Taken from his book "Who Shall Ascend?" p. 473-505

A.

She is before your eyes; it is the Church. The Church is your hope, the Church is your salvation, she is your refuge. It is for this that Christ established it, after having paid the price of His Blood, for this that He confided His teaching and the precepts of His law, drawing forth at the same time the treasure of His grace for the sanctification and salvation of men. (St. John Chrysostom). 1

The reader is exhorted to keep this thought in mind: No matter what conclusions we come to here, what has happened to the Church has come about within the space of a quarter-century. All this has happened without the least genuine sign of alarm from the reigning pope or his men. All the while, we have been told that it was in the spirit of and according to the norms laid down by the Second Vatican Council. During his reign, Pope John Paul II has continued to exult over the fact that the Church is moving toward the great finale of the Third Millenium. It should be clear to the dullest mind that what has happened was intended all along, that the goals and visions of the Revolutionists who control the Church are very different from those of true Catholics, and have not the slightest reference to the glory of the most Blessed Trinity, the exultation of the Church, the salvation of her children, or the conversion of those wandering in sin and error without, the thought of whose peril causes the true Catholic to tremble and weep.

Cardinal Lienart was the Cardinal who brought about the great turning point at the Council, in the very opening meeting of the first session. This happened on October 15, 1962, when the election of the 160 members of the Conciliar commissions was in process. Hardly had Monsignor Felici, the Secretary-General of the Council, invited the bishops to start the procedure of election, then Cardinal Lienart arose and requested a curtailment, for, he said, "We are not prepared to accept lists of candidates which were compiled before the Council was convened. We have not had time to select candidates of our choice." The "We" and "our" referred to the bishops of the "European Alliance," to use Father Wiltgen’s term, the coalition of Liberal bishops of Germany, France, Holland, Belgium, Austria, and Switzerland, who succeeded in seizing control of the Council and guiding it to its Revolutionary outcome. Fr. Wiltgen tells how this was done:

Archbishop Pericle Felici, Secretary General of the Council, was explaining the election procedures to the assembled Fathers in his fluent Latin when Cardinal Lienart, who served as one of the ten Council Presidents, seated at long table at the front of the Council hall, rose in his place and asked to speak. He expressed his conviction that the Council Fathers needed more time to study the qualifications of the various candidates. After consultations among the national episcopal conferences, he explained, everyone would know who were the most qualified candidates, and it would be possible to vote intelligently. He requested a few days’ delay in the balloting.

The suggestion was greeted with applause, and after a moment’s silence, Cardinal Frings rose to second the motion. He, too, was applauded.

After hurried consultation with Eugene Cardinal Tisserant, who as first of the Council Presidents was conducting the meeting, Archbishop Felici announced that the Council Presidency had acceded to the request of the two Cardinals.....

The first business meeting, including Mass, had lasted only fifty minutes. A Dutch bishop on his way out of the Council hall called to a priest friend some distance away, "That was our first victory!" 2

We continue to quote Fr. Wiltgen:

The different national episcopal conferences immediately set to work drawing up their lists. The German and Austrian bishops, because of linguistic bonds, decided to establish a combined list. The two German cardinals were not eligible, Cardinal Frings being a member of the Council Presidency, and Julius Cardinal Dopfner of Munich, a member of the Secretariat of Extraordinary Council Affairs. Franziskus Cardinal Koenig of Vienna, however, who held no Conciliar office, was immediately placed at the head of the list of candidates for the most commission of all, the Theological Commission.

The January, 1991 issue of Courier de Rome, Si Si No No informs us that it was this same Cardinal Koenig who had been mainly instrumental in the nomination of Cardinal Casaroli as John Paul II’s Secretary of State. This article maintains:

Contrary to what the official press has written, it was not Casaroli who had come up with the idea and specifics of "Ostpolitik" [the "East Policy," that is, the Vatican policy of accommodation with the Soviet Bloc]; he was before all else the executor of this policy. We must remember how he was nominated. Cardinal Koenig, the real inspirer of this negative policy, was the grand elector of John Paul II, and also, of certain knowledge, had tremendous influence in the nomination of Cassaroli to the post of Secretary of State... This explains how Casaroli came to be Secretary pf State, who before had had the modest role of archivist in the second section of the Secretariat of State. [It also gives us an idea of how the Brothers within the Craft push and pull each other to the top of any state or organization which they intend to take over and run.] 3

Fr. Wiltgen continues:

At the close of the discussions, the German-Austrian group had a list of twenty-seven candidates: three Austrians, twenty-three Germans and one Dutch-born bishop from Indonesia who had received his liturgical training in Germany and Austria.

Other episcopal conferences were similarly preparing their lists: Canada had twelve candidates; the United States, twenty-one; Argentina, ten; Italy, fifty. The superiors general present six of their number for the Commission on Religious, and one of their number for each of the other commissions.

Nevertheless, as these lists began to form, it became frighteningly apparent to the liberal element in the Council that their proposal for individual lists by episcopal conferences was no real safeguard against ultraconservative domination of the commissions. For it was expected in those early days of the Council that countries like Italy, Spain, the United States, Britain, and Australia and all of Latin America would side with the conservatives. Italy alone was believed to have some400 Council Fathers, the United States about 230, Spain close to 80, and Latin America nearly 650. Europe had over 1100,including those of Italy and Spain. Africa, with its nearly 300 votes, was in the balance, and might be won for either side. Such considerations prompted the bishops of Germany, Austria and France to propose a combined list with the bishops of Holland, Belgium and Switzerland. At the same time, Bishop Joseph Blomjous, a Dutch-born bishop in charge of Mwanza diocese in Tanzania, together with African-born Archbishop Jean Zoa of Uaounde, in Cameroon, had been busy organizing the bishops of English - and French-speaking Africa. They offered their list of candidates to the group headed by Cardinal Frings, thus assuring numerous African votes.

The six European countries, which now formed an alliance in fact, if not in name, found additional liberal-minded candidates among cardinals, archbishops and bishops from Italy, eight from Spain, four from the United States, three from Britain, three from Australia, and two each from Canada, India, China, Japan, Chile and Bolivia. Five other countries were represented by one candidate each, and Africa by sixteen. This list of Cardinal Frings came to be called the ‘international’ list and contained 109 carefully picked candidates so placed as to guarantee broad representation of the European alliance on the ten commissions...

The results of the elections were eminently satisfying to the European alliance. Of the 109 candidates presented by the alliance79 were elected, representing 49 per cent of all elective seats. When the papal appointments were announced, they included eight more candidates put forward by the European alliance. Alliance candidates constituted 50 per cent of all elected members of the most important Theological commission. In the Liturgical Commission, the alliance has a majority of 12 to 4 among elected members and 14 to 11 after the papal appointments had been made.

Eight out of every ten candidates put forward by the European alliance received a commission seat. Germany and France were both represented on all but one of the commissions. Germany had eleven representatives; France, ten. The Netherlands and Belgium each won four seats; Austria, three; and Switzerland, one...

After this election, it was not too hard to foresee which group was well enough organized to take over leadership at the Second Vatican Council. The Rhine had begun to flow into the Tiber. 4

As one continues through Fr. Wiltgen’s book, one sees very clearly that the Decrees of the Council werein no way the "outpouring of the Spirit of God;" only shrewd, determined maneuvering by Liberals to achieve their purposes.

B.

Anyone close to this subject knows that it is not what the Council decrees say that has caused the damage; it is the use that has been made of them. The decrees have served as a charter for Revolution within the Church, just as surely as the Declaration of the Rights of man did for the Jacobins of the French Revolution. Since the Council, regardless of anything said by the decrees, no one nor nothing has been able to withstand the wrecking ball of the Revolution, always authorized by the "spirit of the Council."

