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.

...

Razing the Bastions? Was that a wise program for the Catholic Church?

 

Traditi Humilitati

On His Program for His Pontificate

Pope Pius VIII - 1829 

ON HIS PROGRAM FOR THE PONTIFICATE

To Our Venerable Brothers, Patriarchs, Primates, Archbishops, and Bishops.

Venerable Brothers, Greetings and Apostolic Benediction.

According to the custom of Our ancestors, We are about to assume Our pontificate in the church of the Lateran. This office has been granted to Us, even though We are humble and unworthy. We open Our heart with joy to you, venerable brothers, whom God has given to Us as helpers in the conduct of so great an administration. We are pleased to let you know the intimate sentiments of Our will. We also think it helpful to communicate those things from which the Christian cause may benefit. For the duty of Our office is not only to feed, rule, and direct the lambs, namely the Christian people, but also the sheep, that is the clergy.

2. We rejoice and praise Christ, who raised up shepherds for the safekeeping of His flock. These shepherds vigilantly lead their flocks so as not to lose even one of those they have received from the Father. For We know well, venerable brothers, your unshakeable faith, your zeal for religion, your sanctity of life, and your singular prudence. Co-workers such as you make Us happy and confident. This pleasant situation encourages Us when We fear because of the great responsibility of Our office, and it refreshes and strengthens Us when We feel overwhelmed by so many serious concerns. We shall not detain you with a long sermon to remind you what things are required to perform sacred duties well, what the canons prescribe lest anyone depart from vigilance over his flock, and what attention ought to be given in preparing and accepting ministers. Rather We call upon God the Savior that He may protect you with His omnipresent divinity and bless your activities and endeavors with happy success.

3. Although God may console Us with you, We are nonetheless sad. This is due to the numberless errors and the teachings of perverse doctrines which, no longer secretly and clandestinely but openly and vigorously, attack the Catholic faith. You know how evil men have raised the standard of revolt against religion through philosophy (of which they proclaim themselves doctors) and through empty fallacies devised according to natural reason. In the first place, the Roman See is assailed and the bonds of unity are, every day, being severed. The authority of the Church is weakened and the protectors of things sacred are snatched away and held in contempt. The holy precepts are despised, the celebration of divine offices is ridiculed, and the worship of God is cursed by the sinner.[1] All things which concern religion are relegated to the fables of old women and the superstitions of priests. Truly lions have roared in Israel.[2] With tears We say: “Truly they have conspired against the Lord and against His Christ.” Truly the impious have said: “Raze it, raze it down to its foundations.”[3]

4. Among these heresies belongs that foul contrivance of the sophists of this age who do not admit any difference among the different professions of faith and who think that the portal of eternal salvation opens for all from any religion. They, therefore, label with the stigma of levity and stupidity those who, having abandoned the religion which they learned, embrace another of any kind, even Catholicism. This is certainly a monstrous impiety which assigns the same praise and the mark of the just and upright man to truth and to error, to virtue and to vice, to goodness and to turpitude. Indeed this deadly idea concerning the lack of difference among religions is refuted even by the light of natural reason. We are assured of this because the various religions do not often agree among themselves. If one is true, the other must be false; there can be no society of darkness with light. Against these experienced sophists the people must be taught that the profession of the Catholic faith is uniquely true, as the apostle proclaims: one Lord, one faith, one baptism.[4] Jerome used to say it this way: he who eats the lamb outside this house will perish as did those during the flood who were not with Noah in the ark.[5] Indeed, no other name than the name of Jesus is given to men, by which they may be saved.[6] He who believes shall be saved; he who does not believe shall be condemned.[7]

5. We must also be wary of those who publish the Bible with new interpretations contrary to the Church’s laws. They skillfully distort the meaning by their own interpretation. They print the Bibles in the vernacular and, absorbing an incredible expense, offer them free even to the uneducated. Furthermore, the Bibles are rarely without perverse little inserts to insure that the reader imbibes their lethal poison instead of the saving water of salvation. Long ago the Apostolic See warned about this serious hazard to the faith and drew up a list of the authors of these pernicious notions. The rules of this Index were published by the Council of Trent;[8] the ordinance required that translations of the Bible into the vernacular not be permitted without the approval of the Apostolic See and further required that they be published with commentaries from the Fathers. The sacred Synod of Trent had decreed[9] in order to restrain impudent characters, that no one, relying on his own prudence in matters of faith and of conduct which concerns Christian doctrine, might twist the sacred Scriptures to his own opinion, or to an opinion contrary to that of the Church or the popes. Though such machinations against the Catholic faith had been assailed long ago by these canonical proscriptions, Our recent predecessors made a special effort to check these spreading evils.[10] With these arms may you too strive to fight the battles of the Lord which endanger the sacred teachings, lest this deadly virus spread in your flock.

