The Mystique of Vatican II
II
And the Unbroken Tradition in the Catholic Church
We have seen that in his 1907 encyclical “Pascendi” Pope St. Pius X warned the whole Church about the Modernists that “there is no part of Catholic Truth that they leave untouched, none that they do not strive to corrupt”. In section I we studied their attack on Catholic Faith in the written Word of God. In this section II we will have a look at their attitude to Catholic Tradition. For just as the natural understanding and the supernatural insights, which God had communicated as His Revelation to His servant Moses, became for Man the Inerrancy of Scripture when committed to the written word; so did these insights become the living Tradition, or the passing on of the spoken word, in the life of the Church which His Son founded. Through Divine Protection, this handing over of the Faith from genera-tion to generation within the Catholic Church also became inerrant if presided over by the Pope of the day and the Bishops of the Church in communion with him.
Many Catholic and other bible translators are at present time engaged in changing words and meanings in their inferior products, because (as we have seen) teilhardian Catholics have a completely different message for our times than the Living Church has. This shows that with their different words and translations they want to bring us a different message, “another 'gospel', which they think is the true Gospel of Our Saviour". (Pope St. Pius X in “Our Apostolic Mandate" in 1910). But just as it proved impossible to divorce Holy Writ from its original God-given meaning and purpose, so it proved equally impossible to tear this Supernatural Light and understanding away from this living Tradition within the Catholic Church. But not for lack of trying. The fact that Holy Scripture - in the case of Moses - refers to these insights and this understanding as a 'vision', makes us acknowledge the fact that Moses received from God more than only super-natural enlightenment, and that God showed His servant in visions while he was in His presence, what was necessary for him to understand the Jewish phenomenon: then, as originally at the dawn of history, as at the consummation of the ages. Just so that Moses would be capable of sharing in God's patience with his rebellious people as a true prefiguration of Christ and His Divine compassion for sinful humanity, always eager to go astray. Since the Divine Redeemer was to be born from the Jews, it became absolutely necessary that the Supernatural Significance of the Jewish phenomenon would be maintained and understood in the Super-natural Light of God's Revelation by all "who were in expectation of the consolation of Israel".
We know from St. Paul's description of Original Sin, from his teachings about the uniqueness of Adam as a person, and from his prophecies about the role of the Jews at the end of time, that he took over the Mosaic account, ascribed the Original Sin to a unique event through which death came into this world; and so confirmed for all times that the same deviations which corrupted the Jewish Tradi-tion, would corrupt Catholic Tradition as well. If we accept, on Paul's own testimony, that he spent some time in Arabia preparing for his mission, and that he received many revelations and visions from the Lord, relating to the transition from the Jewish Tradition to the Catholic one, then it will not be hard to accept that Moses received from God the same profound illumination while he conversed with God in His presence. This then is the unbroken tradition of Moses and the Jewish people, which accepts God as the Author of Holy Scripture, which believes that the Bible is the Word of God and which maintains that the Living Tradition explains the meaning of this Revelation in time. It was this Tradition which went through its fulfilment, the Incarnate Word of God, into the Catholic Church, and which, through the Apostles, through the Fathers, through the Popes and the great Councils, through the Council of Trent and through the "Credo of the People of God" has come to us and will go beyond.
Now in those latter days, the one thing that, at the same time that it swept the world, also constituted the greatest break with the Insights and Understanding, contained in this Vision and its Divine Meaning, is Teilhardian evolution. The Mosaic account and the Catholic Tradition are definitely not evolutionary. It is no good claiming that Antiquity and Early Christianity knew nothing about it because evolution had not been ‘invented’ by then, for the simple reason that these Super-natural Insights and Revelations are not of human origin. God knew beforehand that evolution would eventually make its entry into world history, and so could have made it part of His Revelation. He did not. And evolution, even as it is, cannot be proven by ordinary scientific thinking. But in the whole of Tradition there is not a trace of it.
Yet what concerns us here for the moment is teilhardian evolution because it came from within. It is a human corruption of the Living Tradition within the Catholic Church. Its fundamental heresy is a parallel Magisterium, equating conditional individual Salvation withthe universal Redemption won by Christ, making salvation extend as far as Redemption. In his ‘evolution’ we are all on a cruise to god-omega, because it is inevitable that, through evolution, redemption itself becomes secured. Evolution is the ‘home’ of the cosmic-christ. Instead of original sin, it claims that salvation is propagated by procreation, thereby teaching that individual salvation and universal Redemption are the same, which flies directly in the face of Catholic Tradition which teaches that individual salvation is not inevitable but depends on human co-operation with Grace.
