Prolegomena

That which should be read first

The worldwide scandal that Catholic children come out of Catholic schools with no knowledge whatsoever of the Catholic Church, of Her Catholic Truth, her Dogmas, Her infallible Tradition and Her uniqueness, goes on unabated. A whole generation of Catholics has been lost, and everywhere anti-discriminatory legislation has been put in place which forbids the few Catholic parents who care from laying the blame at the doorstep of bishops, priests and religious. The great majority of Catholics are quite happy with the ‘easy church’ which the Modernists have erected as a substitute for the Catholic Church, and held up everywhere as the “modern Catholic Church”, “the new Catholicism”, given to the world, so they claim, by the Second Vatican Council. That this has resulted in darkness and absolute chaos in spiritual matters on a grand scale is understandable. The lifelong task of so many bishops of calculating and weighing how much Modernism they can filter into their dioceses against the God-given Light of the Magisterium and Tradition of the Catholic Church has been accurately foreseen and foretold.

“What has become of their Catholicity? Alas, this organisation (SILLON, composed of well-meaning social Catholics in France) which formerly afforded such promising expectations, has been harnessed in its course by the modern enemies of the Church, and is now no more than a miserable affluent, feeding the great movement of apostasy, being organised in every country for the establishment of a One-World Church, which shall have neither dogmas nor hierarchy neither discipline of the mind nor curb for the passions, and which, under the pretext of freedom and human dignity, would bring back to the world the reign of legalised cunning and brute force and of the oppression of the weak and of all those who toil and suffer... We know only too well the dark work-shops in which are elaborated those mischievous doctrines.” [Our Apostolic Mandate, Pope St. Pius X, 1910].

Many readers may feel that the word ‘affluent’ in the above quote should read ‘effluent’. The French of Our Apostolic Mandate, the language in which this Apostolic Letter was written and which I have in my possession, has ‘affluent’, which is the correct word. The whole Modernist movement is ad-fluent, i.e. ‘flowing towards’, the great movement of apostasy. To stress that I use the word ‘feeding’. ‘Ex-fluent’ is flowing out, and that is weak here. The Pope and Saint was well aware that the Modernist movement was flowing out of the Church, but it was for him far more important to stress where it was flowing TO, Latin ‘ad’, and what it was feeding.

Flourishing worldwide Catholicism of barely forty years ago has been harnessed in its course by the modern enemies of the Church, the Modernists, who overnight have abandoned Her in droves. They are now no more than the miserable affluent the Pope and Saint spoke about in the above quote, feeding the great movement of apostasy organised in every country for the establishment of a One-World ‘Church’, the World Council of Churches, or WCC, which is anything but the Catholic Church.

And then this far-seeing Pope and Saint gave us in great detail the hallmarks by which this worldwide movement of apostasy can be recognised:

It will show itself as a ‘religious monstrosity’ with no Creed (no dogma), with an abandoned authority (no Hierarchy), with no Truth (no discipline of the mind), and with a total disregard for moral responsibility (no curb on the passions). And who is there ‘living’ in today’s world, who can say that all this has not come to pass, is not with us at this very moment in history and has not been fulfilled to the letter?

All this would be bad enough if it were all this Holy Father could have truthfully said about this great movement of apostasy. But he added much more to it. No doubt many observant students of the world scene could have guessed a hundred or so years ago, that a world unshackled from a Divinely revealed Creed, and freed from the guidance of a God-willed Authority, would end up as a world in which there would be no Truth, no longer any moral absolutes and therefore no curb on the passions. But to all this, this holy man from God added something that no one could have known beforehand unless lifted up by God and placed right in the middle of what would be going on in the very heart of life in the second half of the twentieth century. The Saint foretold that this modernistic ‘counter-church’, this religious monstrosity, this great movement of apostasy, would use pretence. And he gives us two examples of this pretence: the pretext of freedom and the pretext of human dignity. And since any pretence is not inspired by Truth, and so is Godless no matter how much the mass media would like us to believe otherwise, both these pretexts mentioned by Pope St. Pius X are part and parcel of this great apostasy.

But the present Holy Father John Paul II has added his voice to this global chorus of ‘freedom’ and ‘human dignity’, speaking so often about both these qualities but from the totally different panorama of Catholic Faith. To this the Modernists add their daily noisy reminder ad nauseam that our human dignity exists solely in our total freedom to do as we like. After all, are not we all children of God? So how will we ever know in the darkness that surrounds us everywhere which are the freedom and human dignity that come from God and which are the false ones spread around by the world of the Beast, by all the Modernists and by the WCC?

