by Michael J. Matt
In the wake of Pope John Paul's recent visit to the Americas, we must not forget how to weep over what we saw. From the moment the Pontiff stepped once again onto American soil, we were all made to witness the spectacle of the successful ramming of the Modernist juggernaut through the walls of our beloved Church. From the rock 'n' roll youth rallies, to the abominable papal Mass, to the unsettling ecumenical prayer service in the Basilica of St. Louis-the universal breakdown of the Universal Church was painfully manifested again and again.
Even as we listened to the incessant "John Paul Two, We love you," Traditional Catholics watched and waited and--I hope--many wept. ABC's Vic Ratner summed it up on his radio newsbreak during the Pope's visit to St. Louis: "Is it a rock 'n' roll festival or a prayer revival meeting? Even many of the bishops are dancing in the aisles." I managed to watch most of EWTN's coverage of the papal visit. I saw a suffering pope, who looked as though he carries the sins of the world on his terribly hunched-over shoulders. I saw an old, tired man basking in the unbelievable veneration offered him by hundreds of thousands of cheering fans. I saw one of the most powerful world leaders modern man has known grappling with the painfully obvious onset of the twilight years of his long pilgrimage on this earth. I believe that I also saw little Jacinta's "suffering pope," incapable because of sickness to smile for the hundreds of cameras always pointed his way.
I looked into the sad eyes of an overwhelmed revolutionary who probably had the best of intentions in mind when it all began, but who now tragically cannot see that his grand revolution failed to bear fruit. It seemed that the last vestiges of Catholic triumphalism in the new Church hobbled across the world's stage for certainly one of its final acts in the person of the aging pontiff. I mean no disrespect when I say that Pope John Paul II resembles more the mascot of the Novus Ordo than the visible head of the Church. He's given his right and duty to rule and govern the Church over to the iron-clad constraints of collegiality, and now he tours the world as the spokesman-the CEO-of the new Church. It's as though he's trying to transmit to his children (whom he truly loves) the imaginary vision of the New Springtime that he thought was so near at hand many years ago, but that never quite manifested itself in the world as he thought it would have by now. And so, here he searches for it, and there, but it eludes him. Back and forth across the globe he seeks it out, but it's not to be found. Instead of Springtime, he sees in the world only the Winter of war, death, apostasy and faithlessness. The only place he thinks he occasionally catches a glimpse of it in the Church is in the eyes of the millions of his screaming admirers; but, even there, he's not quite sure. And so he travels and peddles that New Springtime, travels and searches for it, travels and wonders where it went. Will history say Pope John Paul II was a powerful reformer or a wild revolutionary?...I believe he truly doesn't know. His is the saddest face I've ever seen.
Do I love the Pope? Yes. But I fear for him. Even as he hopes to see evidence of the elusive Springtime in the eyes of his children who pack stadiums and line so many streets, so we try to see in him the dim reflection of the Church's former grandeur. Even miserable charlatans like Bill Clinton are forced to bow in his presence.They may want to jeer and even to seek political gain by shaking hands with him before a solid wall of the world's cameras, but even the most reprehensible politicians cannot camouflage their awe in the presence of the most recognized man in the world. It's as if the last remnants of the Church's greatness are flickering dimly in the person of Peter's modern successor, weak as he is, but even that faint flicker is more powerful than anything they possess in the halls of modern government. And, yet, it was his hand which helped remove that grand triumphalism once eagerly shared by the world's Catholics (and admired by the world's non-Catholics) before the Blessed Sacrament, the Blessed Mother of God and the totality of the Holy Faith. In trying to give a human face to the Church in the modern world, he succeeded in aiding and abetting the movement which would finally banish Christ to a broom closet, turn the altar of sacrifice into a dinner table, and empty the pews and shut the doors forever of countless Catholic churches the world over.