But for Western Catholics, grown soft on materialism, the fascination of this message: ‘secured salvation’, proved irresistible. Teilhard's foremost requirement is music to their ears and balm to their consciences. To be urged to embrace this world, in order to share in the incarnation of the cosmic-christ, as a pre-requisite to be swept by evolution inevitably into one’s final destiny, who can resist that....?
This 'gospel' is of course nothing but the preaching of 'the great apostasy', foreshadowed by St. Paul, and pointed out by St. Pius X as being with us now. It is an absolute and final break with Catholic Tradition, which never taught the inevitability of individual Salvation. And through the inexorable pressure of the Holy Spirit, the teilhardian 'church' will in its turn be cut off and cast out from the Guardian of God's living Tradition, the Holy Catholic Church. The danger is that, through this great and universal apostasy, the separating 'church of darkness' may be numerically larger than the Catholic Church; resulting in the fact that this anti-church may take with it for a while the outward machinery of the Catholic Church in exactly the same way as, at the time of Christ's Passion and Death, the Son of God appeared to be the outcast from the corrupted Jewish tradition, and the separating Jewish Sanhedrin appeared to be in charge. And in retaining the outward signs of power and organisation, it was able to take most of the Jewish population of the day with it.
Having arrived at this seeming impasse, where can we find an arbiter with enough authority to settle this vexed question once and for all? The answer is not hard to find: we will have to consider here the profound significance of Vatican II within the living tradition of the Catholic Church. Even if this means facing up to the seemingly inexplicable paradox of our times: how, on the one hand, it appears possible that teilhardian evolutionists are so adept in dealing with the teachings of Vatican II in their own sinful, erroneous ways, and how, on the other hand, this great Council nevertheless defies and frustrates any designs the unholy ones have in dragging her down to their own heretical level. For an answer we will have to go back a long way....
Many an attentive reader of Sacred Scripture may have wondered at times why, in the Book of Genesis, there occur two accounts of Creation: one, in which the Majesty of the Creating God dominates, (Ch.1 ), the other, (Ch.2), more idyllic and poetic, in which the interest and attention centre around man, the first human beings in their earthly paradise, and the drama in which they became involved. This duality is not unique: it occurs each time a towering intellectual achievement is put before humanity. The classic Greek duality is the one between the philosophy of Plato and the philosophy of Aristotle. And so there exist within the Church two streams of philosophy: one, the Aristotelic-Thomistic system, in which the Church feels at home and which She has made Her own; the other the Platonic-Augustinian-Franciscan 'tradition', more mystical and idealistic, reflec-ting the nostalgia for the idyllic state of the Lost Paradise. In matters of such momentous importance it is obvious that such duality did not come about unless by the direct Will of God's creative Spirit. Why would that be so? God, the Creator of the human being, knows His own product intimately. He knows our strength and our weaknesses. He gave a definite priority to the intellect (just as a definite priority has been given to His most precious Gift to man: Faith; the root, foundation and beginning of all Justification), yet He knows that any 'towering intellectual achievement' tends to neglect the heart and human feelings, tends to lose some of that warmth, tends to become eroded, formalistic, legalistic. and in His Goodness He called into existence an in-built safety device, so that, when at some stage this erosion of heart and idealism would occur in the dominant system, the other more poetic and idyllic one, with its mystique and warmth and inner awareness could be called upon to restore to the predominantly intellectual system what it had lost in human understanding. But under no account was this restoring system to be divorced from the other one it is supposed to serve. It was there to correct, not to take over. The "human interest story" of Genesis pre-supposes the towering Majesty of the Creating God in Chapter 1 and not the other way around.
Now Vatican II was God’s - and the Church’s - answer to Catholics who had become too formalistic, legalistic and somewhat neglectful towards the needs of humanity in general, and of separated Christians in particular. It was an answer in the solid tradition of the Church to restore to Thomism what may have seeped away in previous decades, when the warnings of the Church fell on deaf ears.
