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Friday, February 4, 2022

The Silence of Good Catholics Amplifies the Lies of Tyrants

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The Silence of Good Catholics Amplifies the Lies of Tyrants

“Preach the word: be instant in season, out of season; reprove, entreat, rebuke in all patience and doctrine. For there shall be a time when they will not endure sound doctrine but, according to their own desire, they will heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears. And will indeed turn away their hearing from the truth, but will be turned unto fables.” (2 Timothy 4:2-4)

Just as many people have willingly smothered themselves with useless masks for two years, much of the world’s population has smothered itself in lies during the pandemic of hysteria and insanity. This situation did not occur overnight with the introduction of Covid, even though we have seen it manifested more clearly. Instead, our collective willingness to accept lies has been prepared for decades by the education systems, the entertainment industry, our political leaders, and the media — and the architects of the Great Reset would not have embarked upon their overt phase of oppression unless they deemed that preparation sufficient. None of this preparation would have had any chance of success, though, if the majority of the world’s Catholics had not learned to be silent (and eventually indifferent) in the face of evident lies about the Catholic Faith.

 

To be fair, most Catholics have found themselves in a near impossible situation of trying to reconcile conflicting realities. As Henry Sire wrote in Phoenix from the Ashes, our Faith establishes a definite presumption that our shepherds ordinarily will not lead us astray:

“There are those who are unable to believe that the Church could have strayed as grievously as the traditionalist indictment argues, and they feel their position guaranteed by the assurances given by Christian teaching of the indefectibility of the Church. But the same teaching also contains grave warnings of afflictions that will threaten it. St. Paul writes, ‘Know also this, that, in the last days, shall come dangerous times. Men shall be lovers of themselves, having an appearance indeed of godliness, but denying the power thereof, ever learning and never attaining to the knowledge of the truth. Now as Jannes and Mambres resisted Moses, so these also resist the truth, men corrupted in mind, reprobate concerning the faith. For there shall be a time, when they will not endure sound doctrine; but, according to their own desires, they will heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears’ (2 Timothy 3:1 to 4:3). Those who have lived through the last fifty years can see exactly what he meant. We also have Christ’s prophecy of a time when there shall come false prophets ‘to seduce (if it were possible) even the elect’ (Mark 13:22).”

The reality is grim and we must acknowledge that men like Bergoglio, Roche, and Cupich cannot possibly represent the Catholic Church in any complete sense because their words and actions go against the Catholic Faith.

For many faithful Catholics, the Church’s teachings on infallibility and indefectibilty understandably inspire a reluctance to consider “that the Church could have strayed as grievously as the traditionalist indictment argues.” Indeed, this position leads some otherwise devout Catholics to defend the indefensible and vilify those who actually try to defend the Church’s perennial teaching against the innovators. Yet, as Sire expressed, we must consider not only the promises that the Church can never be overcome but also the warnings that there would come times when its survival might appear uncertain.

So we cannot abandon the Faith, but we also must acknowledge reality. As Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre wrote:

“Just as we never would have dared to place those words on the lips of our Lord: ‘My God, My God, why hast Thou abandoned me?’ (Mt. 27:46), so we never would have thought it possible for error to penetrate so far inside the Church. But we cannot close our eyes to the problem.The realities are right there in front of us and they refuse to be ignored. We are witness to all of the horrible things that are happening in the Church and to everything that has happened since Vatican II; witness to those ruins that are accumulating day by day, year by year. The more time goes by, the more the errors are spreading and the more faithful are losing the Catholic faith.” (The Spiritual Life)

The reality is grim and we must acknowledge that men like Bergoglio, Roche, and Cupich cannot possibly represent the Catholic Church in any complete sense because their words and actions go against the Catholic Faith. And we would insult God to think that any of the popes since Pius XII have faithfully guided the Church through adherence to the inspirations of the Holy Ghost. When they have not actively scourged the Mystical Body of Christ, they have at least echoed the words of Pilate to Our Lord: “What is truth?” (John 18:38). We wish we could see the Mystical Body of Christ in radiant glory, as the Apostles saw Our Lord after the Resurrection; but today we see the Mystical Body of Christ immersed in crisis that resembles Our Lord’s Passion.

