Category: Ecumenism

John XXIII, 'Pope of the Jews'

John XXIII, ‘Pope of the Jews’

Published on by Kathy Clubb3 Comments

Angelo Roncalli has been accused of many things: of conversing with aliens, consorting with Freemasons, being installed by Freemasons, being a Freemason and of course, introducing Synarchy into the heart of the Church. Although those accusations rely on a degree of speculation, he exhibited enough obvious flaws (as evidenced by the disastrous Second Vatican Council) to conclude that his papacy struck a heavy blow to the Church.

Part of that blow came in the form of the ecumenical movement, which was a Modernist counterweight to the longstanding belief of extra ecclesiam nulla salus – there is no salvation outside the Catholic Church. The document, Nostra Aetate, which was a pet project of John’s, formed the basis for the reject of extra ecclesiam. Hidden within its ambiguous text was the suggestion that non-Catholics can be saved without conversion to Catholicism. The document errs mostly by omission in that it fails to advise Catholics to evangelise their non-Catholic neighbours, thus implying that there is, in fact, salvation outside of Catholicism.

One problematic section from Nostra Aetate is given below. For more samples of its errors and a commentary, please read here.)

True, authorities of the Jews and those who followed their lead pressed for the death of Christ (cf. Jn. 19:6); still, what happened in His passion cannot be blamed upon all the Jews then living, without distinction, nor upon the Jews of today. Although the Church is the new people of God, the Jews should not be presented as repudiated or cursed by God, as if such views followed from the holy Scriptures…

While it’s true that prior to being elected Pope, Angelo Roncalli assisted in the protection of thousands of Jewish people as they fled from persecution by the Nazis, he didn’t stop with merely defending their safety. As Pope, John went further and re-wrote the Church’s relationship with the Jews.

In large part, the Church’s relaxation of its policy towards the Jewish religion was the result of lobbying by a French Jewish historian named Jules Isaac.

Jules Isaac

In 1948, Isaac authored a book which, rather brashly, gave suggestions to Christians about how they should teach their children about the Jewish people. Called Jesus and Israel: A Call for Necessary Corrections on Christian Teaching on the Jews, the book included 18 points he believed should be enacted by the Catholic Church. (Read them here.)

Isaac secured a meeting with Pope John XXIII on June 13, 1960, two years prior to the Council, and recorded his thoughts immediately after they met. Isaac’s notes are treasured by Jewish historians.

For the meeting, Isaac was equipped with volumes of material which he believed was evidence that the Church’s teaching was anti-semitic and needed to be changed. Note that Isaac audaciously believed the had a right to change Catholic teaching. He wrote:

The problem of Catholic teaching which I attacked is infinitely more complex than that of the liturgy1. Seen from the special angle concerning Israel, it touches, if not the main ideas of faith and dogma, at least a thousand-year-old tradition, product of the Church fathers, from St. John Chrysostom to St. Augustine. 

Isaac’s particular concern was the so-called “teaching of contempt” of Catholic towards Judaism, which he believed to be anti-Christian and which he believed fuelled anti-Semitism. He put forward his arguments and suggested that the Pope create a sub-committee to study his concerns. The Pope agreed to seek advice on the matter and they parted cordially.

Judaic Influence

A few months later, a group of American Jewish men from a society known as B’nai B’rith met with the Pope. B’nai B’rith (see more here) has close ties to Freeemasonry, and founded the Anti Defamation League.

At that meeting, John told them that: “You are of the Old Testament and I of the New Testament, but I hope and pray that we will come closer to the brotherhood of humanity… It gives me great pain and sorrow to see these recent events (a rash of swastika graffiti) which not only violate a natural right of human beings but destroy the understanding between brothers under God…”

That same year, he also met with a group called United Jewish Appeal, when he said: “We are all sons of the same Heavenly Father. Among us there must ever be the brightness of love and its practice. I am Joseph, your brother.”

Later in 1960, John called for those clerics preparing for the Council to add a declaration on the attitude of the Church towards the Jews. He approved the first draft, entitled Decretum de Judaeis (“Declaration on the Jews”) in November 1961, but didn’t live to see the document in its final form. That was left to Paul VI, who promulgated it as Nostrae Aetate in 1965.