What the Council did was Liberalize the Church, which means that it brushed aside the tradition of faith and discipline and prudence which once prevailed. Since the Council, no principle, no tradition, no custom, no common sense judgment, no established authority has been any defense against or deterrent to whatever lunacy or novelty the Liberals have wished to foist upon the Catholic faithful. Further more, the controlling hierarchy has made it its chief business to take the side of Liberals against all and everyone who raised their voices to object or challenge.

It is not a rare thing to hear it suggested that the bishops do not obey the Pope, or "The Vatican." Similarly, many have said that the American hierarchy may be expected to set the Church in this country free of Rome. Such talk is ill-informed. Besides appointing Liberal and Modernist bishops, the Roman Curia has carried out a program of subversion by favoring the Liberal over everyone else in every dispute and conflict. Likewise, in the spirit of "collegiality," it has allowed national bishops’ conferences to vote into effect almost everything for which Liberal majorities have agitated.

The decrees of the Council have made it impossible for anyone in authority in the Church to exercise any discipline to speak of. If any discipline remains, it is there, not because it is being imposed, but because Catholics – and human beings in general – prefer order and regularity to disorder and endless, pointless, irreligious change.

It is futile distraction to speculate how the Council might have proceeded, had not the "Lienart intervention" taken place. It is in what happened that we find the cause of the Church’s present disruption. We know what happened and can now appreciate the momentousness of the event. From that very first meeting, the Council became a Liberal takeover and rout; and using the Council, the Revolutionists assumed power over the Church itself, all this before the majority of Council Fathers had any idea of what was happening. (Most of them never did perceive what had happened; or, if they did, kept it to themselves.)

It is with a mindfulness that the salvation of men’s souls is the Church’s primary objective that one must study the Council. The conclusion one reaches immediately is that het Council Fathers, as a body, lost sight of this purpose completely. It is probably more accurate to say that most of them someh9ow imagined that the matters being discussed and the votes being cast in no way endangered this purpose. They seem to have imagined that the changes they were voting for would not alter the Church greatly; that they were only minor adjustments, pastoral adaptations, which is what the conspirators wished them to think.

The Council Fathers, for the most part, acted as if the Church were very secure, robust. Evidently, while the Council was in session, the Bishops did not think of themselves as reforming the Church, but merely "bringing it up to date" – though they seemed incapable of determining what this phrase was supposed to mean, or that such a determination needed to be made. Most of them, when they arrived in Rome, were unaware that the Church was in such dire need of reform. The talk about the Council’s having been convened for the purpose of a general "reform" of the Church came afterward. Once the Council was over, the Liberals had all the authorization they needed to put it into effect, not what the majority of Bishops thought they had voted for, but what the words to which they had given their approval really meant.

The Bishop’s terrible mistake was that they lost sight of what the Church is supposed to concern itself with, in season and out of season. As a consequence, it seems never to have occurred to them to ask how it was that there should be, among the so-called Liberal Fathers, a passionate concern for so many causes that had absolutely nothing to do with the salvation of men’s souls. They failed to observe that the main movers had absolutely no thought of this. For proof of this all one needs to do is read the Conciliar decrees. The "aggiornamento" which they were voting into effect was not Catholic, because it was an effort to change the Church in such a way that it would please men, as if pleasing the men of the world were some positive good, some neglected obligation, and the root cause of the Church’s being disliked and distrusted by non-believers.

The Liberals were equally insistent that the Church must change for the sake of its own members. But the changes for which they agitated were totally unspiritual. There was nothing about them that had anything to do with enabling Catholics to make greater progress in virtue, to pray better, to live more spiritual lives. The discussions all had to do with changing the Church as if there were something grievously wrong with it, as if the Church’s condition were critical and intolerable. (It was intolerable to all who were not Catholics at heart.)

Other complaints were nothing else but the revival of ultramodernist carpings which had disrupted the Church in Western Europe in the Nineteenth century, about how the Italians controlled the Curia and the Papacy, about how unrepresentative the Church was in its governing personnel. (After the Council, we would begin to hear the tedious canard about how minorities and women have been excluded from the Church’s offices.) Here again, one observes, is the Liberal restlessness over silly non-problems. But ceaseless complaining achieved its purpose: It changed the Church’s focus from the spiritual to the irrelevant and purely organizational.

Beginning with the "Lienart intervention," the Liberals gained control of the Council, which is to say, from that time on, they were able to control both the subjects of the various schemata, and their composition; which included the terminology and spirit of both the schemata and the discussion about them. From this point the conservatives fought a defensive battle (and that very poorly), and were reduced to trying to preserve some orthodoxy in the language of the decrees. That of course was faint consolation; in fact, it served the cause of the Revolutionists, in that it made it appear that the Council’s preoccupations were those of the True Church. It was not on their orthodoxy or their heterodoxy that the issues were turned, but something larger than that. It was in the subject matter itself. The dominant focus of the Council became this-worldly and Humanistic; it was neither spiritual nor Catholic.

The Liberals, as they always do, fought with a single mind and heart, and worked like Trojans to achieve their goals. In the first sessions of the Council, the conservatives hardly knew what was going on. It was only gradually that they were able to unite and put a halt to the onrush of changes. This they achieved in the fourth session.

The Liberals were able to bring it about that the subjects treated suited their designs, or should we say, the designs of the Masonic conspirators, who usually pull the strings of unwitting Liberal surrogates. They were determined to "reform" the Liturgy, to Protestantize the Church’s approach to the Scriptures (which, in the Mass, meant to raise the "Liturgy of the Word" above the "Liturgy of the Eucharist." Three themes were to be given greatest dominance, no matter what the cost: "Ecumenism," human dignity, and religious freedom. With such subjects to debate, the orthodox Bishops could not possibly win. It seems to have been impossible for any one bishop, or any group of Bishops, to see or to say that the Liberals were in control of the proceedings completely; no matter whether they gained much or little, it would be at the expense of the Faith. No matter what is said or not said, the Church and her children would be the losers.

Those who pay attention to Communist tactics know well that one effective maneuver against hostile (or putatively hostile) governments is negotiation. The procedure is this:

Step one: Demands are made.

Step Two: When the demands are not granted, there are public demonstrations of protest, which escalate to confrontations, then to armed conflict.

Step Three: When the public begins to grow weary of the disturbance, the Communists begin to ask for negotiations. "We will call a truce, if you will negotiate with us. It cannot hurt to sit down and talk."

Step Four: Once negotiations begin, the Communists have established a parity between themselves and the government. Thus, when they began, they were nothing but troublesome, law-breaking rabble, never having been elected to speak for the citizenry, had no right to speak for anyone but themselves. Now, at the negotiating table, they force the legal government to treat with them as co-governors, representing an oppressed population.

Step five: The negotiations consist of the Communists presenting a long list of demands, not a single one of which they have a right to, but every one of which they intend to win sooner or later – and more besides. They threaten that if their demands are not met, the trouble in the streets will become ever more destructive of life and property.

Step six: Instead of clapping them into jail, governments agree to grant certain demands.

Step Seven: The Communists organize more demonstrations until the rest of their demands are met. With every concession, the government grows more impotent.

The Council was the negotiation table of the conspiratorial enemy . The Progressivists came with urgent and peremptory demands for "updating the Church," a reform which ordinary Catholics were unaware was needed. By the time the Council was over, the official Church, led by Pope Paul VI, had witnessed the dissolution of his power and that of the whole Church. The final documents authorized the rebels to do practically anything they wanted. What they had demanded was the de-Catholicization of the Church, the "Masonizing" of the Church, and they could not have been more pleased. And yet, even to this day, these rebels are still discontented. They continue to call Pope John Paul II a "conservative." They demand that the Church allow priests to marry, that it ordain women and give them a greater share in the Church’s governance, that it allow priests and nuns to engage in every form of Revolutionary activity, that it permit abortion, that it recognize homosexuality as an "alternate lifestyle," and so on. And by now this rebel sect dominates the hierarchy in every country.

SOMEONE should have said: "Concerning the kind of ‘Ecumenism’ you are speaking for, this is a program for the Protestantization of the Church; the result of it can only be the dilution of sacred doctrine and promotion of religious indifference."