Sooner or later, thoughtful Catholics realize that their shepherds have been silent about errors that had been consistently condemned until Vatican II and wonder why “truth” can change in such a way.

We are sometimes tempted to walk away from the spectacle, but ignoring or downplaying the current crisis in the Church, and its origins, creates its own set of problems because the fact remains that most of the apparent Catholic hierarchy is teaching error in the name of promoting Vatican II. Bishops and priests who maintain silence about these errors perpetuate the mistaken belief that truth and error can legitimately coexist within the Church. Our Lord told us to judge a tree by its fruits, and we know that the tree of Vatican II — which is poisoned to its roots with the insidious idea that immutable truth can change — bears consistently bad fruits. The tree itself must be condemned lest unsuspecting souls consume the rotten fruits. Many otherwise good shepherds think they are adequately protecting their flocks by identifying a particular piece of rotten fruit to avoid, but this necessarily suggests that all of the other fruits of the same tree are fine to consume. Sooner or later, thoughtful Catholics realize that their shepherds have been silent about errors that had been consistently condemned until Vatican II and wonder why “truth” can change in such a way.

As Fr. Dominique Bourmaud expressed in One Hundred Years of Modernism with respect to the problem of false ecumenism, trying to reconcile truth with error leads to the death of reason:

“To say that all religions are equally good is to say that they are all equally true or equally false since they contradict one another. Do they truly mean to insinuate that truth and error, good and evil, are matters of mere opinion? This mindset can only lead to the death of reason, which is the only faculty distinguishing man from the beasts, to whose level man quickly descends when he abandons his reason. The skeptic does not think; he eats, he digests, he vegetates. Is this the human dignity so vigorously proclaimed, or is it not rather man’s ultimate debasement? As Solzhenitsyn said so well, ‘Do away with truth and man necessarily becomes the prey of the first totalitarianism to pass by.’”

Almost the entire world is now intimately familiar with this reality expressed by Solzhenitsyn: “Do away with truth and man necessarily becomes the prey of the first totalitarianism to pass by.” As Fr. Bourmaud indicated, the process of demolishing truth flourishes within the realm of the false ecumenism initiated by Vatican II’s Declaration on the Relation of the Church with Non-Christian Religions, Notra Aetate, fed by John Paul II’s Prayer Meeting at Assisi, and sustained since then by a continually closer embrace of every religious belief other than actual Catholicism. This demolition of truth, with its often lethal effect on the ability to reason, occurs anytime Catholics are encouraged to believe errors which oppose perennial Catholic teaching.

Building on the words of Solzhenitsyn, it seems fitting that God would allow the world to suffer the current totalitarian oppression as a result of the rejection of truth by so many Catholics. Such a result is not merely hypothetical — we can readily see the definite consequences of Catholics being fed the errors of the Spirit of Vatican II:

  • Catholics abandon the Faith, thereby severing their connection to the Church established by God to dispense grace and truth
  • Most of the remaining Catholics are poorly formed, rendering them unable and unwilling to adequately distinguish truth from error
  • The Church’s efforts to spread truth in the world are thus diluted, as the majority of nominal-Catholics no longer believe, and frequently oppose, key truths of the Faith
  • The ostensible leaders of the Church support morally repugnant (and clearly anti-Christian) causes, thereby causing grave scandal
  • All of this causes a withdrawal of the beneficial influence the Church should have on all men of good will, especially in helping people discern between truth and error
  • As we see today, this results in a prominence of high-ranking Catholics (both in the Church and in the secular sphere) who lend the supposed moral authority of the Church to unambiguously anti-Catholic lies

Those who accept the various novelties set in motion by Vatican II are much more likely to be fully compliant with the nonsensical and tyrannical dictates of their fellow nominal Catholics: Francis, Fauci, Biden, Pelosi, and Trudeau.

