Pope again endorses "Spirit of Assisi" heresy of relativism

Pope Benedict XVI has sent his greetings to this year's Inter-religious Gathering of Prayer for World Peace, held at Mount Hiel, in Japan. The Pontiff noted that the meeting evokes "the spirit of the 1986 historic meeting in Assisi" convened by Pope John Paul II.

The Pope expressed confidence that the meeting would produce positive results for "inter-religious amity", which is a Vatican code-phrase for the false ecumenism condemned by Archbishop Lefebvre and others who hold to the traditional Catholic Faith. Properly understood, the "spirit of Assisi" is an expression of relativism -- the heretical notion that one religion is as good as another, because all roads lead to God.

Relativism (or indifferentism) is a form or subset of the heresy of modernism, condemned in 1907 in the syllabus Lamentabili sane exitu, which distinguished sixty-five propositions as modernist heresies. In the same year Pope Saint Pius X promulgated the encyclical Pascendi Dominici gregis. This was followed in 1910 by the introduction of an anti-Modernist oath to be taken by all Catholic bishops, priests and academic teachers of religion. Presumably Pope Ratzinger took this oath, but perhaps he has forgotten it.

Writing in Catholic Family News, John Vennari comments:
The new ecumenical orientation, such as manifested in the "Spirit of Assisi" threatens the salvation of countless souls, as it effectively tells non-Catholics to remain in the darkness of their false religions. It also threatens to bring with it a great chastisement.

In the early 20th Century, the eminent European churchman Cardinal Mercier, citing the consistent teaching of the Popes, stated that the Great War was actually a punishment for the crime of nations placing the one True Religion on the same level as false creeds, as does the "Spirit of Assisi".

Cardinal Mercier said in his 1918 Pastoral titled "The Lesson of Events":
"In the name of the Gospel, and in the light of the Encyclicals of the last four Popes..., I do not hesitate to affirm that this indifference to religions which puts on the same level the religion of divine origin and the religions invented by men in order to include them in the same scepticism is the blasphemy which calls down chastisement on society far more than the sins of individuals and families."

The "Spirit of Assisi" also gives visual expression to the central error of our time: that any religion is good enough for salvation. [My emphasis. Walt.] The world sees the Pope of the Catholic Church, as well as Catholic bishops and clergy, placing the one true Church established by Christ on the same base level as counterfeit religions. This cannot help but foster the religious indifferentism vigorously condemned by the Popes prior to Vatican II. In the face of this affront to the true Faith, Catholics must not be complacent, but must publicly and ceaselessly resist.

Worth reading: "Relativism - A Central Heresy of our Culture", on the Christian Medical Fellowship website.