Concerning the subject of "the dignity of the human person," SOMEONE should have said: "In the eyes of God and the Church, the human’s dignity is purely potential, until he receives Baptism and enters the Church; it is then that he begins to live the divine life, which our Savior died to win for him. I will not accept that the Church’s duty is to extol human beings merely because they are alive, which is all this orating about ‘human dignity’ is. To the extent that you glorify unredeemed humanity, you downgrade the purpose of every man’s existence; you misdirect the attention of the Church to purely earthly causes, which is not the Church’s purpose."

Concerning religious liberty, SOMEONE should have been said: "This discussion suggests that the Church, like the State, has the obligation to proclaimed that human beings are free with respect to their religious obligations, and with respect to their response to the Church itself. It is not for the Church to defend itself as if it has violated, or needs to be warned against violating, the religious liberty of men. It is the Church’s role to warn men what they must do to be saved, regardless of how they are treated by the State or society. The Church’s chief duty and prerogative is to teach men what their liberty is for, to seek divine truth and serve it, under pain of everlasting damnation."

SOMEONE should have realized the ominous direction of the discussions as they continued over the weeks, and brought them to a halt by saying: "The whole concern of this Council is extraneous to the Church’s reason for existing, and contrary to our reason for being the princes of the Church. I appeal to the Holy Father to intervene in these proceedings and set them a course consonant with the Catholic Faith. Should His Holiness fail to do so, I will excuse myself from this meeting, putting the whole matter in the Hands of Christ. My conscience will not permit me to participate in the vivisection of His Mystical Body."

Through the Council, the Masonic intrigants succeeded in establishing as the religion of the official Church what was their own secret cult and creed. This is the reason that the Catholic membership is thoroughly paganized and doctrinally moribund now.

The Liberals at the Council silenced all opposition by claiming that all that was being done was under the aegis of the Holy Ghost. In point of fact this was atrocious blasphemy, akin to perjury. At the Council, whenever any schema was introduced which was unacceptable to them, the Liberals complained heatedly that the notion was "against the spirit of the Council," or it was "against the spirit of ‘Ecumenism.’" The result was that they succeeded in getting schemas written according to their likes.

What is important is not how the schemas read now, after the conservatives succeeded in toning them down somewhat. More important is the fact that the schemas had to be toned down; that is, when they were presented, they were uniformly Progressivist. Even if their heterodoxy is not so clearly perceptible now, those who proposed them and their intellectual successors are now in power in the Church. The "spirit of the Council" has proved to be not the conservative reading of the radical schemata, but the radical spirit which inspired them. What the decrees say does not matter any more. Their only purpose was to establish the spirit of Revolutionism, the spirit of Freemasonry, the spirit of Liberalism as the spirit and law of the Conciliar Church, against which true Catholics have had no defense.

Equally important is the fact that while this Revolution was being carried out, Pope John XXIII and Pope Paul VI presided. They let it happen, protected it, fathered it. While they pretended to lay a steadying hand on the deliberations, in point of fact, they let the Reformers have their way, gave approval to the final results, and implemented the decrees of the Council with a strong, unhesitating will, repeating pontifically that all, including themselves, were bound to accept and follow the Council. As he said he would, Pope John Paul II has continued this same course with a stentorian resoluteness.

C.

The fundamental reasons why the Bishops at the Council voted against the Faith were two: The first is that they were saturated with Liberalism, whereby they voted so as not to displease the world, the Protestantized, Masonized, Judaized world, which was represented by the non-Catholic observers, who numbered in the dozens. Their approach was to present the Church as having a change of heart. Whereas before, it had been an institution of dogma, moral obligation, religious principle, and divine authoritarianism, now, they were going to unveil to all men the Church’s new-found sweet reasonableness. Now all would be apology and accommodation.

The second reason was that the Bishops, most of them, had little or no understanding of the world they lived in. The atmosphere created for them at the Council was that all the world’s people were also experiencing a change of heart, having in this modern age imbibed from the Holy Ghost a genuine yearning for peace and love. The Bishops were convinced of this – or let themselves be convinced. Nothing was offered as evidence other than the fact that there was much talk about "Ecumenism," world brotherhood, and the inexcusable scandal of religious disunity. The Bishops were pummeled with the idea that it has been the Church which has caused enmities towards herself, that the reason for the hostility of outsiders to Catholicity has been the Church’s approach to the world.

The truth of the matter was (and is) that the spirit of "Ecumenism" was a delusion. The non-Catholic world was not then and is not now interested in "reunion" with the Catholic Church through the discovery of the True Faith. Aside from the fact that it is impossible to speak of the non-Catholic world as if it were a unitary thing, the faithless "world" very much wants all that is opposed to the Catholic Faith and the Catholic Church, that Catholic Church, that is, which is seriously engaged in fulfilling her role as the mother and teacher of all mankind. The most visible source of this idea of world religious unity was the World Council of Churches, which, everyone knows, is a Communist front, which was founded by such prestigious Communists as Albert Einstein, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Paul Henri Spaak.

But the main impercipience of the Council Fathers about the world was in their want of awareness that the act of assembling them for the Council had a sinister and conspiratorial purpose from its conception. Not dreaming this fact, and being altogether incapable of being told this (as the survivors are to this day), the Bishops were as supple as putty. They were at the Council to vote away the Church’s principles and defenses, to disarm the Church completely against its bitter enemies, and this is what they proceeded to do.

Instead of benevolent, the modern world is conspiratorial; the intention was to seduce the Church into a spirit of false charity and guilt, which spirit is prescribed by the Revolution for all whom it means to capture and swallow.

The fierce hatred of the Church’s enemies never wanes; but at the time of the Council, its enemies had succeeded in placing their agents within its walls, in high places. What an exciting adventure it was for them to have the Bishops gulping down their potions, their toxic wastes!

D.

The Decree on Ecumenism: Unitatis Redintegratio

We said above that it is not important what the wording of the decrees is, since no one bothers to read them anymore – something totally unsurprising, since they were not meant to be read, only generically referred to. Nevertheless, it is the wording of two decrees that we find the subtle poison which has by now brought the Church to its present lassitude.

The Decree on Ecumenism does its damage in accordance with Liberal Naturalism, and does it with that disingenuousness that is the hallmark of modern-day heresy. It insists without saying it that all men are related as brothers, by virtue of the fact that they have a single origin, "since God made the whole race of men dwell over the entire face of the earth,"and that they have common religious aspirations. ("Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to Non-Christian Religions."

No. 1). "The Church therefore has this exhortation for her sons: prudently and lovingly, through dialogue and collaboration with the followers of other religions, and in witness of Christian faith and life, acknowledge, preserve, and promote the spiritual and moral good found among these men, as well as the values in their society and culture." (Ibid., no. 2). The consequence of this new approach to Protestants, and all other non-believers, is that the Conciliar Church does not believe in converting people to the true Faith, but in discussing religion with them, and assuring them that we do not think hard thoughts about them and their beliefs. From that day to this, while there has been some talk about "evangelization," the Church’s missionary efforts have practically ceased, conversions are rare, and it is bad taste to uphold the Faith. (Many missionaries have gone into the more hardy business of overthrowing "right-wing dictatorships" and military juntas, and establishing Communist "republics.") The fundamental error here is that here is an essential difference between Catholicity and all other religious persuasions, and that is, that the former is the Revelation and Law of God, whereas the latter are the paltry efforts of human beings to contrive their own religion, and find some kind of satisfaction from it, which efforts can effect nothing good within the soul, and therefore nothing for the soul’s salvation.

The Conciliar approach suggests that it is a proud, evil thing to claim to know what God requires of all men for salvation. The Faith is not to be communicated, but is meant to inspire "Christians" to the patronizing and egalitarian towards those in error. The Council thus suggests that it has a better approach to the people of the world, who suffer the confusion of error and moral guilt, than the Apostles and all the great missionaries of history. Instead of telling them that they must accept the teaching of the Church as coming from God Himself, repent of their sins, and be baptized in order to enter the Church, (Acts 2:38)., missioners are to pat all non-believers on the head, and console them with warm friendliness. Catholics are to understand that, henceforth, one of the few remaining sins will be to suggest that outside the Church there is no salvation.