6. When this corruption has been abolished, then eradicate those secret societies of factious men who, completely opposed to God and to princes, are wholly dedicated to bringing about the fall of the Church, the destruction of kingdoms, and disorder in the whole world. Having cast off the restraints of true religion, they prepare the way for shameful crimes. Indeed, because they concealed their societies, they aroused suspicion of their evil intent. Afterwards this evil intention broke forth, about to assail the sacred and the civil orders. Hence the supreme pontiffs, Our predecessors, Clement XII, Benedict XIV, Pius VII, Leo XII,[11] repeatedly condemned with anathema that kind of secret society. Our predecessors condemned them in apostolic letters; We confirm those commands and order that they be observed exactly. In this matter We shall be diligent lest the Church and the state suffer harm from the machinations of such sects. With your help We strenuously take up the mission of destroying the strongholds which the putrid impiety of evil men sets up.

7. We want you to know of another secret society organized not so long ago for the corruption of young people who are taught in the gymnasia and the lycea. Its cunning purpose is to engage evil teachers to lead the students along the paths of Baal by teaching them un-Christian doctrines. The perpetrators know well that the students’ minds and morals are molded by the precepts of the teachers. Its influence is already so persuasive that all fear of religion has been lost, all discipline of morals has been abandoned, the sanctity of pure doctrine has been contested, and the rights of the sacred and of the civil powers have been trampled upon. Nor are they ashamed of any disgraceful crime or error. We can truly say with Leo the Great that for them “Law is prevarication; religion, the devil; sacrifice, disgrace.'[12] Drive these evils from your dioceses. Strive to assign not only learned, but also good men to train our youth.

8. Also watch the seminaries more diligently. The fathers of Trent made you responsible for their administration.[13] From them must come forth men well instructed both in Christian and ecclesiastical discipline and in the principles of sound doctrine. Such men may then distinguish themselves for their piety and their teaching. Thus, their ministry will be a witness, even to those outside the Church and they will be able to refute those who have strayed from the path of justice. Be very careful in choosing the seminarians since the salvation of the people principally depends on good pastors. Nothing contributes more to the ruin of souls than impious, weak, or uninformed clerics.

9. The heretics have disseminated pestilential books everywhere, by which the teachings of the impious spread, much as a cancer.[14] To counteract this most deadly pest, spare no labor. Be admonished by the words of Pius VII: “May they consider only that kind of food to be healthy to which the voice and authority of Peter has sent them. May they choose such food and nourish themselves with it. May they judge that food from which Peter’s voice calls them away to be entirely harmful and pestiferous. May they quickly shrink away from it, and never permit themselves to be caught by its appearance and perverted by its allurements. “[15]

10. We also want you to imbue your flock with reverence for the sanctity of marriage so that they may never do anything to detract from the dignity of this sacrament. They should do nothing that might be unbecoming to this spotless union nor anything that might cause doubt about the perpetuity of the bond of matrimony. This goal will be accomplished if the Christian people are accurately taught that the sacrament of matrimony ought to be governed not so much by human law as by divine law and that it ought to be counted among sacred, not earthly, concerns. Thus, it is wholly subject to the Church. Formerly marriage had no other purpose than that of bringing children into the world. But now it has been raised to the dignity of a sacrament by Christ the Lord and enriched with heavenly gifts. Now its purpose is not so much to generate offspring as to educate children for God and for religion. This increases the number of worshippers of the true divinity. It is agreed that the union of marriage signifies the perpetual and sublime union of Christ with His Church; as a result, the close union of husband and wife is a sacrament, that is, a sacred sign of the immortal love of Christ for His spouse. Therefore, teach the people what is sanctioned and what is condemned by the rules of the Church and the decrees of the Councils.[16] Also explain those things which pertain to the essence of the sacrament. Then they will be able to accomplish those things and will not dare to attempt what the Church detests. We ask this earnestly of you because of your love of religion.

11. You know now what causes Our present grief. There are also other things, no less serious, which it would take too long to recount here, but which you know well. Shall We hold back Our voice when the Christian cause is in such great need? Shall We be restrained by human arguments? Shall We suffer in silence the rending of the seamless robe of Christ the Savior, which even the soldiers who crucified Him did not dare to rend? Let it never happen that We be found lacking in zealous pastoral care for Our flock, beset as it is by serious dangers. We know you will do even more than We ask, and that you will cherish, augment, and defend the faith by means of teachings, counsel, work, and zeal.

