“The Self-destruction of the Church”
Saint Paul VI[1]
G. K. Chesterton once said: “Progress should mean that we are always changing the world to fit the vision, instead we are always changing the vision.” By this he meant that unless we have a fixed concept of what progress really is, we will never really know if we are making progress. Unfortunately, there are many who instead of working to reach an ideal just change the ideal and call it progress. In this way, one could never know if one is heading to Rome from Buenos Aires if Rome is identified with New York. Only when the objective is set and defined can we then say that we have a target to hit and the energy necessary to shoot our arrow to that target.
It sometimes happens that we lose sight of the objective and concentrate on the merely transitory and terrestrial and try to obtain some pleasure in this. We see this happening in everyday life. There are those who take their delight by flipping pages of a book, but never finish reading the story; who take up paintbrushes in their hands, but never finish a painting; who travel the seas, but never reach the port. This can also happen to religious, to priests, and of course, it can even happen on an ecclesial level which many times translates into Progressive Christianity.
Thus, when in 1980 Saint John Paul II directed a speech to the French Conference of Bishops he warned: “It should not be a surprise that in this ‘post-conciliar’ time there will also be development, even intense, certain interpretations of the Second Vatican Council that do not correspond to its true teaching. I am referring to the two well-known tendencies: ‘progressivism’ and ‘integralism’. Some are always impatient to adapt even the content of the faith, Christian ethics, the liturgy, the ecclesial order to the changing mentalities, the demands of the ‘world’, without sufficiently taking into account, not just the common sense of the faithful who feel disoriented, but the already defined essentials of the faith; the roots of the Church, her secular experience, the norms necessary for her fidelity, unity and universality. They are obsessed with ‘advancing’, but towards what definitive ‘progress’? Others, having seen certain abuses, that we are obviously the first to reprehend and correct, harden their position in order to stay in a determined period of the Church, in a determined plane of theological formulations or of liturgical expression that they consider absolute without penetrating deep enough into its meaning, without considering the entirety of history and its legitimate development, being afraid of new questions without definitively admitting that the Spirit of God continues acting in the Church today, with her Pastors united to the Successor of Peter.”[2]
This is the same warning that Pope Saint Pius X gave in 1907 in his encyclical Pascendi to reprehend and unmask the doctrine that we would later call modernism, and more recently, progressivism. With the desire to expose and present to the Church this very dangerous and penetrated doctrine he even called it “the synthesis of all heresies.”[3] As such it is not so easily understood, nor does it want to be, and it attacks the Church and our faith from many different angles, seeking to fill her with confusion with doctrine as perverse as it is elusive, because “more than a system it is a confusion”[4], even though, as Saint Pius X said, those who fly the progressive flag “pose as Doctors of the Church.”[5]
Founded on immanent philosophy, progressivism is presented as a continuation of Gnosticism from the early years of the Church, which these days has recovered more and more force to the point that the Great Pope, Saint John Paul II said: “It is necessary to admit with realism, and with profound and pained awareness, that Christians today, for the most part, feel lost, confused, perplexed and even disillusioned; ideas that are in contrast with the revealed truth and with what has always been taught have been widely spread; Genuine heresies have been propagated in the dogmatic and moral field, creating doubts, confusion, rebellions, even the liturgy has been manipulated. Immersed in intellectual and moral relativism, and therefore in permissiveness, Christians are tempted by atheism, agnosticism, vaguely moralistic enlightenment, by a sociological Christianity, without defined dogmas and without objective morality.”[6]
Father Alfredo Sáenz on his part affirmed: “in recent times, especially since the end of the last century, something unusual has occurred, namely, that this ‘worldly’ world has penetrated with its criteria into the very interior of the Church, mainly through modernism and later progressivism, to the point that [St.] Paul VI could speak in dramatic terms of a ‘self-demolition of the Church.’”[7]