Had Teilhard submitted his own evolutionary ‘mystique’ for scrutiny to the Church and to the bar of Thomism as an antidote for legalism and excessive formalism, he would, as a reward for his filial obedience, eventually have come to understand and appreciate why the Church was forced to relieve him of his evolutionary aspects as incompatible with Her Tradition, at the same time that he would have been very pleased to see the Church accept his concern for the human element as Her own. The result would have been that the human centered interest of Vatican II would have been anticipated by him, and would also have been properly understood for what it was by the next generation. The endless tragedy, however, was, that the inbuilt hatred for, and contradiction of Thomism, which characterises evolution outside the Church, was taken over by Teilhard as a necessary element - so he thought - to correct it, but eventually to replace it. But in discrediting and destroying Thomism from the inside, he also broke with Tradition. Vatican II drew attention to humanity's plight in Her own unique way, wholly from within the Church's Tradition, and teilhardism tried to do the same with an illegal substitute. That's why so many Catholics can be under the illusion that, in following the evolutionary teachings of Teilhard de Chardin's system, they are implementing the directives of Vatican II....
But that is not the whole story. All during the long and arduous centuries, the Catholic Church has kept alight the Beacon of God's Saving Truths, and has guided sinners to repentance and salvation in obedience to these Truths. Like Her Divine Founder, She too has had compassion with the multitudes and on the example and command of Her Groom, She has attended to their every need. But in Vatican II, it appears, the Catholic Church has shown this compassion for the multitudes in a unique way, but still wholly within the Tradition of the Church.
Only on two occasions in the whole history of the human race does it seem that God cast all reason and precaution aside, to let His Heart speak. The first occasion was, when He instituted the Blessed Eucharist, when, if the separation of His Body and Blood pronounced and effected there would have any meaning at all, necessitated His frightful passion and death, where this separation was made the reality it was in the Upper room. The institution of the Blessed Eucharist became the Signature under His own death warrant, freely given in a Love so surpassing all human understanding, that the great Apostle of Love could only exclaim: "In fine dilexit eos", "He loved them till the very end". Till He could go no further. And within 24 hours, the Sacred Body and Blood of Christ were completely separated on Calvary.... If this could not be surpassed, could it be imitated? Could the One who showed us so much love, inspire as much? Where would He find a receptacle suitable for such an inspiration? Where, but in a Bride, the Bride of the Lamb of God? And this became the second occasion, when, in an excess of love for that same sinful humanity: for pagans and Protestants, for Hindus and Mohammedans, for abortionists and homosexuals, for communists and freemasons, for teilhardians and modernists and all the derelicts over the place: for a whole world She had spoken to for 2000 years but never reached, the Catholic Church in Vatican II "tradidit semetipsam"' 'gave Herself up as a victim'; "exinanivit semetipsam", 'emptied Herself', in the fine tradition of the Son of God. And within 10 years Her beauty was gone.... What took 2000 years to build was demolished within a decade. For, on both occasions, under the direct inspiration and instigation of the Evil One, there were traitors and predators waiting in the wings, ready to seize on this profound immolation as if it was a weakness: on the part of Christ, it was the Jewish Sanhedrin, which made the fatal mistake; and now in the case of the Catholic Church, it is the teilhardian 'church of darkness'. And just as in the days of Christ, a still uninformed but most loyal Peter took to the sword in defence of His Master, so in our days an equally fiery Archbishop Lefebvre has taken it upon himself to defend with the sword what he considered was the Church he knew before. Scandalised by Her disfigurations, he too made the same mistake as Peter in Gethsemane, and it is by now a fact of history that the Archbishop did not heed the command of the gentle Pope, and did not show the same obedience as the Prince of the Apostles gave to the command of his Master Christ.
The Mystery of the Catholic Church is so profound, that only the holiest of motives must be attributed to Her will and desire to follow Christ to Her own Good Friday and Calvary. The Catholic teilhardians, mistaking the Church's com-passion for the millions as the seal on their own perversions, have betrayed the Church into the hands of Her enemies, greatly facilitating the global persecutions predicted by Our Lady of Fatima. In committing her children to these, the Church no doubt will have hastened the conversion of the world. And just as Christ in His Sacred Passion bore His sufferings in silence and only spoke to defend or expand His teaching, so the faithful should use the greater enlightenment which has come to them in their agony, when they see the Church they loved so much being treated the way She is now, to defend the Church's teaching, so that this Passion may not be lost on the perpetrators of the Evil. The Church is also divine, and so Her seemingly irrational act of Love to follow Christ in His annihilation for sinful humanity, must be ranked under the most profound acts of Wisdom and Sanity ever witnessed on this earth, The course of the Church is steadfast and sure. She knows what She is doing, even in acts where Her great heart seems to have gotten the better of Her great rationality.