12. With many ardent prayers We ask that, with God restoring the penitence of Israel, holy religion may flourish everywhere. We also ask that the true happiness of the people may continue undisturbed, and that God may always protect the pastor of His earthly flock and nourish him. May the powerful princes of the nations, with their generous spirits, favor Our cares and endeavors. With God’s help, may they continue vigorously to promote the prosperity and safety of the Church, which is afflicted by so many evils.

13. Let us ask these things humbly of Mary, the holy Mother of God. We confess that she alone has overcome all heresies and We salute her with gratitude on this day, the anniversary of Our predecessor, Pius VII’s, restoration to the city of Rome after he had suffered many adversities. Let us ask these things of Peter, the Prince of the Apostles, and of his coapostle Paul. With Christ’s consent, may these two apostles grant that We, firmly established on the rock of the Church’s confession, suffer no disturbing circumstances. From Christ Himself We humbly ask the gifts of grace, peace, and joy for you and for the flock entrusted to you. As a pledge of Our affection We lovingly impart the apostolic benediction.

Given in Rome, at St. Peter’s, May 24, 1829, the first year of Our pontificate.

---

1. Wis 1.32.

• 2. Jer 2.25.
• 3. Ps 136.7.
• 4. Eph 4.5.
• 5. Epistle to Damasus, the 37th pope.
• 6. Acts 4.12.
• 7. Mk 16.16.
• 8. Rule 4 of the Index, and the addition to same from the decree of the Index of 13 June 1737.
• 9. Session 4 on the decree concerning holy books.
• 10. Read, among other things, the apostolic letters of Pius VII to the archbishops of Gnesen (1 June 1816) and Mohilev (3 September 1816).
• 11. Clement XII, constitution In eminenti; Benedict XIV, constitution Providas; Pius VII, Constitution Ecclesiam a Jesu Christo; Leo XII, constitution Quo graviora.
• 12. In sermon 5 on fasting of the tenth month, chap. 4.
• 13. Session 25, chap. 18, on reform.
• 14. 2 Tm 2.17.
• 15. In the encyclical letter to all bishops published in Venice.
• 16. Read the Roman catechism for parish priests on matrimony
• 
  
• Haydock on Psalm 136. Read what it has to say about razing the bastions. Good Lord. THIS is supposed to be a good thing for Holy Mother Church?

HAYDOCK CATHOLIC BIBLE COMMENTARY ON THE OLD TESTAMENT

PSALM 136

 

PSALM CXXXVI.  (SUPER FLUMINA.)

The lamentation of the people of God, in their captivity, in Babylon.

 

Ver. 1.  For Jeremias.  For the time of Jeremias, and the captivity of Babylon.  Ch. --- Or "of" (Jeremiæ.  H.) Jeremias; on which subject he composed his Lamentations, as the Sept. thus insinuate.  W. --- The title may be a later insertion, and is not the same in all the Greek or Latin copies.  It is wholly omitted in Heb. &c.  Theodoret blames those who have written the name of Jeremias, as he was never at Babylon.  C. --- He might send the psalm to the captives, (Grot.) though it were written by David, (Gerer.) who was a prophet.  See Ps. lxxviii.  Bert. --- The captives express their sentiments at Babylon, (Bossuet) or at their return; (C.) and thus, under the figure of the earthly Jerusalem, (Bert.) aspire to heaven.  S. Aug. --- Rivers.  Euphrates, &c.  The Jews retired to such places to pray.  Philo, con. Flac.  Acts xvi. 13.  H. --- Sion, and all the ceremonies of religion.  W.

 

Ver. 2.  Willow.  With which the Euphrates was lined.  Is. xv. 7.  It passed through the city, which was adored with trees, and contained extensive tracts of land for cultivation.  C. --- Babylon may also include all the territory.  Bert. --- Instruments.  Heb. Kinnor means properly the ancient lyre, but here it is put for all instruments of music.  C. --- In grief, music was laid aside.  Is. xxiv. 8.  Ezec. xxvi. 13.  Apoc. xviii. 21.  Yet Christians may unite spiritual canticles with holy compunction.  Col. iii. 16.  We must not expose the word of truth to the ridicule of infidels.  Bert.

 

Ver. 3.  Sion.  The Levites were trained to singing from their infancy, at the expense of the nation.  Under David, there were 288 masters, and 8,000 Levites who played on music.  1 Par. xv.  The Babylonians wished to hear them, (C.) or (W.) spoke insultingly, (Theod.) as the pagans asked what good Christ had done?  S. Aug.

 

Ver. 4.  Land.  they were oppressed with grief, (Eccli. xxii. 6.) and unwilling to expose sacred things to profanation, though there was no prohibition for them to sing out of Judea, for their mutual comfort.  C. --- They excuse themselves on both accounts.