In fact, progressivism is still very latent in the Church today, for its promulgators, “lie hid… in her very bosom and heart, and are the more mischievous, the less conspicuously they appear,”[8] wanting to undermine their nature and confuse the faithful. This is why our duty is to know progressivism more profoundly so to better expose it and, in that way, defend the Mystical Body of Christ and protect souls, so that we may not be unfaithful to our most sacred duty to be servants of the Truth.[9]
With clear insight Saint Paul VI said: “As we all know, the Church is deeply rooted in the world. It exists in the world and draws its members from the world. It derives from it a wealth of human culture. It shares its vicissitudes and promotes its prosperity. But we also know that the modern world is in the grip of change and upheaval. It is undergoing developments which are having a profound influence on its outward way of life and habits of thought. The great advances made in science, technology, and social life, and the various currents of philosophical and political thought pervading modern society, are greatly influencing men’s opinions and their spiritual and cultural pursuits. The Church itself is being engulfed and shaken by this tidal wave of change, for however much men may be committed to the Church, they are deeply affected by the climate of the world. They run the risk of becoming confused, bewildered and alarmed, and this is a state of affairs which strikes at the very roots of the Church. It drives many people to adopt the most outlandish views. They imagine that the Church should abdicate its proper role, and adopt an entirely new and unprecedented mode of existence. Modernism might be cited as an example. This is an error which is still making its appearance under various new guises, wholly inconsistent with any genuine religious expression. It is surely an attempt on the part of secular philosophies and secular trends to vitiate the true teaching and discipline of the Church of Christ. An effective remedy is needed if all these dangers, which are prevalent in many quarters, are to be obviated, and We believe that such a remedy is to be found in an increased self-awareness on the part of the Church. The Church must get a clearer idea of what it really is in the mind of Jesus Christ as recorded and preserved in Sacred Scripture and in Apostolic Tradition, and interpreted and explained by the tradition of the Church under the inspiration and guidance of the Holy Spirit. Provided we implore the aid of the Spirit and show Him a ready obedience, He will certainly never fail to redeem Christ’s promise: But the Paraclete, the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring all things to your mind, whatsoever I shall have said to you. (John 14:26)”[10]
1. The Great Storm
Historically, and as Father Julio Meinvielle covers extensively in one of his major works[11], progressivism is the continuation of what is known as the Jewish Kabbalah[12] which is nothing but the culpable perversion of the primordial tradition originated in our first fathers, and of the revelation given to the patriarchs, resulting from the continuous contact of the chosen people with idolatrous peoples. To this corrupted tradition or secret gnosis, our Lord alludes when He says to the Pharisees and the scribes: Neglecting the commandment of God, you hold to the tradition of men […] invalidating the word of God by your tradition which you have handed down; and you do many things such as that.[13]
After the Incarnation of the Word of God, the Redemption and the foundation of the Church, this Kabbalah also penetrated into newborn Christianity giving place to Gnostic Christianity, that affirms a fundamental and ontological monism which ends in absolute pantheism. It gives evil a positive consistence and a dynamic force, and places within man the very origin of his salvation, in such a way that he does not need any savior or grace.
This Christian Gnosticism has taken on different names and has survived thanks to many philosophers, theologians and writers who, with heterodox doctrines, opposed the teachings of the Magisterium of the Church and the authentic Christian philosophy and theology, most fully represented by St. Thomas Aquinas.
However, at the end of the XIX century, this Christian Gnosticism appeared more vigorously under the name of modernism, carried forward by a group of intellectuals who were consumed with the intention of ruining the Church[14] trying to change her doctrine from within by confusion.