In trying to conjure up that New Springtime, they succeeded in ushering the Bride of Christ into the bleakest winter she's ever known. The faithful have swapped "Lumen Christi, Deo Gratias" for "John Paul Two, We Love You" over and over again, and now the person of the Holy Father is at center stage, even as ravaging fires burn out of control through the walls and into the sanctuary of the grand theater called the Catholic Church. Deceived and deluded, modern Catholics feel the heat of those flames, but they are easily able to convince themselves that it is only the warmth of the Holy Spirit in this, the season of the new Pentecost of Vatican II. Once they awaken to what is happening, it will be too late, and their faith will fade with the actor's last curtain call, even as the fires of heresy and schism creep in behind them.
Who sees that the Emperor's new clothes are no clothes at all? In their euphoria over the person of the Pope, few Catholics today listen to his perplexing words or even read his impossible encyclicals. As though under the influence of some hallucinogenic drug, they immerse themselves in the cult of the man and close their ears and eyes to everything else. Meanwhile, ecumenism spins so far out of control that one wonders if John Paul would welcome an opportunity to change the papacy into the presidency of the one world religion, embracing all religions, all faiths, all cultures which espouse a monotheistic faith system. So many good Catholics do not see what is waiting at the end of the papal pilgrimage of Pope John Paul II....I believe that it is the New World Order and the One World Church.
I do not blame these Catholics for their inability to see. There is a supremely seductive quality to it all. I've felt it. I even felt it via the television screen as our Holy Father made his pilgrimage to our country. It is so charming...so strangely alluring...that one wonders if, as with the admonitions given along with the Three Days of Darkness to board up the windows and not look outside, Traditional Catholics would be better served by not watching any of the strange acts of this reoccurring modern play. Such charisma, especially in an old and ill man, is a powerful thing! And yet the revolution he so eagerly endorses is fundamentally seductive as well, if it were not, then how could it have enjoyed such global success in so short a time? Its most significant viruses of false ecumenism, religious freedom, collegiality, the abandonment of the most difficult aspects of being a follower of Christ, etc., carry with them the seduction similar, it seems to us, to those Satan employed in his effort to tempt Christ Himself. He now tempts Christ's Mystical Body likewise.
How easy it would be to succumb to the temptation to abandon the old concept of what it means to be a Catholic, to evangelize according to a new understanding of a politically correct Christianity to accept that modern science has demonstrated that the old Faith is nothing more than the composite of generation's worth of folklore, superstition, and myth. These are the seductive temptations we all face.This is the chastisement that is now at our doors.
The New Church appeals to the human emotions and weaknesses of our fallen nature; Catholics are subjected to a constant barrage of emotional suggestions, which entice them to believe that all the world's religions worship the same God, that the idea of conversion is passé, that unity with our fellowmen is more urgently required than ironing out doctrinal differences, that all men are saved, etc. The temptation is to cast ourselves down from the mountaintop of the old Faith (so "extreme," so "intolerant," so difficult), and to foolishly presume that our merciful Creator will send his angels to raise us up on the wings of the Novus Ordo, where the rules have changed and the old law no longer applies. Old Mass, New Mass, Vatican II Mass, it doesn't matter, as long as the old doctrine, the old theology and the old philosophy are thrown onto the "cleansing" fires of Vatican II. This is what is at stake.
The terrifying reality of the situation is that there are, for all practical purposes, two Catholic Churches now. Two Romes, if you will-the Traditional one and the post-conciliar one. And is it not plain to see that profound confusion awaits those who try to reconcile the two? What do we do with our two Churches? According to which one do we direct our lives? Which do we believe? What's it going to be: Ut Unum Sint or Mortalium Animos? Rudimentary apologetics tell us that they can't both be right and true. The New Church opens wide its doors to Moslems, Jews, and heretics with little or no call for the conversion of these non-believers. It seems to affirm that which the old Church anathematized-that all the world's "great" religions worship the same God, or at least, that all religions are pleasing to the God of Christianity. Modern Catholics - while constantly reminded of the "New Evangelization" - are not made to feel the necessity of converting those outside our Faith. We need only pray with them, together, as the great human family, united in the common cause of the pursuit of peace on earth. And while we feel good about all that, Satan and his minions laugh at the martyrs, laugh at the heroic Jesuits of old, laugh at the "old evangelization." For the sake of peace and unity, we're being encouraged to abandon the old Faith. But instead of peace, a torrent of confusion, unanswered questions, and frustration has visited itself upon the face of our Church; brother has turned against brother, mother against child, husband against wife; millions have lost the Faith; generations of children scarcely have a chance anymore to save their souls. And in the middle of this storm-as though all were well-stands the absorbed conductor of all this chaos, His Holiness, so pro-life, so filled with pathos, so devout, so serene, so progressive, so filled with the myriad contradictions to which the attempted amalgamation of Modernism with Catholicism must necessarily give way. To most men today, he can be all things: he is liberal to the liberal, conservative to the conservative, and (thanks to the motu proprio Ecclesia Dei) traditional to the Traditionalist. Perhaps, as was the case in the Babylonian Captivity (in Avignon), good and holy people will be numbered (within the ranks of practicing Catholics) among the Pope's most ardent admirers as well as within the ranks of his harshest critics. He is a master of the double-speak of Vatican II, and his personality has won him the veneration of so many worldwide.