No. 2. "It was to the apostolic college alone, of which Peter is the head, that we believe our Lord entrusted all the blessings of the New Covenant, in order to establish on earth the one Body of Christ into which all those should be fully incorporated who already belong in a way to God’s People. During its pilgrimage on earth, this People, though still in its members liable to sin, is growing in Christ and is being gently guided by God, according to His hidden designs, until it happily arrives at the fullness of eternal glory in the heavenly Jerusalem."

In the sentence quoted, the subtle suggestion is made that the true membership of the Church is in the state of potency: God’s People (in and outside the Church) are, and will be till the end of time, in a formative stage; mysteriously, those in and outside the Church are being "gently guided by God toward the full mature Christ." This is an erroneous reference to the words of St. Paul, "Until we all meet into the unity of faith, and of the knowledge of the sons of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the age of the fulness of Christ" (Eph. 4:13). St. Paul’s expression applied to the members of the Church exclusively. Nowhere in St. Paul’s writings will one find the idea that those outside the Church are members of Christ’s Mystical Body. As has been insisted elsewhere, the Apostolic writings on the subject of dissidents are uniformly condemnatory, and often vehemently so.

No. 4. "The ‘ecumenical movement’ means those activities and enterprises which, according to various needs of the Church and opportune occasions, are started and organized for the fostering of unity among Christians. These are: first, every effort to eliminate words, judgments, and actions which do not respond to the condition of separated brethren with truth and fairness and so make mutual relations between them more difficult; then, ‘dialogue’ between competent experts from different Churches and Communities. In their meetings, which are organized in a religious spirit, each explains the teaching of his Communion in great depth and brings out clearly its distinctive features. Through such dialogue, everyone gains a truer knowledge and more just appreciation of the teaching and religious life of both Communions. In addition, these Communions cooperate more closely in whatever projects a Christian conscience demands for the common good..."

This paragraph is the culmination of many years of persuasion and agitation on the part of certain writers (the names of Fr. Gustav Weigel, S.J. and P. Charles Boyer, S.J. come chiefly to mind.), some of whom, for all we know, had good intentions, but were sadly deceived as to the inevitable result of their aspirations. The Second Vatican Council wrong-headedly launched the Church in the direction of compromise and irreligion. For the sake of "unity" and "brotherhood" among the Christian churches, the Conciliar Church has been willing to trifle away its very identity and all claim to be the True Church of Christ. Only the extremely naive would not recognize in "The ‘Ecumenical’ Movement" the machinations of Freemasonry, which from the Nineteenth century has had as one of its principal goals the amalgamation of the churches, and the deletion from all of them the last traces of authentic Christianity.

The result of twenty-five years of "Ecumenism" exactly what the Codex Canonici Juris sought wisely to prevent by its restrictions against communicatio in sacris ["sharing in sacred things"]. The Liberals in the Church, for two decades and more before the Council, gibed that such exclusiveness and xenophobia were ridiculous; that there was no reason why Catholics could not associate and worship together and "dialog" over our differences with Protestants, to the mutual benefit of all parties concerned. Exactly what the conservative Bishops feared and warned of at the Council has come to pass. "Ecumenism" has proved to be one of the great mistakes of the Church’s history. And the idea that this movement has been due to the "inspiring grace of the Holy Spirit" is woefully wrong.

But not all who agitated and manipulated for this "Ecumenical" interchange were naive. From the first day that the dialogs have taken place, things have been happening which the faithful have known nothing about and have had nothing to say about. Some of those who have been so busy with these discussions have known what they were up to. They were engaged in a process not of defending and proving the rightness and imperative of Catholic belief. By no means. Those who were dubious wondered what they meant when they said: "The result will be that, little by little, as the obstacles to perfect ecclesiastical communion are overcome, all Christians will be gathered in a common celebration of the Eucharist, into that unity which Christ bestowed on His Church from the beginning." Now we know. The "obstacles" to perfect.... communion were all the things Protestants object to and have objected to since 1517. The Conciliarist "dialogers" (their word, not ours) have been conceding the elements of Catholic belief one at a time ever since, in order to be more acceptable to their "separated brethren," who have nothing to concede.

The progress of this "Ecumenical" activity has been as pathetic as it has been disastrous. Catholic churches have been given over to Protestants here and there. It would be impossible to list the kinds of "Ecumenical" activities which have taken place which could not possibly have drawn Protestants to the True Church, but confirmed them in their errors and complacency instead.

While all this has been going on, millions of Catholics have been leaving the Church, joining Protestant sects, a large percentage of them Fundamentalist bodies, where they can find genuine, "old-fashioned, Bible-based Christianity," – and old-fashioned anti-Catholic Bible-thumping, invincible ignorance. ("Old" to Protestants, of course, is something twenty or thirty years old.) All the while the Catholic clergy, from the Pope down, have persisted in their sell-out and denials. Worse, in its effort to be acceptable to all men, the Conciliar Church has neuterized itself to nothing more than a Humanistic association, which cannot define itself, and which has become a curiosity "to angels and to men." The only discipline which survives is its steely intolerance of traditional Catholicity; the only sin which provokes its mirthless wrath is the persistent refusal on the part of Traditionalist Catholics to acquiesce to its apostasy.

No. 3. "There arose certain rifts (cf. I Cor. 11:18,19, Gal. 1:6), which the Apostle strongly censures as damnable. (Cf. I Cor. 1:11ff,; 11:22)."

These words are true. The rifts were the result of false teaching and disobedience on the part of certain individuals within the fold. The Apostles who wrote the Biblical epistles unanimously condemned the heretics who subverted the faith of some and established rival sects.

No. 3. "But in subsequent centuries much more serious dissensions appeared and large communities became separated from full communion with the Catholic Faith – for which often enough men of both sides were to blame."

In their passion for unity, the Bishops take no thought as to historical accuracy. No excuse can be made for the heretics, nor is their teaching any less false and damnable to this day. We know the history of all the heresies. It may be that certain Church authorities failed at times fully to recognize the nature and gravity of heretical movements gathering adherents within the Church, but never can it be right to blame them for the rebellion of those who left the Church, set up a counter-church and lied about and cursed the True Church of God. These sectarians were never content merely to disagree with the traditional doctrine; to the extent that they were able, they persecuted the faithful, appropriated Church property, and sought to influence civil authorities for the complete extirpation of the Church, as if they had been its much-abused victims. It is impossible to find a single instance where the founder of an heretical sect set forth his theses with honesty and humility, the proper attitude of a true Christian, submitting his propositions to the Church as one genuinely desirous of the truth.

The Protestant Revolt which gave rise to what we refer to, for want of a better name, the Protestant Church, which is now comprised of approximately seven thousand sects of every size and religious notion, was from its inception bitterly anti-Catholic. If modern-day Protestants are ever to be brought back to the unity of the Faith, they are going to have to recognize the true history of their movement, for which the Catholic Church deserves no blame, but has always been in tears. This is not to say that Catholics were uniformly guiltless of crimes in situations of conflicts; it is to insist that it was the arrogant, unappeasable heresiarchs and their subversive doctrines which caused the dismemberment of Christendom, and that it is this same spirit of revolt and obstinacy toward the truth that is the cause of the disunity among Christians today.

No. 3. "However, one cannot charge with the sin of separation those who at present are born into these communities and in them are brought up in the faith of Christ, and the Catholic accepts them with respect and affection as brothers."

These words are obsequious sentimentality. Those who have kept the separation in effect are the Protestant clergy and lay controllers, who have a vested interest in its continuance. Protestantism of its very nature instills an invidious opposition to the True Church. Its essential attitude is one of protest, resentment, and jealousy against the Church for its doctrine, for its authority, and its pre-eminence.