Modernism, which St. Pius X strongly condemned, could be synthesized as the effort to accommodate the Catholic faith to the requirements of the world, that is, to make the Church of Jesus Christ bend and adapt, with complete submission, to the whims and desires of history, with the sole argument that history is the manifestation of God. “The subjectivist, immanentist, and evolutionist currents—those which infected the modern mentality—infiltrated the Catholic intellectual environments have determined a new interpretation of Christianity in exegesis, the history of dogmas and of the Church, philosophy, and theology, in realm of facts, fundamentally altered, and thus have destroyed them.”[15] Modernism sought to destroy the divine nature of the Church and turn it into a merely human entity at the service of modern history. Which is why we are not afraid to affirm that “fundamentally, the ‘modernists’ of yesterday and today have in common a system based on philosophical immanentism; yet, as Lortz says, modernism is not so much a system of heretical doctrine as a heretical way of thinking.[16]”[17] Thus, it was that men like Félicité Lamennais devised bizarre methods and arguments to accommodate themselves to the world, betraying the Church and their consciences. Nevertheless, as we were well taught: “If modern civilization embraces the absolute autonomy of man against God, it is abundantly clear that the Church cannot be reconciled with it.”[18]
It is worth noting that St. Pius X in a certain way foresaw the later development that modernism has reached today, nihilism on the theoretical level (insofar as such a thing is possible) and ‘absolute’ relativism on the practical level. Whichever form of immanentism (empiricist, rationalist, materialist, historicist, sentimentalist, scientistic or progressive in the sense of enlightenment) that is taken as a method and as a basic philosophy for Theology, will have the same conclusion: the elimination of the very possibility of supernatural Revelation and the negation of mystery. And that, for the Catholic Church, would be the elimination of the deposit of revelation and, therefore, its death by its reduction to the sphere of the world.[19]
Lately, with greater force after the Second Vatican Council, and thanks to many authors of the Nouvelle Théologie[20], this Christian Gnosticism presents itself under the name of progressivism and seeks zealously to subject the Church to Marxist ideology and communism, as well as to liberalism, denying a Christian social order.[21] Today, this progressivism is the great storm that the Church must face for the salvation of souls.
2. Spurious Combination
Just as the gnosis that it is, progressivism is a spurious combination: “a mixture of supernatural and natural, a fusion of faith and reason, a false combination of Christ and Caesar, a confusion of theology and philosophy or of sociology and psychology.”[22] Moreover, contemporary progressivism, in assuming the essence of Marxism –which is dialectics– has no qualms about affirming and denying diametrically opposed things, or contradicting itself, because it does not seek the truth but rather to accommodate itself to the times. Pius XII had already underlined this characteristic: “These new opinions, whether they originate from a reprehensible desire of novelty or from a laudable motive, are not always advanced in the same degree, with equal clarity nor in the same terms, nor always with unanimous agreement of their authors. Theories that today are put forward rather covertly by some, not without cautions and distinctions, tomorrow are openly and without moderation proclaimed by others more audacious.”[23]
Progressivism is also presented as an inversion, which is the result of this obsession with making dialectics out of everything. “Instead of God, man… instead of love of God, love of neighbor… instead of a message of salvation, a social message… instead of the Cross, openness to the world… instead of absolute truth, the truth of the times.”[24] They do not know how to harmonize things that are apparently opposed, because they have never meditated on the mystery of the Incarnate Word. They subvert reality and turn it upside down, because they are unable to correctly assess the value of things. “It is to seek first the surplus and then, if there is time and desire, the Kingdom of God”[25].
Progressivism is also characterized by dissolution. Since its strategy is confusion, it seeks to dissolve the truths of faith and the Catholic religion itself, stripping them of their philosophical and historical foundations and always calling them into question, arrogating to itself the right to doubt the dogmas and the faith handed down by the Apostles and protected by the Magisterium. In this way they present false ‘salvations’ which, although they bear the name of Christianity, are nothing more than hidden ways of allying themselves with the spirit of the world. They dissolve, in turn, the whole supernatural order into the natural order, taking away its value and foundation. They postulate an “absolute independence between the spiritual and the temporal”, “in such a way that one may act in the temporal without any type of concern for the spiritual.”[26]
Likewise, the Holy Father declared with all his might: “From all that has preceded, some idea may be gained of the reforming mania which possesses them: in all Catholicism there is absolutely nothing on which it does not fasten… but especially in its disciplinary and dogmatic parts. Its spirit with the public conscience, which is not wholly for democracy; a share in ecclesiastical government should therefore be given to the lower ranks of the clergy, and even to the laity, and authority should be decentralised…
The ecclesiastical authority must change its line of conduct in the social and political world; while
keeping outside political and social organization, it must adapt itself to those which exist in order to penetrate them with its spirit. With regard to morals… the active virtues are more important than the passive, both in the estimation in which they must be held and in the exercise of them… there are some who, echoing the teaching of their Protestant masters, would like the suppression of ecclesiastical celibacy.
