THE CAUSE OF THE WORST CRISIS THE CHURCH HAS EVER FACED

His Holiness Pius IX warned:

“Catholic liberalism is one foot in truth and one foot in error; one foot in the Church and one foot in the world, one foot with me and one foot with my enemies… What afflicts your country and prevents it from deserving the blessings of Heaven is the confusion of principles. I will speak the word and I will not remain silent: what I fear most for you is not those wretches of the Commune, veritable demons escaped from hell, but Catholic liberalism, that fatal system that always dreams of reconciling two impossible things: the Church and the Revolution. I have already condemned it, but I would condemn it forty times more if necessary. Yes, I say it again because of the love I have for you; yes, this balancing act is what can end up destroying religion among you.”

(Pope Pius IX, Address to the Catholics of France, June 18, 1871).

Saint Pius X also pointed out this great danger:

"Liberal Catholics are wolves in sheep's clothing. And for this reason, the priest, the true priest, must reveal to the people entrusted to his care their dangerous snares and their evil aims."

(Saint Pius X, Address of September 5, 1894, as Cardinal).

We now quote an interview given by Cardinal Ratzinger to Vittorio Messori in November 1984. Regarding the challenges facing the Church at Vatican II, he said:

"The problem of the 1960s was that of acquiring the best values ​​resulting from two centuries of 'liberal' culture. In fact, these are values ​​that, although born outside the Church, can find their place, purified and corrected, in its worldview. That is what has been done."

This clearly shows the strong influence of liberalism and modernism within the Church in the 1960s (and long before); of wheat already influenced and contaminated by the tares. It is the nefarious influence of Maritain. That quote negates the radical condemnation of the papal magisterium of ALL liberalism.

The Commonitorium of St. Vincent of Lérins (a Father of the Church) teaches:

"It belongs to Catholics to preserve the deposit of the holy Fathers, to condemn impious novelties, and, as the Apostle has said time and again, to pronounce anathema (condemnation) upon anyone who proclaims a doctrine different from that received (Gal. 1:9). From this it follows that every Catholic who desires to prove that he is a legitimate son of our Mother the Church must adhere to the holy Faith of our Fathers, cling to it, and die for it. He must also detest impious novelties, hate them, combat them, and persecute them."

The First Vatican Council made it clear that the Magisterium's role is not to innovate, purify, or Christianize the errors of the world, but to preserve and explain the faith received:

“The Holy Spirit was not promised to the successors of Peter so that they might teach new doctrines, but so that they might religiously guard and faithfully expound the revelation handed down by the Apostles.”

Is it clear what the core and cause of the errors that are currently growing like weeds within the Church and causing the worst crisis in its history are?

But the time will come when the Lord will separate the weeds from the wheat, so we must remain faithful to the true faith and to the Catholic Church He founded.

BEWARE OF HERETICAL NEWS

 

A General Rule for Distinguishing the Truth of the Catholic Faith from the Falsehood of Heretical Pravity

I have often then inquired earnestly and attentively of very many men eminent for sanctity and learning, how and by what sure and so to speak universal rule I may be able to distinguish the truth of Catholic faith from the falsehood of heretical pravity; and I have always, and in almost every instance, received an answer to this effect: That whether I or any one else should wish to detect the frauds and avoid the snares of heretics as they rise, and to continue sound and complete in the Catholic faith, we must, the Lord helping, fortify our own belief in two ways; first, by the authority of the Divine Law, and then, by the Tradition of the Catholic Church.

Therefore, it is very necessary, on account of so great intricacies of such various error, that the rule for the right understanding of the prophets and apostles should be framed in accordance with the standard of Ecclesiastical and Catholic interpretation.

Moreover, in the Catholic Church itself, all possible care must be taken, that we hold that faith which has been believed everywhere, always, by all. For that is truly and in the strictest sense Catholic, which, as the name itself and the reason of the thing declare, comprehends all universally. This rule we shall observe if we follow universality, antiquity, consent. We shall follow universality if we confess that one faith to be true, which the whole Church throughout the world confesses; antiquity, if we in no wise depart from those interpretations which it is manifest were notoriously held by our holy ancestors and fathers; consent, in like manner, if in antiquity itself we adhere to the consentient definitions and determinations of all, or at the least of almost all priests and doctors.

EXAMPLES OF HOW TO APPLY THE RULE

What then will a Catholic Christian do, if a small portion of the Church have cut itself off from the communion of the universal faith?

-What, surely, but prefer the soundness of the whole body to the unsoundness of a pestilent and corrupt member.

What, if some novel contagion seek to infect not merely an insignificant portion of the Church, but the whole?

-Then it will be his care to cleave to antiquity, which at this day cannot possibly be seduced by any fraud of novelty.

But what, if in antiquity itself there be found error on the part of two or three men, or at any rate of a city or even of a province?

-Then it will be his care by all means, to prefer the decrees, if such there be, of an ancient General Council to the rashness and ignorance of a few.

But what, if some error should spring up on which no such decree is found to bear?

-Then he must collate and consult and interrogate the opinions of the ancients, of those, namely, who, though living in various times and places, yet continuing in the communion and faith of the one Catholic Church, stand forth acknowledged and approved authorities: and whatsoever he shall ascertain to have been held, written, taught, not by one or two of these only, but by all, equally, with one consent, openly, frequently, persistently, that he must understand that he himself also is to believe without any doubt or hesitation.

Saint Vincent of Lerins

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