Perhaps more than anything else, the pontificate of Pope John Paul II demonstrates how Our Lady of Fatima's "diabolical disorientation" has taken deep root in our world today. His Holiness can write an encyclical, for example, and the reaction to it on the part of the faithful is usually in perfect accord with the point of view each person held in the first place: i.e., if one is a conservative, then the encyclical is interpreted to be orthodox; if one is a liberal, then the encyclical is usually seen as progressive; and if one is a Traditionalist, then its novelties are construed to be interpretable in the light of Tradition. Most everyone (except for right-wing Traditionalists and left-wing liberals) believes he can legitimately lay claim to the current Vicar of Christ. Absolutism and clarity of thought are by and large absent from the modus operandi of this pontificate, and so the guessing game goes on. Loving the Pope, apparently, is the only thing that all parties concerned can agree upon. The undefined notions that have come to epitomize the "pilgrimage" of Pope John Paul-the dignity of the human person, the New Evangelization, unity among religions, the Spirit of Vatican II-are interpreted by everyone to mean almost anything at all. Again, to love the Pope is the only truly essential thing in fostering an ill-defined global unity.
But what to do with Assisi? The endless papal apologies? The prayer services in the synagogues? The easy and frequent endorsements of the infamous United Nations? How do we interpret, for example, the frightening passages in the recent "Message of His Holiness Pope John Paul II for the Celebration of the World Day of Peace" (January 1, 1999)? Let us look at a few of these passages.
"The year 1998 has marked the fiftieth anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Declaration was intentionally linked to the United Nations Charter, since it shares a common inspiration. As its fundamental premise, it affirms that the recognition of the innate dignity of all members of the human family, as also the equality and inalienablility of their rights, is the foundation of liberty, justice and peace in the world."
Really! What about the United Nations' fanatical agenda to control the world population through abortion, sterilization and contraception? Aside from that, is not the Catholic Church and the Word of Jesus Christ the "foundation of liberty, justice and peace in the world"?
"Religion expresses the deepest aspirations of the human person, shapes people's vision of the world and affects their relationships with others: basically it offers the answer to the question of the true meaning life, both personal and communal. Religious freedom, therefore, constitutes the very heart of human rights. Its inviolability is such that individuals must be recognized as having the right even to change their religions, if their conscience so demands."
So much for the rights of Christ the King to rule over society. Contained in this paragraph is the apparent admission that religions-any and all varieties-are good because they contribute in some way to the common good and the brotherhood of man. There isn't even the slightest hint contained herein that there is only one true religion. Pope John Paul speaks as though God created man to serve the universal brotherhood and that this is the ultimate purpose for the existence of all religions. His seems to be a social Gospel. Does he believe that man was created to serve the true God in the true religion, and that the Church's mission is to bring all men into her embrace, the only place where salvation is possible? It is unclear. The rabbis in St. Louis were thrilled to be invited to pray with the Pope at his ecumenical prayer meeting in a Catholic basilica service this month. Was one of them made to feel the necessity of converting to the true religion? Certainly not.