What is there left in the Church which is not to be reformed according to their principles?”[27]
3. Inevitable Consequences and Immediate Causes
Dr. Alberto Caturelli in an article prepared on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Encyclical Pascendi notes that “philosophical, scientific and historical immanentism, which arbitrarily postulates that it has a knowable object, unlike faith, whose subject they consider unknowable, is the source of all errors and rebellion.”[28]
St. Pius X had already pointed out the inevitable consequences of this erroneous way of thinking, that it leads to atheism and the negation of all religion as resulting from pure symbolism.
“That the proximate and immediate cause [of this evil] consists in a perversion of the mind cannot be open to doubt.”[29] As to the personal motivations or causes that lead someone to think in this way, the Holy Father mentioned two fundamental ones: pride (“inflated with a boastful science”[30]) and, simultaneously, the vice opposed to the virtue of studiousness, which is curiosity in the sense of a vicious search for what is new (“under the sway of a blind and unchecked passion for novelty”[31]), and not the objective truth. In the case of theology, both vices are the more serious because man sets himself as the supreme norm.[32]
As to the, “immediate causes, two emerge with undeniable evidence: a) ignorance: it is an ignorance that is not ordinary but profound (if it can be called that), an ignorance that can affect many ‘learned’ people who teach in Seminaries and Ecclesiastical Universities lacking real adherence to the Magisterium and with disregard for metaphysical realism. As Pope Pius X says: ‘Modernists who pose as Doctors of the Church, who puff out their cheeks when they speak of modern philosophy, and show such contempt for scholasticism, have embraced the one with all its false glamour because their ignorance of the other has left them without the means of being able to recognize confusion of thought, and to refute sophistry.’[33]
b) The other cause is contained in the first, for it is none other than the hatred of the scholastic method. These gratuitous ‘bearers’ of a ‘parallel magisterium’, reject ‘scholastic philosophy, the authority of the fathers and tradition, and the magisterium of the Church’ (…) ‘For scholastic philosophy and theology they have only ridicule and contempt’[34]. In 1907 [as in 2022] all those who defend orthodoxy and fight for the Church are the victims of ‘conspiracy of silence’[35]; this way of proceeding against Catholics, says St. Pius X, is all the more odious because at the same time ‘they load with constant praise the writers who range themselves on their side,’ concludes the Pontiff, ‘hailing their works, [full of] novelty in every page, with choruses of applause’[36]”[37]. Still more, “when one of their number falls under the condemnations of the Church the rest of them… gather round him, heap public praise upon him, venerate him almost as a martyr to truth.”[38]
“If St. Pius X had lived today, he would have been able to verify that what he denounced then, has now reached a certain completeness. Catholic bookstore windows full of books by Boff, Küng, Gutiérrez, Rahner, Moltmann and many others; precisely because they have been ‘observed’ by the Holy See, they are good business… they sell… they sell a lot. In the Pascendi, the Pope denounced the permeation of seminaries and congresses, magazines, newspapers and religious orders.”[39]
4. Their Attacks
As we have said, progressivism is the synthesis of all heresies[40], and thus there is no aspect or truth of our Faith that it does not attack or seek to destroy.