 

Ver. 5.  Forgotten.  May all that is most dear to us perish, if we do not serve God, (W.) and seek to procure the welfare of Jerusalem.  H. --- Yet they knew that the joy of their earthly abode in that city could not satisfy their desires.  They allude, therefore, ultimately to heaven.  Bert.

 

Ver. 7.  Day.  When Jerusalem was taken, or when it shall be re-established.  H. --- The Idumeans incited the Babylonians to destroy it entirely, and even cut in pieces such as had escaped.  Abdias. v. 11.  Jer. xii. 6. --- But Nabuchodonosor punished them five years afterwards, and Hircanus forced them to receive circumcision.  Joseph. x. 11. and xiii. 18.  C. --- Isaias (xxi. 11.) denounced their ruin, as the psalmist does here.  W. --- S. Chrysostom thinks that the latter expresses the vindictive sentiments of the Jews: but he rather desires that God's cause should be maintained in the manner in which He should judge best.  The illusions of our own imagination and vanity are most dangerous and domestic enemies, as the Edomites sprung from the same stock as Israel.  Bert.

 

Ver. 8.  Daughter.  Citizens. --- Miserable "plunderer," (Sym.) or "ruined," (Aquila) or "which shalt be given up to plunder."  Theod. --- Cyrus reduced the city to a state of abjection, and it has since experienced other miseries, (C.) so that its situation is now unknown.  H. --- Isaias (xiii.) foretold this destruction.  W.

 

Ver. 9.  Dash thy little ones, &c.  In the spiritual sense, we dash the littel ones of Babylon against the rock, when we mortify our passions, and stifle the first motions of them, by a speedy recourse to the rock, which is Christ.  Ch.  S. Aug. S. Greg.  Ps. l.  W. --- We do not read that Cyrus treated Babylon with this rigour; but such practices were then customary, (Ose. xiv. 1.  Iliad xxii.) and Darius cruelly punished the revolted city.  Herod. iii. 159.  C. --- God will reward those who execute his decrees (H.) against Babylon.  W. --- The psalmist contrasts the felicity of the conqueror, with the misery of the citizens, without approving of his conduct.  Bert.

 

Razing the bastions. What Catholics must do or what Catholics must oppose?

 raze (v.)

1540s, "completely destroy," an alteration of racen "pull or knock down" (a building or town), from earlier rasen (14c.), etymologically "to scratch, slash, scrape, erase," from Old French raser "to scrape, shave," from Medieval Latin rasare, frequentative of Latin radere (past participle rasus) "to scrape, shave." This has cognates in Welsh rhathu, Breton rahein "to scrape, shave." Watkins says it is "possibly" from an extended form of the PIE root *red- "to scrape, scratch, gnaw." But de Vaan writes, "Since this word family is only found in Italo-Celtic, a PIE origin is uncertain." From 1560s as "shave off, remove by scraping," also "cut or wound slightly, graze." Related: Razed; razing.

bastion (n.)

"projection from a rampart," 1560s, from French bastillon, diminutive of Old French bastille "fortress, tower, fortified building," from Old Provençal bastir "to build," perhaps originally "make with bast" (see baste (v.1)).

Destroying the fortress of Catholicism and inviting the world - one of three ancient and permanent enemies of the Catholic Church; the world, the flesh and the devil - inside is still deemed the right thing to have done by a much-lauded Neo-Con.

It should be noted that much of what he has to say about The Catholic Church prior to the 1960s revolutionary synod is simply wrong but who is going to destroy those bastions of bull shit?

...

Vatican II was also the moment in which Catholicism fully realized its claim to be a global (“catholic”) institution, as churchmen from outside the Church’s historic European core began to take prominent roles in shaping the Catholic future. The extraordinary growth of the Catholic Church in sub-Saharan Africa—where Catholicism now counts hundreds of millions of adherents, many of them first- or second-generation Christians—was accelerated by the council’s promotion of native African clergy and religious orders, its disentanglement of Catholicism from colonialism and its insistence on the Church’s essentially missionary character.

Man o man is that stupendously shallow and stupid. The Catholic Church realised its claim to be global because non-Italians become prominent members of the Curia?

Had there been no Second Vatican Council, the Catholic Church of the 21st century would look rather different. 

HELL YEAH, look at what happens in a Chapel operated by a Traditional Order vs look at the shite that happens inside a N.O. Parish.

Real men want a real Church.