Unhappily, Protestants are not in the Church, and cannot be considered to be "brothers in Christ," whether they are validly baptized or not. To say that they are is to say what is not true. Protestants differ so radically from faithful Catholics in what they believe, that we call them "Christians" only by way of the broadest analogy. For the sake of the dream of Christian unity, the Council Fathers speak here as if the whole truth of the matter is known by neither side of the controversy. The Council of Trent lamented the Protestant Revolt, but it could not deny that those who had established the Lutheran, the Calvinist (Presbyterian), and the Anglican (and Episcopalian) Churches were outside the Church, and would remain so until their members individually or collectively returned. The Church could not change its teaching, or blame itself for their revolt so as to win them back, and it cannot do so now. The monstrosity which is the Conciliar Church has done this, only to confirm non-believers in their heresies. The above is not a careless statement; quite obviously, for the last twenty-five years, the Conciliar Church has been accommodating itself to Protestantism in every facet of its belief and practice; it has denied its very nature and purpose, and dispossessed itself of its power and claims, in order to unite itself to that disunited throng of sects, which we refer to as "the Protestant Church"; if these sects have themselves been changing, it is certainly not in the direction of traditional Catholicity, but rather toward Secular Humanism, paganism, and nihilism. "Ecumenism" can now be recognized for what it was from the beginning, subversion at work.

No. 3. "For men who believe in Christ and have been properly baptized are put in some, though imperfect, communion with the Catholic Church."

As we have said before, there is no such communion; the relationship here spoken of is idyllic and imaginary; it defies theological definition; it is nothing more than an idea which is born of the illusion that there is some hope of a reunion between Protestants and Catholics, when the history of our time has revealed that the rift between two parties is deeper than it has ever been, for, at the time of this writing, Protestants and Catholics both are less religious and less reverent towards God than they were when the Great Break occurred in the Sixteenth century. What the Council should have said is the simple, kind, and holy truth, namely, that every Protestant must abandon his false creed and communion, repent of his sins, humbly submit himself for Baptism, in order to be received into the loving arms of his holy Mother, if he truly wishes to be saved.

But Protestantism is much more anti-Catholic now than in the Sixteenth century, because hateful as it was then, it had not then been overmastered by Luciferian Freemasonry.

For the Bishops at the Council not to have said these things was a grievous failure. Consequently, the Conciliar Decree on Ecumenism is worthless, and all the "Ecumenical" efforts which have been inspired by this decree have yielded absolutely nothing for the salvation of the souls of Protestants. One cannot help recalling the comment of the perspicacious St. Pius X, when he was presented with this same program of "Ecumenism:": "If you try that, you will neither convert the souls of others, nor keep the ones you have."

No. 3 "Nevertheless, all those justified by faith through Baptism are incorporated into Christ."

This is a gross misreading of a sentence from the Decree, Exultate Deo, of the Council of Florence (1438-1445), which says: "Holy Baptism, which is the gateway to the spiritual life, holds the first place among all the sacraments; through it we are made members of Christ and of the body of the Church." (Nov. 22, 1439, No. 696).

A footnote, provided ,we presume, by Fr. Walter M. Abbott, S.J., the editor, opines: "The Decree stops short of saying outright that they are ‘members’ of the Church, probably because of the sentence in Pope Pius XII’s encyclical Mystici Corporis issued in 1943: ‘Only those are to be included as real members of the Church who have been baptized and profess the true faith and have not been so unfortunate to have separated themselves from the unity of the Body..." Fr. Abbot continues: "Cardinal Bea and other theologians, however, have developed a great deal of thinking on the situation of those born and baptized outside the visible borders of the Catholic Church who have not knowingly or deliberately separated themselves from the unity of the Body." Here is more prattle which is the specialty of Liberal "theologians." Notice the words: ".... developed a great deal of thinking..." Pray, what does this mean? "... born and baptized outside the visible borders of the Catholic Church..." The writer is clearly trying to circumvent Pope Pius’s meaning: There are no invisible borders of the Church; one is either in or out. One is in if he wants to be, out if he wants to be. No matter whether he is a cardinal or a most erudite theologian, he cannot make it anything else. Cardinal Bea and his theologians were Liberal heretics. The Baptism of sincere Protestants does not make them Catholics; they do not want to be Catholics; they want to be what they are.

We can simplify the discussion by quoting the same Council of Florence where it says in language we inerudite Catholics understand:

[The Catholic Church] firmly believes, professes and preaches that none of those existing outside the Catholic Church, not only pagans, but also Jews, and heretics, and schismatics, can ever be partakers of eternal life, but that they are to go into the eternal fire "which was prepared for the devil, and his angels," (Mt. 25:41) unless before death they are joined with Her; and that so important is the unity of this Ecclesiastical Body, that only those remaining within this unity can profit from the sacraments of the Church unto salvation, and that they alone can receive an eternal recompense for their fasts, almsdeeds, and other works of Christian piety and duties of a Christian soldier. No one, let his almsgiving be as great as it may, no one, even if he pour out his blood for the Name of Christ, can be saved unless they abide within the bosom and unity of the Catholic Church. 5

We consider that for the Council Fathers not to have quoted these words of the aforementioned Council smacks of deceit. One might easily make the deduction that the Bishops hoped that by omitting to express the Doctrine of Exclusive Salvation clearly in the context of this decree, they had in mind that they might entice protestants into the Church. Once they had captured them thus, the Bishops would have disclosed to their new converts what the true mind of the Church is.

E.

The Decree on Religious Liberty: Dignitatis Humanae Personae

The Decree on Religious Liberty complements this approach more by what it implies, than by what it says. Surely all know by now that the decree sins against divine truth by suggesting that there is such a thing as "religious liberty," and then proceeds to deceive the reader by misdefining the term, that is, by defining it one way, while intending that it be understood in another, something which happened exactly as planned.

The Council defined "religious liberty" as the right of every man to be free in his religious beliefs from all external coercion and disturbance by the state or any other agency. (Chap. 1, no. 2). Its explicit heresy is in its contention that every man has the right to worship publicly in union with his co-religionists provided this does not disturb the public order. "Nor is anyone to be restrained from acting in according with his own beliefs, whether privately or publicly, whether alone or in association with others, within due limits." (Ibid). This teaching is directly contrary to the Syllabus of Errors which condemns the notion that:

"Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which he, led by the light of reason, thinks to be the true religion." (Denz., 15, 1715).

Here we are more interested in the fact that erroneous as the decree is, its harm reaches beyond its words. For, by now, the world understands that the Council declared that every man may believe and act in all circumstances as his conscience dictates, and that neither the State, nor any other individual or agency (including the Church itself) may judge or condemn him for his personal credo. Together, as is obvious, these two decrees subvert all genuine faith and the authority of the Church as Christ on earth.

What the Decree on Ecumenism fails to do is to attend to the fact that, even if non-believers accept certain truths in common with Catholics, one may not refer to their belief as the supernatural virtue of faith, which virtue can be exercised only toward the full deposit of revealed truth. Moreover, as has been said elsewhere, we discern heresy: the doctrines which they do not believe, they deny. In a word, in that they have no faith, and in that their personal credo embodies a refusal to believe the truth of the Gospel, non-Catholics stand condemned by Christ in Heaven and His Church on earth.

And, with respect to the Decree on Religious Liberty, the very term is a calculated misnomer. There is no such thing as "religious liberty," when the term is used in its presumed sense, which is that a man is free to believe "what he wants to believe." The implication is that Masonic "liberty" which is the arrogant spirit of the age, and which the Second Vatican Council seeks to hallow, the idea that man is sacrosanct in himself, and it is a violation of his person and "dignity" to require that he believe anything that he is not minded to. In still plainer terms, the Church itself has no authority to teach modern man what he must believe, nor to condemn him for not believing, or for espousing error.