In Section I of this paper we saw that God put a circuit-breaker in the Mosaic account of the creation of man in order to block any evolutionary interpretation or view of Genesis. Do we find the same circuit-breaker in Vatican II, placed there by the Holy Spirit to block any evolutionary interpretation of this great Council’s deliberations and documents?
If we can be sure of one thing it is that Teilhard’s evolutionary modernism got filtered out by the Council in no uncertain way. None of this was allowed through. It is absolutely impossible to maintain, even if force was used on the text, that the sacred documents refer - however remotely - to an evolutionary spirit. Everything is solid, traditional language. The examples one can choose are myriad, and can be found no matter where one opens the documents, even (and it is no exaggeration to say especially) in those where the Council breaks new ground. It would take us too far to give here even a few examples. So, in line with the above treatment of Vatican II’s immolation of itself for the salvation of mankind and as a seal on this great Council’s veracity and orthodoxy, I would like to remind the readers that in at least four places in its documents Vatican II urges Catholics to be prepared to shed their blood for the salvation of their fellow-men.
If that is not “solid traditional” I do not know what is….
Maybe here is as good a place as any to say a few words about the new Liturgy. We recognize in the Life of Christ two sources for His humiliations. Some, like the Incarnation, sprung from His great Love for us and from His obedience to His Father's Will; others were inflicted upon Him by His enemies and came from the hatred of the Devil. When God revealed to the Angels in their period of Probation the Divine Decree that His Son, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, would take on human nature and become Man, many Angels were scandalised and protested. Until eventually the protest became open rebellion in the battle cry of Lucifer: “Non serviam”, 'I will not serve...' Cast into Hell forever, the hatred of the fallen angels froze into their eternal fixation, and it is not without significance that, in his meditations in the 30 day retreat, St. Ignatius continuously refers to Satan as 'the enemy of human nature'. For not believing in the human nature of Christ became his downfall. And so he became the second source of profound humiliations for Christ in His Sacred Passion, when for a while the Evil One was given power over that Sacred Body.
Now there can be no doubt that the Holy Father has made it crystal clear that the Novus Ordo comes from the bosom of the Church. For reasons deep down in the mystique of Her Vision, which, as we recognize, have a lot to do with Her compassion for the world, the Church in Vatican II, 'in emptying Herself' on the command and example of Her Spouse and Head, has not clung to the regal beauty of the Tridentine Mass, but has replaced it with the Novus Ordo. And so the Novus Ordo is one of those humiliations the Church has freely taken upon Herself. And just as Christ, through a freely accepted Incarnation, became vulnerable for all sorts of other humiliations which his enemies could now heap upon Him, so the Novus Ordo is also open to abuses which have nothing to do with the original intention. And just as through the Incarnation "the secret thoughts of many hearts were laid bare", so also with regard to the Novus Ordo. The non-acceptance of it by the Latin Mass Societies until an indult was wrenched from the Holy Father to avoid further trouble had to be revealed as much as the disrespect and unbelief of the modernists.
In His Sacred Passion and Death, Christ looked for all the world like the loser. Yet He was never stronger. He became the corner stone, rejected by the builders. The corner stone of an entirely new creation, His very own Church. In rejecting Him, the Sanhedrin could make it appear as if finally their interpretation of the Jewish tradition had gained the upper hand, but all in vain. As we know: the Five Sacred Wounds of Our Redeemer became the instruments of defeat of the Enemy. In our days, the teilhardians and modernists are making the same mistake. They may appear to be in charge and make it credible that their evolutionary interpretation of Tradition is prevailing, but all in vain again. The true meaning of Vatican II, the immolation of the Holy Church as seen in the Supernatural Light of the authentic Catholic Tradition, will prove to be the second stone which will bring down the enemy and his cohorts at the same time that it will help save the world.