So would world politics. The council’s seminal Declaration on Religious Freedom, which recognized that the altar-and-throne alliances of the past were not possible under modern political conditions, helped to transform the Church from a bulwark of the status quo into one of the world’s foremost institutional defenders of basic human rights. Absent Vatican II, it is difficult to think of a pope coming from Poland or to imagine that pope playing a pivotal role in one of contemporary history’s great transformations: the self-liberation of Central and Eastern Europe in the 1989 collapse of European communism.

Religious Liberty is a heresy that was condemned prior to the 60s Synod in the Syllabus of errors:

III. INDIFFERENTISM, LATITUDINARIANISM

15. Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true. — Allocution “Maxima quidem,” June 9, 1862; Damnatio “Multiplices inter,” June 10, 1851.

16. Man may, in the observance of any religion whatever, find the way of eternal salvation, and arrive at eternal salvation. — Encyclical “Qui pluribus,” Nov. 9, 1846.

17. Good hope at least is to be entertained of the eternal salvation of all those who are not at all in the true Church of Christ. — Encyclical “Quanto conficiamur,” Aug. 10, 1863, etc.

18. Protestantism is nothing more than another form of the same true Christian religion, in which form it is given to please God equally as in the Catholic Church. — Encyclical “Noscitis,” Dec. 8, 1849.

... The more radical Catholic traditionalists of our day seem to imagine that the Catholic bastion of the mid-20th century could have sustained itself indefinitely. If that were true, however, why did that way of being Catholic crumble so quickly in Ireland, Québec, Spain and Portugal? And why did those men and women most recently formed in pre-conciliar seminaries and novitiates lead the flight from the priesthood and consecrated religious life?

Typical Neo-Con. The Church (Vietnam Village) had to be destroyed to save it.

On February 7, 1968, American bombs, rockets and napalm obliterated much of the South Vietnamese town of Ben Tre — killing hundreds of civilians who lived there.

Later that day, an unidentified American officer gave Associated Press reporter Peter Arnett a memorable explanation for the destruction.

Arnett used it in the opening of the story he wrote: 

   “It became necessary to destroy the town to save it,” a U.S. major said Wednesday. 
   He was talking about the grim decision that allied commanders made when Viet Cong attackers overran most of this Mekong Delta city 45 miles southwest of Saigon. They decided that regardless of civilian casualties they must bomb and shell the once placid river city of 35,000 to rout the Viet Cong forces.

After Arnett’s story was published in newspapers the next morning, February 8, 1968, the unnamed major’s remark became one of the most infamous war-related quotes in modern history.

https://eppc.org/publication/what-vatican-ii-accomplished/

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++==

NOW, onto the matter of Razing the Bastions:

Joseph Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology

Does this mean that the Council should be revoked? Certainly not. It means only that the real reception of the Council has not yet even begun. What devastated the Church in the decade after the Council was not the Council but the refusal to accept it. This becomes clear precisely in the history of the influence of Gaudium et spes. What was identified with the Council was, for the most part, the expression of an attitude that did not coincide with the statements to be found in the text itself, although it is recognizable as a tendency in its development and in some of its individual formulations. The task is not, therefore, to suppress the Council but to discover the real Council and to deepen its true intention in the light of the present experience. That means that there can be no return to the Syllabus, which may have marked the first stage in the confrontation with liberalism and a newly conceived Marxism but cannot be the last stage. In the long run, neither embrace nor ghetto can solve for Christians the problem of the modern world. The fact is, as Hans Urs von Balthasar pointed out as early as 1952, that the “demolition of the bastions” is a long-overdue task.

Pope Pius VIII, Traditi Humilitate Nostrae

Although God may console Us with you, We are nonetheless sad. This is due to the numberless errors and the teachings of perverse doctrines which, no longer secretly and clandestinely but openly and vigorously, attack the Catholic faith. You know how evil men have raised the standard of revolt against religion through philosophy (of which they proclaim themselves doctors) and through empty fallacies devised according to natural reason. In the first place, the Roman See is assailed and the bonds of unity are, every day, being severed. The authority of the Church is weakened and the protectors of things sacred are snatched away and held in contempt. The holy precepts are despised, the celebration of divine offices is ridiculed, and the worship of God is cursed by the sinner. All things which concern religion are relegated to the fables of old women and the superstitions of priests. Truly lions have roared in Israel. With tears We say: “Truly they have conspired against the Lord and against His Christ.” Truly the impious have said: “Raze it, raze it down to its foundations.” 

The FSSP

 https://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/2018/05/dario-cardinal-castrillon-hoyos-rip.html#.ZGaxii_MJmA

We are always being subjected to hearsay about the Pope's intentions with S.P. but in his own explanation about his motive for S.P. it sounds depressingly familar.

On a flight to France....