The Decree on Religious Liberty sins even more grievously, again by implication, by suggesting that there can never be such a thing as a Catholic state, a state in which the Catholic Faith is the official religion, and all other religions are merely tolerated under restrictive conditions. The Decree implies that, since every man has the right to worship God (whatever god he believes in) in his own way, either privately or publicly, it would be an injustice for any state to favor one religion to the disparagement of all others.

We may presume that it was in accordance with the "spirit of Vatican II" that Pope John Paul II, in 1988, accepted the declaration of the Italian government that it is no longer a Catholic state! This act opened the way for Fundamentalists and Moslems, Humanists and Communists to conduct their business of seeking to draw Catholics out of the Church with complete freedom and with protection of the Italian state. At this writing, the Moslems are building a mosque in Rome. (The Catholics, you understand, may have the "spirit of the Council,’ but the Moslems have the spirit of the Prophet.)

If it needs to be said, the fundamental error here is the glorification of Fallen Man, the suggestion that any idea or fantasy, no matter how wrong or witless, has value for no other reason than that some human being adheres to it, and no man or group may deride the idea for that very reason.

As to how we can say that Conciliarism holds to no religious tenet, that is proved by the Masonic purpose and inspiration of "Ecumenism" and Religious Liberty. For the sake of unity among men, another name for World Brotherhood, the Conciliarists were (and are) bent on throwing aside any and every belief. The Catholic ideal of the Gospel is the brotherhood of all men and all nations in the unity of one Faith and one Baptism within the Mystical Body, the Church, under the spiritual authority of the Pope of Rome, as the Vicar of Christ the King. The Utopian dream of Freemasonry is the unity of all men, set free of the Church’s authority, set free to deny all truth, and enslaved by a totalitarian World Government. The "Ecumenism" and Religious Liberty of Vatican II are nothing else but the ideal of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity under another label. This is exactly what one of the Masonic Cardinals (Suenens) meant when he commented: "This Council is the French Revolution of the Church."

Indeed, it is with a mindfulness of the French Revolution that all should view the true intent, the subtle anti-Catholicism, and the appalling ruinousness of the Council: the Masonized Mass, tens of thousands of "ex-priests," priests dressed as laymen, embittered feminist nuns, vacated academies and seminaries, churches up for sale, socialist bishops, the Pope manifesting what appears to be a long-standing camaraderie with the Communist murderers, terrorists and slavemasters, and the disenchantment of hundreds of thousands of once-Catholic laypeople.

F.

1. At this distance (1992), we can assess the Council without danger of error. I was set in motion and established within the Church as an agency for its destruction. The Council, which is the shibboleth of the Conciliar Church, is omnipotent. Any law, divine or human, any defined doctrine, any tradition, no matter how venerable, any reasonable expedient, or plain truth, or present or historical fact, becomes a nothing at the merest evocation of the Second Vatican Council. The Church has no past prior to the Council; all is interpreted, not by the words of Conciliar decrees, which mean everything and nothing, but the indefinable "spirit of Vatican II. In the name of Vatican II all is permitted; against Vatican II, all is forbidden.

2. The only thing that can be done is that those in power acknowledge the great error, regardless of who is to blame, and to recall the faithful to orthodoxy.

3. There was no proper exchange at the Council between the Liberals and the orthodox, for the former, under the protection of the Popes, carried the day with their increasing majorities, especially in sessions two and three. The reason there was no proper dialog was that there were two incompatible ideologies represented, the one, a compromised Catholicity, the other, a conspiratorial Liberalism. The Liberals paid no appreciable attention to the arguments or warnings of the conservatives, but spent their time re-educating the Bishops and garnering votes. The conservatives were reduced to trying to edit from the schemata the most extreme expressions, the most blatantly heretical phrases. What they should have done was lodge a strong protest against the proceedings, then excused themselves either individually or in a body. (Bishop Adrian of Nashville {TN}, when he absented himself from the third session, was required to give up his diocese.)

4. In the Decree on Ecumenism, regardless of the easily ascertainable truth, the Council taught that Protestants and other non-believers have good will, divine grace, and a real hope of salvation without entering the Church. The obvious conclusion is: "Well then, we do not need the Church. We have been right all along, and the Church has been wrong. If it has been wrong this long a time, why should we listen to it? Why do you have to invite us to join something no better than what we already have? You will never hear us admit that we have been wrong for hundreds of years, or for a single day."

5. The Council Fathers spoke of all the sins of individual Catholics, in days of yore, presumably clerics, in administering their offices, and found fault with them, because of their uncompromisingness and arbitrariness. They apologized profusely for the Church’s conduct and attitudes over the centuries. To non-believers this represented retraction and self-correction: "If you were wrong before, you may be wrong now. If you were wrong, the founders of our sects were right to rebel against your predecessors. We have no obligation to you. If your Church is so fallible and un-Christian, it is inferior to ours, for our churches are perfect. Our churches had done nothing wrong. What we have always accused the Church of, you are finally admitting."

6. The Protestants said at the time of the Council, and they say to this day: "In all our dialogs, we will hold our ground, and let you Catholics come to us. Our resolutions will consist of the same kind of thing you have been engaged in, finding words which will conceal our irresolvable differences of belief. All that you are saying is that, from now on, your positions are negotiable; your ‘revealed truths,’ and ‘dogmas’ are mere bargaining chips. Our strategy is simple: Since you have a new doctrine, the ‘doctrine of reunion,’ we are certain that for this doctrine, you will sacrifice all the others. The longer we dialog, the more doctrines you will concede."

7. It does not matter whether anyone believes that the tragedy of the Council was brought about by agents of a conspiracy, or by wrong-headed but sincere Liberals. The truth remains that the Council disarmed the Church against Liberalism, and all the isms which, hitherto, it had refuted and censured and condemned. And the present unhappy state of the Church is due to the Council. Anyone who denies this need not read further, as he is beyond the reach of this writing.

8. Liberalism is the idea that all things must be determined by whether they are unpleasant for the human beings involved, or will be immediately. The two notions here are pleasure and immediacy. Liberalism is not concerned with the eventual results of one’s actions; rather, it concerns itself only with the present and the near future. Moreover, it is intolerant of all principle, moral or otherwise; its only concern is that life not be unpleasant; and if it gets its way, anything that makes life better is what ought to be done. Liberalism, to be sure, is little different from the Epicureanism of antiquity.

9. Of course, what we are saying is momentous. How could the bishops have been so wrong? How could it happen that these successors to the Apostles have been so completely subverted? Many there are that say, with good reason, that all this could never have been brought about except by infiltration and conspiracy. What is important is not that one draw the (obvious and well-documented) conclusion that what has happened to the Church could not have been brought about except by a conspiracy within, but, something much simpler, that one accept the fact of what has happened to the Church. It is this that the hierarchy, the priests, and the laity, have yet to admit. They refuse to acknowledge the reality of what the whole world sees.

G.

The Council and Execrabilis

1. An execrable, and, in former ages, an unheard-of abuse, has sprung up in our time, namely, that some people, imbued with the spirit of rebellion, presume to appeal to a future Council from the Roman Pontiff, the Vicar of Jesus Christ, to whom it was said in the person of blessed Peter: "Feed my sheep" (Jn. 21:17), and "whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound also in heaven" (Mt. 16:19).; they do not do so because they are anxious to obtain sounder judgment, but in order to escape the consequences of their sins, and anyone who is not ignorant of the laws can realize how contrary this is to the sacred canons, and how detrimental to the Christian community. Because – passing over other things which are most manifestly opposed to this corruption – who would not find it ridiculous when appeals are made to what does not exist and the time of whose future existence nobody knows? The poor who are oppressed in many ways by the stronger, crimes remain unpunished, freedom is conceded to delinquents, and all the ecclesiastical discipline and hierarchical order are confounded.