It begins by destroying the preambles of faith, and by assimilating the philosophy of immanence, it robs reason of its capacity to know objective reality. “The essence of progressivism lies in the fact that it considers that reality has a one-dimensional character, i.e., that, despite words to the contrary, progressivism pushes towards monism, and full progressivism is an absolute monism, which in rejecting transcendence affirms absolute immanence resulting in a false concept of God.”[41]. As a consequence of this, progressivism denies the capacity of human reason to transcend creation and to know its Creator, because for them God is nothing more than the world and there is no distinction between being by essence and being by participation. Such is the current situation of the world and they would have us believe that today a ‘Theology without God’ is necessary because that is the ‘maturity’ of the Christian. And if we want the world to listen to the Christian message –the progressives maintain– we have to start from that ‘maturity’ (which assumes the situation of the atheistic world) and inaugurate a new exegesis…
This is why progressivism is also a obstinate enemy of the historicity of the Holy Scriptures, often considering them as a mere myth or a fantastical fabrication of certain communities, thus divesting the Divine Revelation and the Person of Our Lord of all historical value, and casting doubt on the veracity of the very words contained in the Gospels. “It buries the revealed truth in history and only in history. Here archaeology and other disciplines placed at the service of the new exegesis acquire an inordinate importance.”[42] What’s more, for progressivism, Christ is not God as the Church has understood Him to be and as the Holy Fathers and Doctors, among which stands out Saint Thomas Aquinas, have rightly explained: the Ipsum Esse Subsistens, transcendental and purely spiritual, personal, free, provident and creative. Christ is nothing more than a human person in whom the presence of God was found in a more particular and patent way, thus denying the hypostatic union of the human and divine natures in the Second Person of the Son, a union that is by assumption. Consequently, Christ is not the Savior of the human race, but merely an example or motivation. Man saves himself by acting according to his nature in the ultimate decision about himself. This was affirmed by the theologian Karl Rahner in his doctrine of anonymous Christianity. Once this outlandish affirmation is accepted, all the Sacraments, the Church herself, her salvific mission and her task of baptizing all peoples fall to the ground. If man does not need the sacraments to be saved, then instead of being the ark of salvation, the Church becomes nothing more than a completely secularized humanitarian organization.
From this point on, the progressive mind reinterprets everything from the Eucharist as a mere symbolic and commemorative celebration –speaking of transignification or transfinalization, instead of transubstantiation– which has nothing real or sacrificial to the spiritual life of man and his search for God, denying even the existence of Heaven and Hell, or freely affirming that at the end of time all men will be saved, because, according to them: “God is good and does not punish anybody.”[43]
Traditional morality is replaced by a situational morality, which ends up endorsing the wildest deviations and sins, even intrinsically evil acts, such as homosexuality. They even go so far as to speak of homosexuality as lawful and willed by God. Yet at the same time, many trivialities are branded as sinful, such as a seeming neglect of nature or indifference to alleged climate change. They are champions of stern justice and at the same time preachers of false mercy: “In the temporal order, they want justice without mercy and in the supernatural order, mercy without justice, thus exposing themselves to the risk of achieving neither justice on earth nor mercy in heaven.”[44]
They speak of the priesthood as if it were not a sacrament instituted by Jesus Christ which makes up the hierarchy of the Church, but affirm that all Christians are priests in the same way. They want to introduce the female priesthood, and with the excuse of not falling into the Scylla of clericalism, they fall into the Charybdis of the trivialization of Holy Orders. They detest vocations to the priesthood and consecrated life, promote almost only the lay vocation and are frightened that some congregations have many vocations, as if it were a bad thing!
The liturgy is also a victim of progressivism, since in it they introduce countless stupidities, abuses and deformations with the excuse of making it more entertaining or accessible to the people, or turning it into an instrument and propaganda of anti-Christian ideologies.
The false principle of “vital immanence” goes even further. This vital immanence postulates that human reason is rigorously enclosed in the circle of “phenomena” and closes all natural access to God and supernatural access to external revelation, thus leading to agnosticism. It makes the faith dependent on some “phenomenon”, even though this be in the sphere of science and history. Therefore, the phenomenon itself is disfigured by attributing to it a meaning that it does not have.[45]
For the progressives “it is enough,” says Dr. Caturelli, “to accept or postulate the non-existence of propositions which contain truth, to reach the most radical relativism that pervades the world today. It is not only academic environments and relativism (that everyone has ‘his’ truth and no one has ‘the’ truth) has penetrated not only science and ‘Theology’ (encyclicals are only the Pope’s ‘opinion’ and are debatable) but also social life, in all public manifestations, in family life and in politics.”[46]
5. The Remedies
Saint Pius X recognized with great clarity that the principle of immanence was the common nerve of the errors he denounced during his time. We can say that it continues to be the common nerve of the problems that afflict us today. It has been said of old that there is no such thing as a “new” heresy. It is true. In progressivism, there is a stubborn effort to “return” to the old man by transferring salvation to the world; the only new thing is Christ, the Incarnate Word; therefore, all errors and heresies are the same old thing, even if they have a mask of “novelty”.