Fr Federico Lombardi, S.J., Director of the Holy See Press Office: What do you say to those who, in France, fear that the 'Motu proprio' Summorum Pontificum signals a step backwards from the great insights of the Second Vatican Council? How can you reassure them?


Benedict XVI: Their fear is unfounded, for this 'Motu Proprio' is merely an act of tolerance, with a pastoral aim, for those people who were brought up with this liturgy, who love it, are familiar with it and want to live with this liturgy. They form a small group, because this presupposes a schooling in Latin, a training in a certain culture. Yet for these people, to have the love and tolerance to let them live with this liturgy seems to me a normal requirement of the faith and pastoral concern of any Bishop of our Church. There is no opposition between the liturgy renewed by the Second Vatican Council and this liturgy.

On each day [of the Council], the Council Fathers celebrated Mass in accordance with the ancient rite and, at the same time, they conceived of a natural development for the liturgy within the whole of this century, for the liturgy is a living reality that develops but, in its development, retains its identity. Thus, there are certainly different accents, but nevertheless [there remains] a fundamental identity that excludes a contradiction, an opposition between the renewed liturgy and the previous liturgy. In any case, I believe that there is an opportunity for the enrichment of both parties. On the one hand the friends of the old liturgy can and must know the new saints, the new prefaces of the liturgy, etc . . . . On the other, the new liturgy places greater emphasis on common participation, but it is not merely an assembly of a certain community, but rather always an act of the universal Church in communion with all believers of all times, and an act of worship. In this sense, it seems to me that there is a mutual enrichment, and it is clear that the renewed liturgy is the ordinary liturgy of our time.
...

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It's been 35 years since The FSSP was formed and Anne Roche Muggweridge was quoted as saying that owing to the FFSP splitting from the SSPX they were promised a Bishop.

Whether that quote is accurate or not, when will the FSSP see a Bishop devoted to them and their cause of Liturgical Tradition?

I say, never.

I tried to post this at The new Liturgical Movement but they are not too keen on dealing with reality when it comes to the authentic Rite

Politically Correct Speech Codes are Talmudic

 

The P.C. Hate Speech Codes are Talmudic

Mick received permission from Dr. E Michael Jones to post this excerpt from his GREAT book, The Jewish Revolutionary Spirit and Its Impact on World History.

Please buy his book and subscribe to Culture Wars.

https://www.fidelitypress.org/book-products/the-jewish-revolutionary-spirit

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October 1976: The Jewish takeover of American Discourse

In October 1976, Leo Pfeffer arrived in Philadelphia to give a talk entitled “Issues that Divide: the Triumph of Secular Humanism." In that talk, Pfeffer declared  Victory in the culture wars and announced the Jews had defeated the Catholics in their 40 years war over American culture. The terms of the Carthaginian peace imposed on the defeated American Catholics included abortion, pornography, the loss of Catholic academe, the redefinition of deviance, and the transformation of discourse. In a formal sense, i.e., in reference to literary criticism, that meant war on Logos. It also meant the end of the New Criticism as everyman's democratic

version of Sola Scriptura and its replacement with Talmudic exegesis. Catholics who began their literary careers learning the Protestant rule that every man had the right to interpret his own text, now had to be re-trained in rules of discourse according to which the Rabbi was always right.

At around the same time that Woody Allen was being celebrated as the great  American genius, Jacques Derrida and Stanley Fish changed the rules of discourse in American academic circles. Literary criticism was no longer Protestant; it was Talmudic. Those who signed up for literature classes to learn how to read a poem,now learned that there was, as Fish put it, "no text." No text meant any constitutional principle could be subverted by Talmudic reasoning by rabbis like Leo Pfeffer; and that any human right, such as the right to life, could be subverted similarly. No text meant there was no such thing as nature, as the campaign to legitimatize homosexuality showed. It also meant there was no substance or being, as Derrida's attack on "onto-theology" showed. 

There was a deeper grammar to this discussion, which eventuated in the campus political correctness speech codes of the 1990s.  The heart of that code wasn't racial; it wasn't feminist; it wasn't homosexual; it was Jewish and expressing Jewish culture at its worst. Political correctness was the final expression of the Talmudic redefinition of American discourse which had begun in the '70s  under the direction of Jewish critical theorists like Fish and Derrida.

In 1992,  Fish authored an essay, "There's no such Thing as Free Speech and It’s a Good Thing Too," in a book called Debating  PC. Criticizing Benno Schmidt's view that speech should be tolerated because "freedom must be the paramount obligation of an academic community," Fish says Schmidt has "no sense of the lacerating harms that speech of certain kinds can inflict.". Fish therefore favored  campus regulations banning "hate speech." "Speech," he says, "is never and could not be an independent value, but it is always asserted against a background of some assumed conception of the good to which it must yield in the event of conflict."