"The promotion of human dignity is linked to the right to a healthy environment, since this right highlights the dynamics of the relationship between the individual and society. A body of international, regional and national norms on the environment is gradually giving juridical form to this right. But juridical measures by themselves are not sufficient. The danger of serious damage to land and sea, and to the climate, flora and fauna, calls for a profound change in modern civilization's typical consumer life-style, particularly in the richer countries."
While no Catholic should be in favor of abusing God's creation, this statement of the Pope's is frighteningly in line with the agenda of the new Gestapo known as the Environmental Protection Agency-a toady of the United Nations which puts loggers out of business for "murdering" trees, puts farmers in jail for accidentally running over "protected rats" with their tractors, and threatens to outlaw engines (cars eventually?) whose exhaust "destroys ozone." The EPA would like to see citizens totally dependent upon big government for everything, even basic transportation. Al Gore would be in full agreement with this papal plan for peace and dignity.
"The third and final year of preparation for the Jubilee is marked by a spiritual pilgrimage to the Father's house: all are invited to walk the path of authentic conversion, which involves rejecting evil and making a positive choice for good. [Your guess is as good as mine is as to whether this means conversion into the Catholic Faith or not!?!] On the threshold of the year 2000, it is our duty to renew our commitment to safeguarding the dignity of the poor and the marginalized, and to recognize in a practical way the rights of those who have no rights."
Again, what about the rights of Christ the King? Has He any role in this grand papal plan for world peace? I do not know. He's not mentioned by His Holiness. What does "conversion away from evil and towards good" actually mean? Is it in the natural sense? The moral sense? The Catholic sense?
Readers are of course aware of the recent establishment of the United Nations' International Court, which many conservatives are constantly condemning, as it will certainly undermine national sovereignty and will feature immoral globalists deciding upon an international code of morality, promulgated by the United Nations. In other words, persons such as Joe Schiedler, Fr. Paul Marx, and Randal Terry may soon be called in front of the United Nations' International Court for the "crime against humanity" called being pro-life. "Pro-Life-ism," we are now being told, is what is responsible for the terrorist acts of violence against abortionists. Well, His Holiness has quite a different take on this International Criminal Court. In this same address, Pope John Paul offered the following sobering endorsement:
"A positive sign of the growing willingness of States to recognize their responsibility to protect victims of such crimes and to commit themselves to preventing them is the recent initiative of a United Nations Diplomatic Conference: It specifically approved the Statute of an International Criminal Court, the task of which it will be to identify guilt and to punish those responsible for crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity and crimes of war and aggression. This new institution, if built upon a sound legal foundation, could gradually contribute to ensuring on a world scale the effective protection of human rights."
It appears that Pope John Paul is not only in favor of expanding "big government," but he is laboring for the creation of a global bureaucracy--one might even call it a one-world government!
Astonishingly enough, Pope John Paul even appears to be in favor of global gun control. Sounding like something straight out of the infamous Brady Bill so revered by the Clinton Administration, His Holiness continues in this same address to say:
"Seeds of war are also being spread by the massive and uncontrolled proliferation of small arms and light weapons. Governments must adopt appropriate measures for controlling the production, sale, importation and exportation of these instruments of death. Only in this way will it be possible to deal effectively and completely with the problem of the massive illegal traffic in arms."
Of course, the black market sale of Stinger missiles and other hand-held anti-tank and airplane weaponry is a volatile and controversial situation. But, on the other hand, the right to self-defense is given us by God. And yet, Pope John Paul--in another flurry of non-specifics--seems to be calling for government control of that right. He demands that all governments adopt small arms-controlling measures, and we all know into what that could easily translate. Most thinking people are terrified by the prospect of the likes of Bill Clinton and Janet Reno controlling our capacity to protect our families with anything more substantial than a butcher knife or a baseball bat (in Hungary in the 1950's, it was brooms against tanks); but Pope John Paul, on the other hand, seems to be demanding that that control should be implemented.
