Raze the Bastions? What'n'hell were they thinking?

Nobody ever asked me if I wanted Fortress Catholicism destroyed.

Matthew 10:

16 Behold I send you as sheep in the midst of wolves. Be ye therefore wise as serpents and simple as doves.  17 But beware of men. For they will deliver you up in councils, and they will scourge you in their synagogues.

I was taught that us Catholics were sheep living amongst wolves and that we were to HATE the world.

But the putative experts of the 1960s Synod had by then become fun house mirrors reflecting Freemasonry and the 60s Synod experts held that all men are good, that all men can worship God as they desire and  that religious liberty is the way to peace on earth and so there was no need of Fortress Catholicism:

Statement on Freemasonry and Religion

Prepared by the Masonic Information Center
Basic Principles. Freemasonry is not a religion, nor is it a substitute for religion. It requires of its members a belief in God as part of the obligation of every responsible adult, but advocates no sectarian faith or practice. Masonic ceremonies include prayers, both traditional and extempore, to reaffirm each individual's dependence on God and to seek divine guidance. Freemasonry is open to men of any faith, but religion may not be discussed at Masonic meetings.

The Supreme Being. Masons believe that there is one God and that people employ many different ways to seek, and to express what they know of God. Masonry primarily uses the appellation, "Grand Architect of the Universe," and other non-sectarian titles, to address the Deity. In this way, persons of different faiths may join together in prayer, concentrating on God, rather than differences among themselves. Masonry believes in religious freedom and that the relationship between the individual and God is personal, private, and sacred.

Volume of the Sacred Law. An open volume of the Sacred Law, "the rule and guide of life," is an essential part of every Masonic meeting. The Volume of the Sacred Law in the Judeo/Christian tradition is the Bible; to Freemasons of other faiths, it is the book held holy by them.

The Oath of Freemasonry. The obligations taken by Freemasons are sworn on the Volume of the Sacred Law. They are undertakings to follow the principles of Freemasonry and to keep confidential a Freemason's means of recognition. The much discussed "penalties," judicial remnants from an earlier era, are symbolic, not literal. They refer only to the pain any honest man should feel at the thought of violating his word.

Freemasonry Compared with Religion. Freemasonry lacks the basic elements of religion: (a) It has no dogma or theology, no wish or means to enforce religious orthodoxy. (b) It offers no sacraments. (c) It does not claim to lead to salvation by works, by secret knowledge, or by any other means. The secrets of Freemasonry are concerned with modes of recognition, not with the means of salvation.

Freemasonry Supports Religion. Freemasonry is far from indifferent toward religion. Without interfering in religious practice, it expects each member to follow his own faith and to place his Duty to God above all other duties. Its moral teachings are acceptable to all religions.


Prepared by the Masonic Information Center(12/93)
Revised (9/98)

The experts at the 1960s synod heard the complaints of those who hated the One Truly Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church established by Jesus and they sought to let those who hated the Church have an influence at the council and so the call to raze the bastions was heard and actualised because, apparently, the fathers at the 1960s Synod felt like inferior islands in the sea of protestantism surrounding them.

As could be expected from those who held the Faith once delivered- but not by the exerts at the 1960s Synod - razing the bastions and refusing to defend the faithful from being preyed upon by wolves had a most predictable result - cataclysmic calamity and chaos.

The experts had proclaimed the wolves were our misunderstood friends who were not to blame for their wolfish actions; no, they were our brother  sheep that the great shepherd had failed to protect; i.e. their schism and heresies were not to be blamed on them but on the bad old mean Catholic Fortress. 

I got so bad that the revolutionary Paul VI was constrained to observe:

In  1972, on the feast of Sts. Peter and Paul, Pope Paul VI delivered a sermon that startled the world. Describing the chaos then consuming the post-conciliar Church, he lamented : “From some fissure the smoke of Satan has entered the temple of God.” 

Some fissure? Y'all opened the front door of the Fortress and The Prince of the world, Satan, sauntered in.