The catch in this argument revolved around the conception of the good at its heart. The traditional view claimed speech was subordinated to the moral law, the good in question. The Whig Enlightenment claimed, in the case of speech, that the moral law was subject to individual freedom. 

This rallying cry allowed Jewish revolutionaries to take over the university. Once in power, they changed the rules. The "Good" at Duke University, where Fish taught at the time he was being proclaimed as an Apostle of Political Correctness in organs like Newsweek,  got redefined as the will of those in power. In the absence of a "text" such as Nature, Being, Logos, the Constitution, etc., there could be no good but the will of the powerful fortified by appetite.

Two years earlier, in an article in Newsweek  on Political Correctness entitled "Thought Police on Campus," Fish praised pluralism in a way that had already become dated, when he claimed that "Disagreement can be fun.”

By the 1990s  there was no disagreement and little fun in class. Reader Response criticism was Talmudic. 

There was "no text." There was no Torah; there was only Talmud, i.e.,  opinions of literary critics who were the secular equivalent of the rabbi, always right, even when other rabbis contradicted him. Reader Response criticism, as espoused by Fish, claimed the reader did not discover meaning, he created it out of materials assembled from a text that had no real existence until he appropriated it. This idea appealed to legions of poorly educated English majors plodding through graduate schools in the mid-'70s. 

The fledgling critic, overburdened by texts his defective education left him unprepared to understand, leapt to avoid the labor of scholarly pursuit and rejoiced to learn scholarship was nothing but unfettered appetite applied to difficult texts. "The text means what I say it means," the dull-witted grad student chanted. "I am the hegemon of meaning," he crowed, because, Fish told him, the critic is not "the humble servant of texts." The euphoria wore off when the young literary critic discovered, like the denizens of Orwell's Animal Farm, that some literary critical pigs were more equal than others. Animal Farm was especially relevant because the same sort of transformation was taking place in literary criticism that had taken place in revolutionary France, Russia, and Germany. 

The passions were aroused as the instrument of revolution against the moral order, but once the revolution destroyed the old regime, there was no moral order to protect the revolutionaries from the will of their new masters.

Reader Response Criticism led to politicly correct speech codes, but the grad students of the '70s still haven't figured out why or how. Stanley Fish engaged in bait and switch. Once the maleducated, baby-boomer grad students accepted the hegemony of the reader over texts in Fish's campaign to bring down the ancien regime, they were informed the reader was not quite as sovereign as he had told them. Indeed, robbed of the text as the source of meaning, the "readers" had no power at all. The determiner of meaning of was not the "reader" after all, but the "interpretive community." 

"Fish," wrote R. V. Young, "follows here the paradigm of Jean Jacques Rousseau: an initial assertion of virtually limitless freedom (reader-response criticism) turns into total constraint, with the individual reader or interpreter figured as a blind prisoner of the collective mind." Once “liberated" from coming to grips with a text, the critic had no source for his interpretations. He was dependent on the "interpretive community," the lit crit equivalent of the communist party.

Where did the interpretive community get its meanings? Fish could not answer that question, just as he could not explain how this community could change its mind. All that remained was desire, the bait that started this revolution. But the desires of the weak, disconnected from morals and a constitutive text, inevitably succumbed to the desires of the powerful. There was something "democratic" in the traditional American sense of the word, about the study of literature when the New Criticism gave everyone a chance to come up with a winning interpretation. That possibility disappeared with the disappearance of the text. 

When the deconstructor deconstructs all meanings and all texts, all that is left is the hegemony of his desires over everyone else's. 

Since there can be no appeal to an objective text with objective meaning, e.g, the Bible or the Constitution, the deconstructor has absolute hegemony over those who lack his power. That was the motivation behind the replacement of Shakespeare with Queer Theory and Deconstruction.

Those who abolished the text were like those who abolish morals in the name of  "liberation." Their ultimate goal, no matter how inchoately understood, was libido dominandi.  The average grad student, like the average TV watcher went along with the revolution because he saw in it  the validation of his own desires. What he failed to see was the simultaneous eclipse of his moral freedom. That realization usually came too late, if at all. Since the abolition of text was a fundamentally totalitarian project, it should come as no surprise that former Nazis like Paul DeMan were attracted to it.

Sexual morality had to be deconstructed in the name of political power. It must have no "meaning" because if there were no meaning, no one could object when the powerful inflicted their desires on the weak. Aldous Huxley explicated the meaning of "meaninglessness" long ago in Ends and Means.  

