Keys of This Blood (114 page)

Of course, this attempted destruction of the traditional Roman Mass and the inadequate formulas of the Novus Ordo were part and parcel of the hijacking of the Second Vatican Council by the anti-Church members, who have successfully used that Council's ambiguous and general statements to devise a method of dismantling the specifically Roman Catholic character both of the Mass and of other basic Roman Catholic elements—beliefs and practices. In the wake of their success with the Novus Ordo and the consequent diminishment of the priest as official celebrant in the presentation of Christ's Sacrifice on Calvary, the anti-Church members are logically proposing the priestly ordination of women, the use of altar girls for altar boys, of Eucharistic ministers, male and female, instead of the priest. It is a single integral plan to reduce specifically Roman Catholic worship and practice to such a low common denominator that any non-Catholic can participate and not feel in an alien atmosphere.

But the total result has been confusion. There thus has arisen among the clergy and the people various groups that refuse the Novus Ordo and insist on maintaining the traditional Roman Mass. At first, the anti-Church thought that these would fade away with time. But time has only increased their importance, their preponderance and their number. Many, many more millions of Roman Catholics than Catholic officialdom
will admit are in severe doubt as to the religious value of the Novus Ordo. Roman authorities themselves under the anti-Church influence did their best, by ecclesiastical punishment, by ostracism, even by outright lies, to do away completely with the traditional Roman rite. “The traditional Roman Mass has been forbidden by the Pope”; “The Roman Mass has been officially abolished and abrogated”; “The Novus Ordo is the very same as the traditional Latin Mass, only modernized”—such were and still are some of the deceptions and lies used.

None of all this resolved anything. In the meantime, attendance at the Novus Ordo liturgy dropped drastically throughout the Church. The local habits of the clergy and of the bishops and the people made it quite clear to Rome that belief in the Real Presence of Jesus at the Novus Ordo celebration was strictly on the wane.

The general confusion grows only greater with every year, because Roman authorities now give the traditional Mass their grudging approval and because the vagaries of the Novus Ordo in its various vernacular forms throughout the world are such—ludicrous, unseemly, naturalistic, even sacrilegious—that a tiny note of alarm is sounding in the Church.

But now the anti-Church animosity—really a species of hatred—for the traditional Roman Mass is so great, while the obstinacy of the traditionalists has become a proven fact of Roman Catholic life, that only the supreme teaching authority of the Church as embodied personally in the Holy Father as head of the Church can, in a solemn, infallible statement, set the clergy and the people aright. Such a statement is lacking. Meanwhile, the members of the Church continue fractionating and dividing and doubting and deserting the practice of a sacramental life.

The present Holy Father has done a little in this regard. He did grant an indult that facilitated the introduction of the traditional Roman rite into the dioceses of his Church. But the opposition to his recommendations—that is all the Pope made, recommendations—successfully stifled all the traditionalist attempts to take advantage of this perfectly legal means of reintroducing the lost traditional Roman rite. His Holiness is quite aware of what has happened to the sacramental life of the Church. In an extraordinary passage in a letter he wrote in 1980 to all the bishops of his Church, he apologized and asked forgiveness from God, in the name of all his bishops, “for everything which, for whatever reason, impatience or negligence, and also through the at times partial, one-sided and erroneous application of the directives of the Second Vatican Council, may have caused scandal and disturbance concerning the interpretation of the doctrine and the veneration of this great Sacrament” of the Eucharist.

This is the nearest John Paul II has dared to approach a recognition of the gross damage done to the sacramental life of his Church and of the anti-Church's destruction of the Roman Catholic Mass.