What were the remedies that the Holy Father proposed in 1907? Among others that the Pope proposes in his encyclical we will mention the following:
- “In the first place, with regard to studies, We will and ordain that scholastic philosophy be made the basis of the sacred sciences.”[47] To leave no room for doubt, he adds: “And let it be clearly understood above all things that the scholastic philosophy We prescribe is that which the Angelic Doctor has bequeathed to us,” and he warns, “they cannot set St. Thomas aside, especially in metaphysical questions, without grave detriment.”[48] “On this philosophical foundation the theological edifice is to be solidly raised.”[49]
- He also urges the promotion of “the study of theology… so that your clerics on leaving the seminaries may admire and love it, and always find their delight in it.”[50] He also advocates the study of secular disciplines as long as it is not to the detriment of sacred studies.
- finally, he mentions some practical guidelines regarding the choice of “directors and professors for seminaries and Catholic Universities” saying that “anybody who in any way is found to be imbued with Modernism [progressivism] is to be excluded without compunction from these offices, and those who already occupy them are to be withdrawn.”[51]
* * * * *
Progressivism, in its many manifestations and facets, seeks to destroy the transcendent God, the God of the Gospels and of our Catholic faith. “Progressivism –liberal or Marxist, bourgeois or revolutionary– does not work so that the public and social life of the peoples may be subordinated to God as their ultimate end, because ‘their’ god is no longer transcendent; if every tawdry thing is possible in ‘their’ liturgies, it is because ‘their’ god is not majesty itself; if they have questioned every truth of faith and doubted every miracle or prophecy in Scripture, it is because ‘their’ god is not all-powerful; if they are fruitful in doubts and sterile certainties, it is because ‘their’ god is not the infinite truth.”[52] And by taking God out of their midst, they have put man in His place, deifying themselves, believing themselves to be the center of history, of theology and of salvation. Hence, they speak only of the rights of man, and little to nothing of the rights of God. They do not want Him present in society, be it communist, capitalist, or of any other kind. Nor do they speak of making Him known in non-Christian countries, and they do not want to preach Him again in nations of ancient Christian tradition.
Because of this progressivism, the reigning atheism, many today consider the modern world as ‘hopeless’. Indeed, it sometimes seems like a long Good Friday where everything divine seems to have failed. Perhaps never before has the future seemed so unpredictable. People seem to suffer from an anguished sense of desolation.
However, there is no need or place for such despair. The world has appeared just as desolate in the past as it does now, when Christ was crucified. Yet it was resurrected to the freshness of a new Christian civilization. The same can take place now, as it has at least a dozen times since the coming of Christ. However, it is essential to be aware that the modern ideal is not so much goodness as success. And such an ideal makes penance incredibly difficult. It is true that paganism, before Christ, also sinned, but the sin of modern paganism has the serious aggravating factor of having betrayed an ideal that the pagans did not have, namely Christ. And that is why “progressivism” cannot be considered progress because it substitutes the eternal Ideal for the temporal world and its maxims. This is why humanity will not rise to peace and happiness through political and economic remedies, even if these are also needed, but fundamentally through the spiritual regeneration of hearts and souls, through conversion –or a return– to Christ, the only peace and happiness of mankind. This is why St. Pius X said upon assuming the Chair of Peter: “should anyone ask Us for a symbol as the expression of Our will, We will give this and no other: ‘To renew all things in Christ.[53]”[54]
This is the task that is particularly incumbent upon us as members of the Institute of the Incarnate Word who have been called to “assume” cultures, purifying and elevating them starting from Christ and his Gospel, understood “within Church”. Therefore, analogous to the mystery of the Incarnation, the union must be an assumption, i.e., there must be both an action and a passion that expresses becoming not only the final result, but that also expresses the distinct relation to each one of the terms of origin and of end. Mere union is not enough for us, nor is it enough to simply put a nominalistic label on reality for it to be truly under the rule of Christ. “Being in the world” only makes sense to us when it depends on “not being of the world”. Only in this way we can truly be salt of the earth and light of the world.[55] Otherwise, we would become tasteless salt, and light under a bushel basket.[56] Not to be “tributaries”[57] continues to be our slogan.