With regard to this difficulty, Pope St. Pius X has not left us in any doubt in spite of the sickening darkness in which we have to find our way. For he has made it abundantly clear which freedom and human dignity come from God, and which ones are used as a pretence by the great movement of apostasy. The freedom and human dignity preached by the Modernists, by the WCC and by all those who no longer believe in any dogma, who no longer accept a transcendental truth, who no longer obey a God-given authority and who no longer admit to the existence of an objective and absolute morality imposed on everyone, such freedom and human dignity are used as a pretext to do evil. They are, according to the Saint’s own words, used for

And I repeat that this astounding precision of the very essence of our time could never have come from guesswork but only from a direct revelation by God.

We only have to turn on the television, open a newspaper or a modern magazine anywhere in the world to see how literally the prophecy of Pope St. Pius X has been fulfilled. The push of the homosexual network, the strident demands of feminism, the harsh legislations of governments, the ‘freedom’ of big business by which the poor are oppressed and sucked dry to increase the wealth of the rich, the brute force by which minor offences against unjust laws are being punished whereas the rich offenders against just laws can buy for themselves exemptions: it all adds up to a world without fear of God, a world of no belief in Revealed Truths, of no hierarchical values, no discipline of the mind and no curb on the passions. In other words, a world of pretence and pretexts, a world of total license for those who can afford this “legalised cunning” for their own advantage, and of oppression for those who cannot.

All of this has been dealt with and explained in books and articles written by the Australian Marian Academy of the Immaculate Conception, AMAIC for short. And great consolation for the readers has been derived from the parallel drawn in these books and articles between the Sacred Passion of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and sustained by His Holy Mother on that first Good Friday 2000 years ago, and the Sacred Passion at present undergone by Our Lord’s Mystical Body, our Holy Mother the Catholic Church, freely accepted on His behalf and example by the Second Vatican Council.

But next to a small minority of Catholics who, in the supernatural light of their untrammeled Catholic Faith are fully aware of what is going on, and who try to live according to that Light, are a great majority of Catholics who either left the Church altogether, or who no longer practise their Faith. And to this vast number must be added those who are critical of Vatican II and of the Popes who implemented its prescriptions, and are now truly uncomprehending and bewildered in the darkness that has overtaken us. For their closed minds the teachings of Vatican II and the above-quoted predictions of Pope St. Pius X are a closed book. Thus they will not apply to themselves the serious warnings contained in them as well as in the words of this Holy Pope we are going to quote now.

For, apart from the message already dealt with, this Pope and great Saint also wrote the following immortal words to be read by every Catholic on earth:

“They (i.e. the Modernists) lay the axe not to the branches and shoots, but to the very root, i.e. to the Faith and its deepest fibres. And once having struck at this Root of Immortality, they proceed to diffuse poison through the whole tree.” [Pascendi, 1907].

These momentous words do not reveal any damage to the Faith of the Catholic Church as such which of course is impossible, no matter to what low numbers the True Church may eventually be reduced on this planet. But they most certainly refer to an impairment of the Catholic Faith in millions of Catholics the world over. This poisoning of Catholic minds goes to the heart of the modern problem.

Thus this book is written and published by the Australian Marian Academy of the Immaculate Conception for the small minority of Catholic parents who want their children to be brought up in the timeless and eternal stream of Catholic Truth and practice as they are contained in, and learned from, the Catholic Mass. For as soon as the love for the Blessed Sacrament has struck its deep roots in the souls of their children, they know from their own experience and from the Lives of the Saints, that it will never leave them. For It truly is “the treasure in the field” (Mat. 13:44) and “the pearl of great beauty” (Mat. 13:46), for which the trader-in-the-know sold everything in order to possess it.

In dealing with this great Mystery of the Catholic Faith it is very necessary that it be done systematically. What happened at the Last Supper, when Christ, as the Pascal Lamb, changed bread into His Sacred Body, and wine into His most precious Blood, extended backwards in time all through the Old Testament right up to Adam and Eve, and was linked irrevocably to His atoning Death on the Cross the next day. Parents who want their children to have a good understanding of this, must take their time to make all the necessary connections. The book will take care of this, but it will require of adults that they read up on it first in order to keep before their children and young adults the grand total from which the finer details must be explained. But they should have no fear in the exercise of this spiritual work of mercy, keeping before them the words spoken by Our Lord:

“I bless You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for hiding these things from the learned and the clever, and revealing them to mere children. Yes, Father, for that is what it pleased You to do... No one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him.” (John 11:25-26).

Thus the book has not been divided into chapters but into sections, all related to one another. The first section deals with the reason why the Son of God was sent by the Father to our earth. The rest follows from that.