The second vital Roman Catholic belief about which confusion reigns and is daily nourished concerns the oneness and trueness of the Roman Catholic Church. The essence of the confusion is this: Since the Second Vatican Council, and because of one of its official documents concerning religious liberty, the persuasion is now commonly abroad among bishops, theologians, priests and laity that membership in the Roman Catholic Church is not essential for salvation; that there are many equivalent roads to Heaven—non-Catholic and non-Christian; that everyone must be granted a moral and religious equivalence as regards the attainment of eternal salvation; even, according to some, that one can be saved without benefiting from the sacrifice that Jesus made of his life. Jesus, in other words, is (for some Roman Catholics) one Savior, and there are other saviors—Buddha, Mohammed, Abraham, even Martin Luther King. That the Roman Catholic Church is the one and the true Church in which and through which exclusively eternal salvation can be achieved—this is now in severe doubt and wrapped in confusion.

There has thus grown up, due to the febrile attention of the anti-Church, an entire panoply of ecumenical “gatherings,” “contracts,” “celebrations,” “liturgies,” “documents of agreement,” the keynote idea of these being that “we are all sons of God” and “brothers in the human family,” so we all set out on “our common pilgrimage,” nobody claiming to be solely right (or the one, true Church of Christ) and nobody declared to be wrong.

By an obvious misreading of yet another text from the Second Vatican Council documents, it is declared that the “people of God” includes the Roman Catholic Church but also many, many others who are not and will never be (because they don't want to be) Roman Catholic. In most of the dioceses of Europe, North America and Australia, for instance, any attitude other than the new “ecumenical” attitude will effectively close all doors.

The confusion among the Catholic faithful is enormous under these circumstances. Because the Vatican Council document on religious liberty condemns any attempt to force anybody to adopt a religious belief against his will, it is assumed and understood thereby that any human being has an innate right to choose and believe in a false religion. This is tantamount to saying that anyone has an innate right to be religiously
in error. This is not only false as a religious proposition; it is a contradiction in terms for anyone who is supposed to believe in the one, true Church of Christ. For if the proposition is true, then no religion is right, no religion is wrong; in fact, there is no way that a human being can arrive at religious truth.

Nothing has contributed more effectively to the decadence of Roman Catholic religious unity and identity than the pervasiveness of the idea that suddenly, as of the mid-1960s, Roman Catholics found out that they as Catholics belong to “the general mainstream of religious feeling and belief among all men and women.” Likewise, nothing has contributed more effectively to the confusion of the Catholic rank and file. For when they see and hear their prelates and their priests acting and talking as if there were no specifically Catholic uniqueness and truth, immediately their logical instinct is to regard the moral laws of the Church and its dogmas as optional. (“If others are not required to believe those dogmas and obey those laws, why should I?”) There thus arise the “cafeteria” Catholics, with a pick-and-choose attitude to Roman Catholic dogma and moral law. They insist on remaining in the Church and calling themselves Catholic, but stoutly maintain that they need not believe this, that or the other dogma, need not observe this, that or the other moral law. Their numbers teem in the Catholic Church today and include single individuals and organized groups.

The confusion in this matter continues unabated. Most of the initiatives for the new “ecumenism” and most of the theorizing about it and the false idea of religious liberty have come from Roman Catholic prelates and their theologians, and from minor diocesan officials who engage in an ecumenical network organized at the diocesan level and implemented at the parish level.

There has not yet been a very clear and unmistakable statement by bishops, followed by faithful enforcement of the fundamental Roman Catholic belief that this Church is the one and the true Church founded by Christ, to which all men and women must belong if they are to be saved from eternal damnation. Nor have the Roman authorities made any ostensible effort to rectify this grave deficiency in the bishops of the Church.

The relationship of bishops to the Bishop of Rome as Pope and as personal Vicar of Christ is the third heading under which confusion has been allowed to develop. Catholic dogma says that each bishop is the legitimate chief pastor of his diocese, provided he be in communion with
the Pope: that is to say, that he hold the same beliefs and moral laws as the Pope and that he be subject to the jurisdiction of the Pope. The Pope, as universal pastor of the Church, is also pastor of each diocese in his own right. All the bishops of the Church, about four thousand in actual number, together with the Pope, constitute the college or assembly of apostles, and they can legislate with infallibility for the Church Universal as members of that college headed by the Pope.

But Roman Catholic doctrine holds that the Pope by himself can do all that this college can do doctrinally and in jurisdiction and in moral discipline; the college of bishops can do nothing without the collaboration and headship of the Pope.

