genuine assent of the intellect to truth received by hearing from an external source. By this assent, because of the authority of the supremely truthful God, we believe to be true that which has been revealed and attested to by a personal God, our Creator and Lord.”
Faith is a supernatural virtue by which men firmly believe all that God has divinely revealed; faith is NOT some “blind sentiment of religion welling up” in an individual as John Paul II falsely taught.
One of the natural consequences of religious indifferentism is the equally erroneous belief of false ecumenism. Those who profess religious indifferentism promote dialogue and common worship not only between the various Christian churches but also the various religious of the world.
As the contagion of religious indifferentism and false ecumenism began to spread with particular devastation, Pope Pius XI condemned these erroneous beliefs in no uncertain terms in Mortalium Animos (1929):
“With this object, congresses, meetings and addresses are arranged, attended by a large concourse of hearers, where all without distinction, unbelievers of every kind as well as Christians, even those who unhappily have rejected Christ and denied His Divine Nature or mission, are invited to join in the discussion. Now, such efforts can meet with no kind of approval among Catholics. They presuppose the erroneous view that all religions are more or less good and praiseworthy, inasmuch as all give expression, under various forms to that innate sense which leads men to God and to the obedient acknowledgment of His rule. Those who hold such a view are not only in error, they distort the true idea of religion, and thus reject it, falling gradually into naturalism and atheism. To favor this opinion, therefore, and to encourage such undertakings is tantamount to abandoning the religion revealed by God...
“This being so, it is clear that the Apostolic See can by no means take part in these assemblies, nor is it in any way lawful for Catholics to give to such enterprises their encouragement or support. If they did so, they would be giving countenance to a false Christianity quite alien to the one Church of Christ. Shall we commit the iniquity of suffering the truth, the truth revealed by God, to be made a subject for compromise?
“... Can the object of faith, then, have become in the process of time so dim and uncertain that today we must tolerate contradictory opinions? If this were so, then we should have to admit that the coming of the Holy Ghost upon the Apostles, the perpetual indwelling of the same Spirit in the Church, nay, the very preaching of Jesus Christ, have centuries ago lost their efficacy and value. To affirm this would be blasphemy.
80-89, M