Speaking of Bill Clinton, who do you suppose uttered the following classic liberal statement? "As the parable of the rich man, who will remain forever without a name, and the poor man called Lazarus clearly shows, in the stark contrast between the insensitive rich man and the poor in need of everything, God is on the latter's side. We too must be on this same side." No, it was not Mr. Clinton. It was Pope John Paul. But surely this fits right in with the punish-the-rich mentality of any good liberal from Robin Hood to Hillary Clinton. Oh, well, there's more so, much more. Any reader interested in reading this incredible speech of Pope John Paul's may access it on the Internet at: www.vatican.com
To our many "conservative" Catholic friends, we ask: What indeed are we to make of such disturbing papal statements as these? How are we to spin them? What are we to tell our children that the Pope meant, exactly, by his infamous statement back in 1985, for example, during his visit to Morocco, when he told 60,000 Islamic students gathered at the Casablanca sports center that Moslems and Christians believe in the same God? "Abraham is the same model of faith in God for us, a model of submitting to his will and of confidence in his bounty. We believe in the same God, the only God, the living God, the God who creates worlds and brings its creatures to perfection."
Is He indeed the same God? Is He indeed? In the May 15, 1986 issue of The Remnant, an "Open Letter To Pope John Paul II" was published by my father. It was written by Fr. Emmanual De Traveau, and I believe it answers this question. A portion of this Open Letter follows below:
No, Holy Father, we Catholics do not believe in the same God as do the young Muslims. We believe in the God Who revealed Himself fully in Our Lord Jesus Christ, whereas Muslims believe in a God Who, according to them, revealed Himself fully through Mohammed. We believe in the Triune God; Muslims reject the Holy Trinity as a form of polytheism. We believe in the God Whose Second Person was incarnate in Our Lord Jesus Christ for our redemption; Muslims reject the Incarnation and deny the necessity of Redemption.
No, the god in whom Muslims believe is not the same God, Father of Our Lord Jesus Christ, in Whom we Catholics believe. Holy Father, you have expressed in the name of the Church what amounts to a favorable appreciation of a religious tradition based on the vain imaginings of a fanatic, a religion filled with error and which rejects Our Lord Jesus Christ, without Whom no one can be saved, and His Church, outside of which there is no salvation. You have thus confirmed Muslims in their error. Moreover, you have given equal weighting to the spiritual tradition of Islam and God's Revelation infallibly handed down to us by Peter and his successors.
The Catholic faith, contrary to what you seem to be saying, is not just a subjective belief of Christians, but the one true faith, divinely revealed and easily distinguishable as such by unmistakable signs by any unbiased person.
Holy Father, we do not want to cast doubt on your faith, but we are forced to note that the words that came from your lips at Casablanca do not express the faith of Peter, who did not flinch from bearing witness to Jesus Christ Our Lord in the face of those who had just crucified Him. What are we to say, then, of your actions at Togoville, Kara and Lome? On the outskirts of the last town, you went with animist priests and their disciples to pray in the "sacred forest" of Be, where the "power of the waters" and the deified spirits of ancestors are invoked. And twice, at Kara and Togoville-at Kara this happened just before Holy Mass!--you took a dry gourd and poured a libation of water and maize flour onto the ground, a rite expressing a false religious belief. Holy Father, it is not for us to judge your intentions; as is right, we leave that to God [but] your behavior in Africa constitutes an encouragement to non-believers to persist in the errors and superstitious practices of their false religion, and for Christians it is a cause for scandal. Your address at Casablanca, together with these actions, seems to represent a repudiation of all the Catholic Church's missionary activity as it has developed over two thousand years; a disavowal of all those missionaries who, from the apostles down, followed the command of Our Lord Jesus, preaching to unbelievers the necessity of Redemption.
Attached to this same article from the May 15, 1986 issue of The Remnant was a postscript written by the late, great Hamish Fraser. At that time, Mr. Fraser wrote:
"The above Open Letter was published in Rome more than three months before the January 25, 1986 papal announcement concerning the forthcoming veritable Congress of World Religions at Assisi for a day of prayer for peace. Our only comment is that when Congresses of World Religions were convened in 1893 and 1900 in Chicago and Paris respectively, they were anathematized by Rome. Need more be said!?"