"The philosopher,” Huxley wrote, who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem in pure metaphysics. He is also concerned to prove that there is no valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to do, or why his friends should not seize political power and govern in the way that they find most advantageous to themselves. The voluntary, as opposed to the intellectual, reasons for holding the doctrines of materialism, for example, may be predominantly erotic, as they were in the case of Lamettrie (see his lyrical account of the pleasures of the bed in La Volupte and at the end of L'Homme Machine), or predominantly political as they were in the case of Karl Marx.

 Beginning with Saul Bellow's Mr. Sammler's Planet  in 1968,  followed by Portnoy’s Complaint  one year later, then by the movies of Woody Allen, Jewish themes and ideas became mainstream American culture. At around the same time that movie-goers were lining up to see Annie Hall,  Jewish literary critics like Stanley Fish and Jacques Derrida were changing the rules of discourse. Interpretations Professor Fish said were the privilege of "interpretive communities," meaning English departments at prestigious institutions like Johns Hopkins University, where he happened to teach. Before long any institution became ipso facto prestigious by the fact that it had hired Stanley Fish to teach there. First Duke and then the University of Illinois at Chicago became prestigious. At the same time Jacques Derrida at Yale was saying that the interpretation of texts was so difficult, that no one could do it. Readings were no longer possible; all that was possible were "misreadings."

Neither of these talmudic forms of literary criticism were compatible with American democratic ideals. According to Fish, the Torah, i.e,  the poem or “text" as a secular surrogate for the Bible, had been swallowed by the Talmud of arcane literary theory, for which he was the chief rabbi. Anyone who disagreed was expelled from the synagogue. Jews of an earlier era were free to come up with outrageously irreverent and literarily blasphemous assertions like the claim that Huckleberry Finn and Jim were homosexuals, as Leslie Fiedler did in "Come back to the raft ag'in, Huck Honey," but the days when anyone was free to make any  interpretation as long as it was based on evidence from the text were numbered.

Professors who thought they had "academic freedom" were the first to learn about the new rules of discourse, but soon the lessons were taught outside of academe too. Major league pitcher John Rocker may have been earning lots of money, but it could not buy him the freedom to speak his mind.

Anyone who says something in public must take account of the rules of discourse or run the risk of punishment. By the end of the 20th century, cultural commentary was dangerous because the monuments to Jewish culture had become ubiquitous but off limits to the goyim.  It is difficult if not impossible to comment on mainstream culture without touching some Jewish monument, yet the number of permissible interpretations was narrowing dramatically at the same time. Mass culture abounds in Jewish artifacts, but unauthorized discourse about them is prohibited.

Derrida's Deconstruction was Talmudic too. Deconstruction was an attackon Logos-synonymous with Christ-by people, in R. V. Young's phrase, "at war with the word." Derrida's Deconstruction was an attack on "real presence." What followed the revolt against Logos was a convoluted explanation of discourse that

bore an uncanny resemblance to the Jewish world once the Temple was destroyed and "everything became discourse," i.e.,  Talmudic disputation without contact with Logos:

The surrogate does not substitute itself for anything which has somehow preexisted it. From then on it was probably necessary to begin to think that there was no center, that the center could not be thought of in the form of a being present, that the center had no natural locus, that it was not a fixed locus, but a function, a sort of non-locus in which an infinite number of sign-substitutions came into play. 

This moment was that in which language invaded the universal problematic; that in which, in the absence of center or origin, everything became discourse-provided we can agree on this word-that is to say, when everything became a system where the central signified, the original or transcendental signified, is never absolutely present outside a system of differences. The absence of the transcendental signified extends the domain and the interplay of the signification ad infinitum.

Derrida's passage is an allegory, describing the destruction of the Temple, after which the Jewish people had no priesthood, no sacrifice, no Temple, no real presence, no Shekinah. After Rabbi Jochanan ben Zakkai got smuggled out of the temple and founded the rabbinic school at Javne, Judaism became a Talmudic debating society, in which "The absence of the transcendental signified extends the domain and interplay of signification ad infinitum."

As Young puts it, "Rather than a frontal assault on metaphysics, Derrida proposes subversion from within." Jacques Derrida and Stanley Fish were, like Trotsky, Jewish revolutionaries. The literary critical revolution of the '70s was the mopping up operation which followed the cultural revolution of the '60s, when academe was taken over by a new group of people.

Reader Response Criticism corresponded in time to the Jewish take over of American culture. The speech  codes which got imposed on college campuses over the course of the 1990s which came to be known as political correctness, were in fact the practical consequences which were drawn from the Jewish takeover of discourse which occurred in America during the 1970s.

From Page 1000 and following , The Jewish Revolutionary Spirit and its impact on world history, E. Michael Jones.

Real Catholics will want to own this book