So while the primary offenses of the anti-Catholic spirit ravaging the Church are those directed against God, many other harms follow naturally from placing truth and error on equal footing. For most of the world’s professed Catholics, the post-conciliar Church has normalized the acceptance of the most preposterous lies. When we consider that there are over one billion Catholics in the world, it is no surprise that this would lead to the massive inability to counter the lies that we see today both in the Church and in secular society.

If even half of the world’s Catholic population (and much less would surely suffice) firmly held to the Catholic Faith and rejected the errors that oppose it, we would not see the prevalence of oppressive lies we see today in those nations that were once Christian. Nourished by the graces of the sacraments and fortified with solid Catholic teaching, these souls would fight the insidious lies with such vigor that the Great Reset would never have been launched. If we doubt this, we need only compare the willingness of Traditional Catholics and Novus Ordo Catholics to accept the various lies associated with the Covid regime: those who accept the various novelties set in motion by Vatican II (which conflict with perennial Catholic teaching) are much more likely to be fully compliant with the nonsensical and tyrannical dictates of their fellow nominal Catholics: Francis, Fauci, Biden, Pelosi, and Trudeau.

Fortunately, we still have the ability to fight for the truth, which we must do. At the beginning of his article entitled “The Charitable Anathema,” Dr. Dietrich von Hildebrand quoted the words of Blaise Pascal:

“It is as much a crime to disturb the peace when the truth prevails as it is a crime to keep the peace when the truth is violated. There is therefore a time in which peace is justified and another time when it is not justifiable. For it is written that there is a time for peace and a time for war and it is the law of truth that distinguishes the two. But at no time is there a time for truth and a time for error, for it is written that God’s truth shall abide forever. That is why Christ has said that He has come to bring peace and at the same time that He has come to bring the sword. But He does not say that He has come to bring both the truth and the falsehood.”

Vatican II, John Paul II, Benedict XVI, etc. have played a vital role in what Paul VI described as the “auto-demolition of the Church.”

Those faithful Catholics who have hitherto “kept the peace” in the face of the lies promoted since Vatican II can decide to fight for the truth at any moment. This requires us to acknowledge the uncomfortable reality that Vatican II, John Paul II, Benedict XVI, etc. have played a vital role in what Paul VI described as the “auto-demolition of the Church,” which has only accelerated with Francis. If we cannot do that, we make peace with error at the expense of God’s truth.

As Dr. Dietrich von Hildebrand wrote, God permits us to grapple with these weighty matters to test us, and He expects us to fight for the truth:

“A far more important thing is that there be no Catholics — no priests, no lay people, no bishops — who profess heresy, who profess theories incompatible with the deposit of Catholic faith. The fact that many orthodox Catholics fight these heresies is not deplorable; on the contrary, we should rejoice that there are still faithful Catholics, and that they raise their voices against heresies, for God expects that of them. St. Paul says there always will be heresies and he adds that God permits them to test the faithful. The disunity that is based on the incompatibility of truth and falsehood cannot and should not be avoided. ‘It is as much a crime to disturb the peace when truth prevails as it is a crime to keep the peace when truth is violated.’”

Will we raise our voices against the errors that offend God and are so incompatible with the Catholic Faith He gave us? If so, we will be worthy to share in Our Lord’s ultimate victory over the Prince of lies and those who follow him. If not, it is absolutely fitting the we be muzzled with the suffocating masks imposed on us by those who ascended to power thanks to our silence.

Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us! Sancte Michael Archangele, defende nos in praelio!

Catch the latest from Remnant TV  WITHSTAND FRANCIS PUBLICLY: Catholic Priest Calls Bishops to Resist Pope

 

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Last modified on Friday, February 4, 2022
Robert Morrison | Remnant Columnist

Robert Morrison is a Catholic, husband and father. He is the author of A Tale Told Softly: Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale and Hidden Catholic England. 

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