John 10:31 Now is the judgment of the world: now shall the prince of this world be cast out invited in.

And those of us who hold the Faith once delivered know y'all will never admit your execrable errors and try to expel Satan.

Y'all keep blabbering on and on about how the 1960s Synod was the Springtime of the Church a new Pentecost blah, blah, damnable blah.

Paul VI closing the council:

...

But we cannot pass over one important consideration in our analysis of the religious meaning of the council: it has been deeply committed to the study of the modern world. Never before perhaps, so much as on this occasion, has the Church felt the need to know, to draw near to, to understand, to penetrate, serve and evangelize the society in which she lives; and to get to grips with it, almost to run after it, in its rapid and continuous change. This attitude, a response to the distances and divisions we have witnessed over recent centuries, in the last century and in our own especially, between the Church and secular society—this attitude has been strongly and unceasingly at work in the council; so much so that some have been inclined to suspect that an easy-going and excessive responsiveness to the outside world, to passing events, cultural fashions, temporary needs, an alien way of thinking …, may have swayed persons and acts of the ecumenical synod, at the expense of the fidelity which is due to tradition, and this to the detriment of the religious orientation of the council itself. We do not believe that this shortcoming should be imputed to it, to its real and deep intentions, to its authentic manifestations.

We prefer to point out how charity has been the principal religious feature of this council. Now, no one can reprove as want of religion or infidelity to the Gospel such a basic orientation, when we recall that it is Christ Himself who taught us that love for our brothers is the distinctive mark of His disciples (cf. John 13:35); when we listen to the words of the Apostle: “If he is to offer service pure and unblemished in the sight of God, who is our Father, he must take care of orphans and widows in their need, and keep himself untainted by the world” (James 1:27) and again: “He has seen his brother, and has no love for him; what love can he have for the God he has never seen?” (I John 4:20).

Yes, the Church of the council has been concerned, not just with herself and with her relationship of union with God, but with man — man as he really is today: living man, man all wrapped up in himself, man who makes himself not only the center of his every interest but dares to claim that he is the principle and explanation of all reality. Every perceptible element in man, every one of the countless guises in which he appears, has, in a sense, been displayed in full view of the council Fathers, who, in their turn, are mere men, and yet all of them are pastors and brothers whose position accordingly fills them with solicitude and love. Among these guises we may cite man as the tragic actor of his own plays; man as the superman of yesterday and today, ever frail, unreal, selfish, and savage; man unhappy with himself as he laughs and cries; man the versatile actor ready to perform any part; man the narrow devotee of nothing but scientific reality; man as he is, a creature who thinks and loves and toils and is always waiting for something, the “growing son” (Gen. 49:22); man sacred because of the innocence of his childhood, because of the mystery of his poverty, because of the dedication of his suffering; man as an individual and man in society; man who lives in the glories of the past and dreams of those of the future; man the sinner and man the saint, and so on.

Secular humanism, revealing itself in its horrible anticlerical reality has, in a certain sense, defied the council. The religion of the God who became man has met the religion (for such it is) of man who makes himself God. And what happened? Was there a clash, a battle, a condemnation? There could have been, but there was none. The old story of the Samaritan has been the model of the spirituality of the council. A feeling of boundless sympathy has permeated the whole of it. The attention of our council has been absorbed by the discovery of human needs (and these needs grow in proportion to the greatness which the son of the earth claims for himself). But we call upon those who term themselves modern humanists, and who have renounced the transcendent value of the highest realities, to give the council credit at least for one quality and to recognize our own new type of humanism: we, too, in fact, we more than any others, honor mankind.

And here I am, poor old Mick, who was taught not to put my trust in princes and that man was not to be trusted.

Psalm 145:Alleluia... Praise the Lord, O my soul, in my life I will praise the Lord: I will sing to my God as long as I shall be. Put not your trust in princes:  In the children of men, in whom there is no salvation.

It is no wonder why the authorities have no use for men like me.

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