2. Wishing therefore to thrust away from Christ’s Church this pestilent venom, to take care of the salvation of all those who have been committed to Us, and to hold off from the sheepfold of our Savior all cause of scandal, We condemn appeals of this kind by the counsel of all prelates and jurisconsults of Divine and human law adhering to the Curia on the ground of Our sure knowledge; and We denounce them as erroneous and detestable, suppress and entirely annul them in the event that any such appeals, extant at present, may be discovered, and We declare and determine that they are – like something void and pestilent – of no significance. Consequently, We enjoin that nobody dare, under whatever pretext, to make such an appeal from any of Our ordinances, sentences or commands and from those of Our successors, or to adhere to such appeals, made by others, or to use them in any manner.

3. If anyone, of whatever status, rank, order or condition he may be, even if adorned with imperial, royal or Papal dignity, shall contravene this after the space of two months from the day of the publication of this Bull by the Apostolic Chancery, he shall ipso facto incur sentence of anathema, from which he cannot be absolved except by the Roman Pontiff and at the point of death. A University or a corporation shall be subjected to an ecclesiastical interdict; nonetheless, corporations and Universities, like the aforesaid and any other persons, shall incur those penalties and censures which offenders who have committed the crimen laesae maiestatis [the crime of treason] and promoters of heretical depravity are known to incur. Furthermore, scriveners [copyists] and witnesses who shall witness acts of this kind, and, in general, all those who shall knowingly furnish counsel, help or favor such appealers, shall be punished with the same penalty.

Therefore, it is not allowed to any man to infringe or to oppose by audacious perversion this charter of Our will, by which We have condemned, reproved, disallowed, annulled, decreed, declared, and ordered the aforesaid. If anyone, however, shall so attempt, let him know that he shall incur the indignation of almighty God and of Saints Peter and Paul, His Apostles.

Given at Mantua in the year, 1460, of the Lord’s Incarnation, on the fifteenth day before the Kalends of February [January 17], in the second year of Our Pontificate. 6

1. The reader will have remarked the style of this pronouncement. Its writer is fully confident of his authority and obligation to speak as he does. He speaks imperiously and urgently, with the conviction that the salvation of souls is at risk. His tone would surely be judged "uncharitable" by the modern lovers of mankind.

2. His Holiness, Pope Pius II (1458-1464) speaks with justifiable indignation that anyone should contrive to skirt the established judgments and rulings of the Church. He exposes their dishonesty in pretending that their intention is merely to get a "sounder," clearer, more definite, more precise judgment on certain theological matters. Their true intention is to oppose the collectivity of the bishops against the Church, and, particularly, its definitive papal pronouncements, and, thereby, to overturn and contradict them.

3. Let it be noted most carefully that His Holiness does not hesitate to impose his sanctions on his own successors on the throne of St. Peter. Those who maintain that "what one pope may legislate, any of his successors may overrule," are found here to be decidedly wrong. Thus, the Pope is saying that not only may no future general council overturn the solemn definitions of the Sacred Magisterium, but no pope may do it either.

Many have written of the Council, in order to sift from its decrees what is acceptable and what is to be reprobated. We surmise that history will assess the Second Vatican Council as one of the greatest tragedies of the Church’s history, and, for that reason, of the whole world. We have not thought it necessary to analyze the Council decree by decree, as we consider that both the inspiration and its conduct have been not of the Holy Spirit, but of the Evil One. It was the work of conspiracy, a great coup d’Eglisse, so long hoped for and plotted, hence, worthy of a blanket condemnation. Indeed, we judge the Second Vatican Council to have been condemned five hundred years ago by Christ and the Saints Peter and Paul, in the person of Pope Pius II, by this Bull, as the little periodical Veritas, has maintained for several years. 7 Moreover, lest anyone suggest that the invocation of a Medieval decree is a desperate argument, it is possible to refer to its confirmation by the First Vatican Council of 1869-1870, in the pontificate of Pope Pius IX. Thus:

And since, by the divine right of Apostolic primacy, one Roman pontiff is placed over the universal Church, We further teach and declare that he is the supreme judge of the faithful, and that in all causes the decision of which belongs to the Church recourse may be had to his tribunal, but that none may reopen the judgments of the Apostolic See, than whose authority there is no greater, nor can any lawfully review its judgment. Wherefore they err from the path of truth who assert that it is lawful to appeal from the judgments of the Roman pontiff to an ecumenical council, as to an authority higher than that of the Roman pontiff. 8

Pope Pius II’s Bull condemned as "execrable" the mere idea, put forth in writing, for example, that anyone should look to a future Council to amend the teachings and decisions of the Church, under the label of a "sounder judgment," which Holy Church has already solemnly and definitively promulgated; its emphasis is on the evil of contemplating, proposing, hoping for, or referring to the possibility of, a general council’s being used to override or alter the venerable determinations of the Church. It is obvious that the actual attempt to cause such a thing would, in the eyes of this Papal prescription, be a thing all the more iniquitous. The Second Vatican Council was everything and exactly what the Bull condemns in the clearest and more apodictic terms. Therefore, there is no reason that we should not consider its decrees, whatever their meaning and intention, to be totally condemned and invalidated by its terms. There is no doubt that the Liberals, Progressivists, Modernists, Marxists, and Masons among the hierarchy, with the collaboration of Popes John and Paul, attempted to use, and did use, the Council to bring about a revolution in the Church. On the plea of "updating" and "adapting" and conforming the Church to modern times and conditions, they attacked every aspect of the Church’s nature and teaching, and sought effectually to declare them out-of-date and no longer of any importance of binding force.

One has only to read Fr. Wiltgen’s book, quoted above, to observe that, from beginning to end, the compelling passion of the Progressivist camp was to push through, by hook or by crook, a Liberal restructuring of the Church. The schemata proposed to the Council Fathers embodied a surrender on every front to all the Church’s enemies and their ideologies: The Church should alter itself so as no longer to be the object of men’s hatred – as if, hitherto, there has been something altogether wrong and objectionable in its nature and procedures which have made it such. The history of the Council is the account of determined men in a raging fever to have their way, apparently unconcerned about the morality of their methods and their objectives, heedless of any possible negative effects their Reformation would bring about.

The result was not merely that a number of questionable nuances were buried in otherwise acceptable pronouncements. No, the Conciliar decrees can only be fully understood and evaluated in terms of what they brought about, in terms also of the satisfaction with which the Council Fathers and their successors view the wreckage which their hands have wrought.

The point of these paragraphs, however, is to express as strongly as possible the truth that the Council stands condemned. Its decrees, no matter how interpreted, have no binding force whatsoever. Like the anti-Church to which it gave birth, the Council must be recognized as the work of criminal conspiracy, to which no Catholic need give the least obedience or reverence.

There is the additional note that since the papal Bull here quoted censures most sternly anyone who would even advocate a council as a maneuver around the verdicts of the Sacred Magisterium, all the more so does it execrate those who would actually cooperate in such a wicked endeavor. We are permitted to conclude that the censures decreed herein truly did fall upon the heads of all those who participated. But this does not mean that the consequences were that the Pope and Bishops involved thereby were expelled from the Church, as Veritas and some others have contended. This is an erroneous reading of the law, as we shall see in due course.

H.

We know well that some may be disturbed to read these condemnatory observations. They are made because they are true, and they are indubitably true. We put it this way because we have the fact of the so-called Extraordinary Synod of 1985 (November 24-December 8) to refer to. This meeting of about a hundred episcopal delegates from around the world was convoked by Pope John Paul II to evaluate and further the work of the Council after twenty years. After two weeks of discussions, the Cardinals and Bishops issued a "Final Report." Again, to read this report, on the one hand, one would think that the Conciliar Church has something to do with the Catholic Faith; on the other hand, one would never dream that the Church is sick unto death.

The Fathers in their Final Report, amid their religiose eulogies of the Council, in a paragraph entitled "Light and shadows in acceptance of the Council" exuded:

Though there was here and there some opposition from a few, by far the majority of the faithful gave Vatican II a very warm welcome. There is no doubt that the Council was taken up with heartfelt consent because this Holy Spirit encouraged His Church to this.