There are, therefore, two distinct relationships: one between each bishop individually and the Pope; another between the Pope and all the bishops as a body. And this relationship is called the collegiality of the Church.

Again by dint of skillful but incorrect reading of texts from the documents of the Second Vatican Council, the persuasion has been nourished by prelates and theologians that a second form of collegiality exists between the bishops of one country. Thus, it is claimed that the national conference of Catholic bishops in a country can legislate in doctrine and discipline quite apart from what the Pope may think, approve or disapprove, and that they can do this infallibly: that is, they will not err in what they propose for belief and moral practice.

No national conference of bishops has as yet had the courage or the gall to come out with a blanket statement to that effect. But already, Catholics have noted over a twenty-year period how their national conferences of bishops have legislated both doctrine and discipline in direct contradiction to the known teaching of the Pope. Needless to say, more than one theologian has proposed theological arguments to bolster this heretical independence of bishops' conferences.

The idea of the “national Catholic Church”—American, Canadian, French, Brazilian, and so on—has been born. It is not merely an idea; it is the guiding principle of many diocesan activities that have the blessing of the bishops. Bishops and their activist clerics and layfolk are thinking along these lines; they have not as yet had the courage to come out frankly and in bold terms. But we must be careful not to mistake the purpose of such a slowly emerging “national Church.” The ultimate goal in the minds of those who nourish the idea and promote it actively and concretely is not merely to solve local problems—for instance, of American priests who want to get married or of homosexuals who demand homosexual rights or of Latin American Marxists and their North American
imitators who claim the right to espouse Marxism and still be called Roman Catholics. In the minds of the purveyors of this new collegiality among the bishops of any one national conference of bishops, there stands as ultimate objective the liquidation of absolute papal control over the dogma and moral discipline in the Church.

In their minds, the truly Catholic Church, no longer called Roman, would consist of a gaggle of “national Churches,” bound together by sentiment and association, always reverential toward the so-called “venerable See of Rome and their brother Bishop” but free in their autonomy to be “mature brother bishops” of the “venerable Bishop of Rome,” and thus be free to arrange the “national” affairs of their Church merely according to the “local culture.”

Obviously, such a liquidation of the Petrine Office could only be effected with the consent of its occupant; and the easiest way in which that could happen would be the election to the throne of Peter of a papal candidate who, prior to his election, is known as favoring such a liquidation. Domination of a papal Conclave by that sort of mind would be a prerequisite for success in this epoch-making venture. For epoch-making it is: to transform the almost two-thousand-year-old tradition of the Roman Catholic Church by ending officially and once and for all the papal primacy such as it has evolved over the centuries and has been asserted by every ecumenical council of the Church, including the Second Vatican Council.

The failure of the Roman authorities to call down national conferences of bishops on matters in which those conferences have transgressed the papal will and decision: This is what has slowly but surely commenced to ingrain the idea in local Catholic communities that their national conference of bishops indeed does have the last word in dogma and moral discipline. But confusion arises because there are sufficient voices protesting that the will and authority of the Pope are supreme. Again, the lack of enforcement on Rome's part is only fomenting the confusion.

The fourth vital issue is a complex one and concerns the reproductive faculties of men and women. The statistics here are horrendous. Under the chief headings of contraception, abortion, homosexuality, premarital sexuality and the modern techniques dealing with reproduction, reliable figures assure us that a great majority of Catholics simply do not accept and a greater majority entertain severe doubts about the traditional Roman Catholic teaching on these five issues. Some particular figures—say,
those for priests who directly counsel their flock in an un-Catholic sense—are appalling. The confusion, where there is confusion, arises because the Pope insists on the traditional laws concerning these issues, whereas in every community of Catholics there are the theologians, priests and layfolk teachers in Catholic institutions who flatly contradict that traditional teaching. Proper enforcement on the part of the local bishops and of Rome would strip any such theologian or teacher of his right to teach and preach to Catholics. There is no such enforcement, either from Rome or from the bishops.