Cardinal Siri of Genoa on the Gnosticism present at Vatican Two

 The great Cardinal Siri of Genoa had this to day about Gnosticism:

1. Opinions Replace Truth . 

In this world the first and fundamental doctrine of power consists of an affirmation that there is no truth. Saint Augustine said that the difference between the city of this world and the city of God consists of the former having a thousand opinions, while the latter has only one truth. The basic difference between both cities, therefore, is not based on the content, but on the very existence of truth. It suffices to remember the dramatic dialogue between Jesus and Pilate. 

What is most grave is that there is a technique to replace truth by opinions. This technique exists and is very useful. It suffices to look at present religious, literary, and philosophical productions. Opinions can be so cautiously expressed that it is impossible to get to know what the author’s thesis is, or even more paradoxical, doctrines that are mutually contradictory are juxtaposed as if they were consistent. 

Let us look at the words, “God is dead.’ 1 If the slogan were denial , everybody would be able to understand. However, here we have a subtly sophisticated idea through which “theologians” want to convey the deceitful impression they are preserving the most assayed and chemically pure idea of God . . . through its “identification” with the most profound reality of man. 

Even the ambiguous terms “conservative” and “progressive” conceal the relativistic technique, which leads every doctrinal issue in the direction of right wing and left wing. Thus everything becomes relative; everything becomes a matter of opinions and an instrument of power. Relativity of truth and doctrine is the actual goal of these arbitrary developments of the Church’s present problems. 

Is not this measure, proclaimed even by bishops and cardinals among us, absurd and most unjust, as if it were an ideal to place us halfway between truth and error? 

2. Is Gnosis Reappearing? 

[To name the current errors in the Church, one speaks about a new Modernism and also the Protestantization of the Church, but the Archbishop of Genoa prefers to use the term Gnosis.] 

Let it be remembered that Gnosis, with its appeal to science and higher speculation, with its eagerness to understand mystery and to naturalize the Faith, was, during the second century, perhaps the worst danger in all the history of the Church. I believe that the complex of errors circulating today can be called Gnosis , systematically speaking. But … do many people know what they are talking about? This is terrible, but they do not! 

One does not act on rational grounds, but on one’s excessive desire to adapt oneself to the world. Worldly power, however, has its own philosophy, and fashionable theologians translate fashionable opinions into theological language, not because they accept a doctrine as such, but because they accept these doctrines that flatter the powers of this world. 

The present times are grave, not because it is no longer a question of opposition or contrast between truth and error, but between truth and non-truth, between the order of truth and the dictatorship of public opinion. People believe they are free because this appears in juridical texts; as a matter of fact, this deceiving belief is evidence of their servitude.