Although great benefits have been gained since the Council ended, we acknowledge very sincerely the failures and difficulties in the acceptance of the Council during the same period. In the post-conciliar years, indeed, there have been shadows arising, partly from faulty understanding and application of the Council, partly from other causes. However, in no way can it be stated that everything that occurred since the Council has occurred because of the Council.

Concerning the liturgical revolution, the Fathers Concluded:

The liturgical renewal is the most visible fruit of the whole work of the Council. Though there were some difficulties, in general it was joyfully and fruitfully accepted by the faithful... The liturgy, if anything, must nourish and illumine the sense of the sacred. It should be filled with the spirit of reverence, of giving worship and glory to God. 9

It is very important not to miss the significance of this meeting and its attendants’ conclusions. These men were anything but ignorant. We may safely say that they were, most of them at least, the "insiders" of the Conciliar Establishment. The significance of their report is that the goals of the Council are being reached; which is to say, what the Council meant to set in motion is in progress; which is to say again, what has happened and is happening, is what was intended. The Council was held to Liberalize the Church, to Humanize it (that is, to de-supernaturalize it), to turn it away from any consideration of dogma and morality, and to refashion it as a pseudo-religious organization, whose enrollees would continue to give it their religious allegiance and obedience, even though all truly religious purpose had been drained from it. All its religious pretensions and allusions would mean absolutely nothing, for the simple reason that no dogmatic or moral or legal compulsion is claimed as to why anyone should believe or do anything. If the Conciliar Church holds to any doctrines, they are two, religious liberty and "Ecumenism." As has been said before, religious liberty means simply that one can believe anything he wishes, and the Church must respect this "right." "Ecumenism" means that the Conciliar Church exists for the mergence of the Conciliar Church with all others.

Once one has these facts firmly in mind, one can understand what the "shadows" of the post-conciliar years are: They should be thought of as two mainly: there are pockets of resistance, those groups of Traditionalists who have not drunk in the poison. It may be imagined that behind closed doors these "shadows" were discussed at length. What was to be done about Archbishop Lefebvre and his Society of St. Pius X, and his too productive seminaries? ("We are trying to close seminaries, and he is opening them!") It is not at all out of order to speculate that at this meeting plans were laid to divide and diffuse the Traditionalist Movement. It is imaginable that at this meeting one of the Bishops suggested that the Society of ST. Peter, a true offspring of the Conciliar Church, the Society of the Desperately Credulous and Cruelly Betrayed.

No doubt another "shadow" is the irritating deathlessness of the True Mass of the Roman Rite. The full power and ingenuity of the Conciliar Church had been brought into play to drive it into oblivion, yet across the world, more and more little chapels were being established for its continuance. Undoubtedly one of these eminent divines beamed forth the idea of Pope John Paul’s Motu Proprio, Ecclesia Dei, the permission for the offering of the True Mass, in any place where the ordinary of the diocese should be willing to permit it – with the capital proviso – provided all involved "accept the Council" – yet another exercise of Conciliarist tyranny.

Meanwhile, in Latin America:

The Pope is concerned, in the aftermath of his second visit to Brazil, his eleventh to Latin America, it is clear that he doesn’t pull the people in as he used to. In Brazil – supposedly the most Catholic nation in the world – the usual throngs just did not materialize: for one scheduled event, 500,000 people were expected, but only 100,000 showed up. In contrast, on the morning of the Pope’s arrival, 200,000 evangelicals packed a soccer stadium for a rally sponsored by a local church, underscoring the fact that over a half-million Brazilians are leaving the Catholic church for evangelical churches each year.

A tidal wave of change is sweeping Latin America and transforming the face of an entire continent. Two recent books [David Martin’s Tongues of Fire and David Stoll’s Is Latin American Turning Protestant?] have created a stir by telling the story almost everyone else missed. [No, the news media have not missed this story; they have their own reasons for not publicizing it.] While the press and religious establishment focused on the drama of liberation theology and its potential to bring the church back to the people, evangelical churches were proliferating at a staggering rate among the poor.

In nearly every nation in the region, the number of Protestants has increased significantly. According to Patrick Johnstone of the Worldwide Evangelization Crusade, the number of evangelicals has tripled regionwide in the past 25 years [that is, since the Second Vatican Council] and in some countries has even sextupled. Stoll extrapolates from these numbers: "If it triples again over the next 25 years, by 1010 evangelicals will be a third of the population. At that point even slowed growth would soon make Protestants a majority of Latin America." According to Brazilian Catholic Bishop Boaventura Kloppenburg, Latin American is becoming Protestant more rapidly than central Europe did in the sixteenth century.

The more than 400 groups planting churches in Guatemala might think it the first predominately evangelical country in Latin America. The 30 percent of Guatemalans professing evangelical faith were largely responsible for the election last January of Jorge Serrano Elias, the first evangelical president elected in Latin America. Stoll predicts that by the year 2000, Brazil, El Salvador, and Honduras will join Guatemala as predominantly evangelical nations.

As Rome grapples with stemming the tide, evangelical successes don’t seem to stop:

[The non-Catholic writer presumes that "Rome grapples." Actually "Rome" does nothing of the sort. "Rome" does absolutely nothing about the tens of millions who have fallen away. It will have been observed that this fact, and dozens like it, received no mention whatsoever in the Synod’s final Report.]

– An estimated 259,500 flocked to Billy Graham’s Buenos Aires crusade last November. The choir alone in this crusade would almost have filled the 5,000-seat auditorium that was the site of Graham’s first Argentine crusade in 1962.

– The Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, an independent Pentecostal church started 15 years ago with a handful of people by self-appointed bishop Edir Macedo de Bezerra, now has two million worshipers meeting in 800 temples throughout Latin America, Portugal, Angola, and the U.S. The flock is nurtured through 2,000 pastors, a TV network, and radio stations.

– Nilson Fanini’s First Baptist Church of Nigerol in Brazil began 28 years ago when Fanini established free schools for poor children. His ministry now adopts thousands of babies a year and operates clinics, a seminary, schools, and 20 churches with about 10,000 believers.

– It is not just evangelicals enjoying the spiritual bull market. Spiritists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, and indigenous sects are bursting with new members, many of whom come from evangelical churches. Last year [1991] the Witnesses packed the same stadium Billy Graham filled in his triumphant Argentina crusade. Also, to the evangelical’s chagrin, the media often lump them together with the cults. [The Evangelicals consider themselves true Christians, these other groups "cults."] 10

In the eyes of Conciliarists, the Protestantization of Latin America – and other countries – is nothing to be concerned about, since all these sincere "separated brethren" will be saved. To true Catholics, all these fallen away Catholics and their offspring, for who knows how many generations, are in danger of losing their souls. But there is no evidence that the Pope and Cardinals and Bishops at the Extraordinary Synod saw fit to discuss the matter. The meeting was properly named.

1. Quoted in Pie X, by Pierre Fernessole, P. Lethielleux, Libraire Editeur, 10, Rue Cassette, Paris. 1753. P. 17.

2. Wiltgen, Rev. Ralph M.: The Rhine Flows into the Tiber. Augustine Publishing Company, Chawleigh, Chulmleigh, Devon, EX18 7HL., England. 1978. P. 17. Concerning this occurrence, the following day, the Italian Communist paper, Il Paese editorialized: "At this point the Devil entered the Council."

3. Annee XXIV, N. 120, p. 1. Address: B.P. 165, 78001 Versailles Cedex

4. Wiltgen, op. Cit., pp. 17-19.

5. From the Bull, Cantate Domino. February 4, 1442. Denz. 714.

6. Denz. 717.

7. Veritas. P.O. Box 1605, Louisville, KY 40201.

8. Denz. 1830.

9. La Documentation Catholique, T. LXXXIII, 5 Janvier, 1986. No. 1, pp. 36, 39.

10. "Why is Latin America Turning Protestant?," by Antres Tapia. "Christianity Today." April 6, 1992. Pp. 28-29.