Wednesday, October 16, 2013

UPDATED 23/10: Do you have to accept Vatican II to be Catholic?

Walt apologizes to non-Catholic (and even anti-Catholic) readers for posting so many items about Pope Francis, the dire state the Roman Catholic Church, and the traditional Catholic opposition to Vatican II and the mainstream Church. But, dear readers, the Church is in crisis -- more so now than ever before -- and if the Church falls, the Western world will fall, and the rest of the world with it.

That is what Our Lady of Fatima meant when She warned that if Heaven's requests are not obeyed, the consequences will be the enslavement of millions and the annihilation of nations. So please bear with me. This is important.

My post yesterday about the rather Damascene conversion of Bishop Fellay, leader of the Society of St. Pius X, echoed strong comments both for and against the bishop, from within the SSPX and from people who consider themselves good Catholics, in communion with Rome and obedient to the Magisterium of the Church and the "teachings" of Vatican II.

One such is Jeff Mirus, of Trinity Communications, publishers of Catholic World News. In an e-mail to Agent 3, he wrote "the Traditionalists (by which I mean those who reject the authority of the Church in favor of their own private reading of tradition) seem more and more sure to spin away now from any pretense of Catholicity, as Bishop Fellay has already done.... Bishop Fellay has...rejected the Church of Christ. It is impossible to reject an ecumenical Council and condemn the Church’s liturgy without rejecting the Church...."

Like Pope Francis, Jeff Mirus is in error. Traditional Catholics stand for the traditional Catholic Faith as defined by numerous truly ecumenical councils, papal bulls and encyclicals, and the infallible and unchangeable dogma of the Church. "Private reading" as nothing to do with it!

Mr Mirus is in error also when he calls Vatican II an "ecumenical" council. It was not and did not hold itself out to be, which is one of the reasons why the teachings of the Council were never defined anywhere its documents as dogma.

UPDATE, 23/10/13 - Before you go on to the talk by Father Gregory Hesse (below), take a look at "On Pope Francis’ Consecration of the World: A Reply to Jeff Mirus" by Christopher Ferrara, which appeared October 18th in Fatima Perspectives.

Agent 3 has referred Mr Mirus to a talk given some years ago, during the pontificate of Pope John Paul II, by Father Gregory Hesse. Fr Hesse held doctorates in both Thomistic theology and Canon Law. From 1986-88 he served at the Vatican as Secretary to Alfons Cardinal Stickler, one of the periti on the Liturgy Commission of the Council, and one of those who spoke out -- too late -- against the Council and the New Mass.

Father Hesse spoke extensively on the true and false understanding of Papal infallibility and the modern errors in the understanding of sacred tradition, religious liberty and ecumenism brought about by the errors or obscurity and lack of definition in the documents of Vatican II.

His talk "Vatican 2 gave us a New Religion" contrasts what the Council documents (and the first encyclical of John Paul II) teach with established Church teaching derived from previous councils and Papal encyclicals. I'm sorry this "video" is really an "audio". It runs for almost 50 minutes and is well worth listening to in its entirety.

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