In this sense, the doctrine that we learn and that we teach is of paramount importance. Without doctrine, which is the expression of the Word made flesh, it is not possible to recapitulate all things in Christ. “We shall never, however much we exert ourselves, succeed in calling men back to the majesty and empire of God, except by means of Jesus Christ.”[58] “How many there are who mimic Christ and abhor the Church and the Gospel more through ignorance than through badness of mind, of whom it may well be said: They blaspheme whatever things they know not.[59]”[60] From this comes the need to teach and, above all, to teach with charity, with pure love for the erring; a duty that is the responsibility of not just the specialists, but of all of us[61], and even of the laity.
Let us be convinced that it is up to us to confront this cesspool of heresies, which is still very rampant. We must promulgate a sound theology, just as Pope St. John Paul II called for: “I know that you are solicitous in the promotion of a sound theology, and rightly so, at a time when we see the emergence or resurgence of ancient gnoses, bold negations that touch the very heart of the Catholic faith.”[62] And, above all, we must wield the weapon of the doctrine of St. Thomas Aquinas, a powerful and very effective remedy against the devices of the progressives.
As Saint Pius X said: “May Jesus Christ, the author and finisher of our faith, be with you by His power; and may the Immaculate Virgin, the destroyer of all heresies, be with you by her prayers and aid.”[63]
[1] To the members of the Pontifical Seminary of Lombardy (12/07/1968). [Translated from Spanish]
[2] Speech to the French Episcopal Conference of the Seminary of Issy-les-Moulienaux (06/01/1980). [Translated from Spanish]
[3] Pascendi, 39.
[4] Carlos Buela, IVE, El Arte del Padre, Parte III, cap. 13, p. 358. [Translated from Spanish]
[5] Pascendi, 41.
[6] Saint John Paul II, Discourse to the participants of the Italian national congress of the “Mission to the People of the 80’s”, 2. [Translated from Spanish]
[7] Cf. In Persona Christi, Introduction, p. XIII. [Translated from Spanish]
[8] Cf. Pascendi, 1.
[9] Cf. Saint Paul VI, Evangelii Nuntiandi, 78.
[10] Encyclical Letter Ecclesiam suam, n. 10.
[11] Cf. De la Cábala al progresismo, Ed. Calchaquí, Salta 1970.
[12] “”The Kabbalah is a Jewish invention that originates in the pagan mysteries, the corruption of the revelation given by God to the Jewish people. It is the divine tradition perverted by man.” Julio Meinvielle, De la Cábala al progresismo, Ed. Calchaquí, Salta 1970. [Translated from Spanish]
[13] Mark 7:9,13.
[14] Cf. Pascendi, 42.
[15] Julio Meinvielle, The Significance of the Canonization of Pius X In: El progresismo Cristiano, Buenos Aires 1983, Cruz y Fierro, p. 88-89.
[16] Cf. Joseph Lortz, Historia de la Iglesia, p. 606, trad. de A. P. Sánchez Pascual, Ed. Guadarrama, Madrid, 1962. [Translated from Spanish]
[17] Alberto Caturelli, “La Pascendi Dominici Gregis, una encíclica profética”, Journal e-Aquinas, Year 5 April 2007, p. 3. [Translated from Spanish]
[18] Julio Meinvielle, El progresismo Cristiano, Buenos Aires 1983, Cruz y Fierro, p. 21. [Translated from Spanish]
[19] Cf. Alberto Caturelli, “La Pascendi Dominici Gregis, una encíclica profética”, Journal e-Aquinas, Year 5 April 2007, p. 6. [Translated from Spanish]
[20] especially the Transcendental School that use modern philosophy as a bases of their theology.
[21] Cf. Julio Meinvielle, El progresismo Cristiano, Buenos Aires 1983, Cruz y Fierro, p. 18 y 20.
[22] Carlos Buela, IVE, El Arte del Padre, Parte III, cap. 13, p. 357. Already the First Vatican Council spoke of the erroneous mixture of nature and grace as the cause of these errors: by making a mistaken mixture of nature and grace, of human knowledge and divine knowledge, the genuine meaning of the dogmas has been depraved and the integrity and authenticity of faith endangered; cf. Constitution Unigenitus dei Filius: “naturam et gratiam perperam commiscentes…”.