The quotations which we provided earlier on in this present article were taken, as we noted, from "Pope John Paul's Message For the Celebration of the World Day of Peace." This Message was part of the Pope's annual reiteration of the "Spirit of the Assisi Prayer Meeting." In St. Louis this month, that same "Spirit" played a significant role in the Pope's ecumenical prayer service at the Basilica of St. Louis, a prayer service that included Moslems, Jews, Mormons, Protestants, Orthodox and who knows what else praying with Pope John Paul II. Hamish Fraser's observation that such prayer meetings were "anathematized by the Church" in the old (pre-conciliar) days still is so frighteningly relevant. Which Rome is right? Can Truth change? Which Catholic Church shall we follow?
Do I love Peter? I have already answered, yes; as Catholics we must love him as Christ has called us to love all of our fellowmen. But what does this have to do with the spiritual chastisement that we all face in this New Springtime? Perhaps we should ask a few other questions: Does Peter love the Traditions of the Church? Does he still maintain the Traditional understanding of the role of the Church in the world? Perhaps we should reiterate Christ's own question: "Peter, lovest thou Me?" And this is a question only he can answer. In the meantime, we pray for the Pope, and we humbly implore him to anathematize the horrific doctrinal errors of the Modernist revolution before it's too late, especially since the Annihilation of Faith is clearly at hand. We cannot break from Rome, that is sure. But has Rome broken from us and from the traditional, immutable Faith? This is the question. Consider the following quote; for even though it was written thirteen years ago, it is still filled with unanswered questions with which we all struggle every day:
"Rome has had the question put to us whether we intended to proclaim our break with the Vatican on the occasion of his Prayer Meeting in Assisi. It would seem to us that the question to be put is, rather, the following: Do you believe, and do you intend to proclaim, that the Congress in Assisi finalizes the break of the Roman authorities with the Catholic Church? Such is truly the preoccupation of those who still remain Catholic. For, indeed, it is abundantly clear that since the Second Vatican Council, the Pope and the bishops have been moving further and further away from their Predecessors in the Faith. Everything undertaken by the Church over the last few centuries to defend the Faith, and everything achieved by the missionaries to spread the Faith, up to and including martyrdom, is now looked upon as a fault for which the Church must plead guilty and seek forgiveness! The attitude of the eleven Popes who condemned the Liberal Revolution in official documents from 1789 to 1958, is looked upon as a "failure to understand the Christian impulse behind the Revolution.
Hence, Rome's total about-face since the Second Vatican Council, which puts on our lips the words of Our Lord to those who came to arrest Him, "This is your hour and the power of darkness." By adopting the liberal religion of Protestantism and of the Revolution with the naturalists principles of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, with the Atheistic freedoms of the Constitution of the Rights of Man, with the principle of human dignity disconnected from Truth or moral dignity, the authorities in Rome are turning their backs on their predecessors and they are entering into the service of those who would destroy Christendom and the universal reign of Our Lord Jesus Christ."
A Statement from Archbishop Lefebvre and Bishop de Castro Mayer following the visit of John Paul II to the Synagogue in Rome and the Congress of Religions in Assisi, 1986.
Yes, Traditional Catholics must love the Pope, but we must pray for him, and for the Church and for ourselves even more. And for him and the whole horrific situation, we should not lose the capacity to weep, even as we pray. For, surely he is the "suffering Pope" Jacinta of Fatima foresaw-the very same one that Sister Lucy of Fatima (who was promised Heaven by the Mother of God) still recognizes as Pope. And, if he is the one who suffered so in the little saintly one's vision, then surely he's seen the very same face which Christ Himself saw when He was tempted; surely he's looked into the eyes of Satan himself. Our love for the Pope should not manifest itself in shrieking rock 'n' roll and charismatic, emotion-charged hero-worship. It should be manifested, rather, through constant prayer for a truly tormented Holy Father. Perhaps, the Mystical Body of Christ stands before Pilate now...and there is still time to accept Barabbas's release. But, surely, the cock has long since crowed for the third time. The question now is: When will Peter begin to weep?
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