[23] Pius XII, Humani Generis, n. 8. As Saint Pius X had already said about the tactics of the modernists who, “present their doctrines without order and systematic arrangement into one whole, scattered and disjointed one from another, so as to appear to be in doubt and uncertainty, while they are in reality firm and steadfast,” Pascendi¸ 3.
[24] Alfredo Sáenz, S.J., Inversión de los Valores, Ed. Mikael, Paraná 1978, p. 12 and 22. [Translated from Spanish]
[25] Carlos Buela, IVE, El Arte del Padre, Parte III, cap. 13, p. 357. [Translated from Spanish]
[26] Bruno de Solages, Postulados doctrinarios del progresismo, Librería Huemul, Buenos Aires 1964, p. 18 [Translated from Spanish]
[27] Pascendi, 38.
[28] Cf. Alberto Caturelli, “La Pascendi Dominici Gregis, una encíclica profética”, Journal e-Aquinas, Year 5 April 2007, p. 10. [Translated from Spanish]
[29] Pascendi, 40.
[30] Pascendi, 13.
[31] Ibidem.
[32] Cf. Pascendi, 13; 43.
[33] Pascendi, 41.
[34] Pascendi, 42.
[35] Ibidem.
[36] Ibidem.
[37] Cf. Alberto Caturelli, “La Pascendi Dominici Gregis, una encíclica profética”, Journal e-Aquinas, Year 5 Abril 2007, p. 11. [translated from Spanish]
[38] Pascendi, 42.
[39] Alberto Caturelli, “La Pascendi Dominici Gregis, una encíclica profética”, Journal e-Aquinas, Year 5 Abril 2007, p.11. [translated from Spanish]
[40] Pascendi, 39.
[41] Carlos Buela, IVE, El Arte del Padre, Parte III, cap. 13, p. 359. [Translated from Spanish]
[42] Cf. Alberto Caturelli, “La Pascendi Dominici Gregis, una encíclica profética”, Journal e-Aquinas, Year 5 Abril 2007, p. 12. [Translated from Spanish]
[43] “The word punishment seems to me to be very strong when applied to the God of love and mercy in whom I believe.” As expressed by Fr. Damián María Montes, a well-known priest who makes videos on Tik-Tok. It is a typical example of the mellow progressivism that surrounds us. (https://www.larazon.es/religion/20201101/vfeg3d645fgz5o6n5r743i5qge.html?jwsource=cl)
[44] Carlos Buela, IVE, El Arte del Padre, Parte III, cap. 14, p. 369. [Translated from Spanish]
[45] For example: “In the person of Christ, science and history see only a man; by virtue of the agnosticism that governs exegesis, it is necessary to erase from the history of Christ all divine character and maintain his historical conditions; it must be concluded that the figure of Christ has been disfigured by faith and it is necessary to eliminate it from his words, acts, the place in which he lived, etcetera. Today we would say that one thing is what the Apostles believed and transmitted and another is the historical reality.”
[46] Alberto Caturelli, “La Pascendi Dominici Gregis, una encíclica profética”, Journal e-Aquinas, Year 5 Abril 2007, p. 13. [Translated from Spanish]
[47] Pascendi, 45.
[48] Ibidem.
[49] Pascendi, 46.
[50] Ibidem.
[51] Pascendi, 48.
[52] Carlos Buela, IVE, El Arte del Padre, Parte III, cap. 13, p. 359. [Translated from Spanish]
[53] Efesians 1:10.
[54] E Supremi Apostolatus Cathedra, 4.
[55] Matthew 5:13ff.
[56] Directory of Spiritualidad, 65.
[57] Constitutions, 214.
[58] E Supremi Apostolatus Cathedra, 8.
[59] Jude 1:10.
[60] E Supremi Apostolatus Cathedra, 12.
[61] Cf. Directorio de Evangelización de la Cultura, 243.
[62] Discourse to the Bishops of Belgium (09/18/1982). [Translated from Spanish]
[63] Pascendi, 58.