Perfidious Pontiff

Yet, the Jewish question had been in John’s mind before these meetings, as back in March of 1959, during the Good Friday Liturgy, John demanded that the word, ‘perfidious’ should not be read during the prayer for the Jews.

As even such Modernists as Cardinal Bea and Henri de Lubac point out, the adjective ‘perfidious’ was included in Medieval times when its meaning was less offensive than it is today. ‘Perfidious’ originally meant ‘unbelieving’ or ‘unfaithful’ and was thus perfectly appropriate for describing the Jewish people.

[It is worth noting that when Benedict XVI allowed for wider use of the traditional Latin Mass, he only authorised the use of the 1962 Missal from which the word “perfidious” had been removed. Fr. Mawdsley has a lot more to say on this.]

Next, John attacked the Rite of Baptism, removing the necessity to “Abhor Jewish unbelief (in Jesus Christ) and reject the Hebrew error (which is that the Messiah has not yet come).”

John also ‘cancelled’ Pius XI’s prayer from 1925, the Act of Consecration of the Human Race to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The words, ‘Look with Thine eyes of mercy upon the children of that stock, so long Thy Chosen People; May the blood called upon them of old, now descend on them as the waters of redemption and life,’ were now deemed to be politically incorrect. 

Making Catholics Pay

John went even firther in his efforts to appease the Jews. With the assistance of the heterodox Cardinal Frings, John required that a prayer be said by German Catholics on the Feast of the Sacred Heart. It went:

“Lord, God of our Fathers! God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob! God of merry and God of solace! We confess before you: Countless men were murdered in our midst, because they belonged to the people from whom the Messiah rose up in the flesh. We pray Thee: Lead all among us who became guilty through deed, omission, or silence, that we may see the wrong and turn from it. In the spirit of heartfelt atonement, we beg for forgiveness for the sins which were committed by our fellow citizens. We beseech that the spirit of peace and reconciliation return to all homes and we pray for the peace of Israel among the nations; on the borders of its state and in our midst…”

While there was most likely a need for some German Catholics to repent of their collaboration with the Nazis, the hypocrisy of John demand is obvious. The Jews detested being held to account as a group for the crime of their forebears – putting Christ to death – yet John expected German Catholics to be held responsible, as a group, for the crime of the Nazis.

And where was the acknowledgement of the non-Jews who were persecuted under Hitler? Including thousands of priests, nuns and lay Catholics? The prayer does not mention those poor people.

Don’t Convert!

John’s commitment to non-evangelisation was well known. Secretary to John XXIII, Loris Capovilla told this story to Time Magazine:

“A young Jewish lad made the acquaintance of Giuseppe Roncalli when he was the Cardinal-Archbishop of Venice. The young man wanted to become a Catholic, but Roncalli kept putting him off. ‘Look,” he said, ‘you’re a Jew. Be a good Jew. Becoming a Catholic will kill your parents.’ The young man persisted and Roncalli finally said he could be baptized — in secret.

“Several years later (in 1961) after his parents had died, he presented himself at the Vatican to see his old mentor, now the Pope. He wanted the Pope to give him the Sacrament of Confirmation. ‘All right, all right,’ said Pope John XXIII, ‘but you have got to continue to be a good Jew, in your own community, go to the synagogue, support the Jewish schul, because, by being a Catholic, you do not become any less a Jew.”

Pope of the Jews

In 2014, Rabbi Dalin, a former professor of Ave Maria University, reminisced about John’s contribution to Catholic-Jewish relations and it was from this man that we learn John was known as the “Pope of the Jews.”

Dalin tells the story of Pope John driving through the streets of Rome on a Saturday, when he suddenly ordered his car to stop in front of Rome’s great synagogue. He got out of the car so he could bless the Jews of Rome as they were leaving: an important symbolic act that earned their gratitude.

“In doing this,” Rabbi Dalin observes, “he began to transform the history of Catholic-Jewish relations in our time, with initiatives inspired by his work on behalf of Jews during the holocaust….

… “Twentieth and 21st-century Jews will forever be indebted to Pope John XIII for his historic role in bringing about Nostra Aetate. It changed forever the relationship between Catholics and Jews.”

It is worth noting that John XXII was canonised (along with another ecumaniac, John Paul II) on the eve of Yom Hashoah, the international day of Holocaust remembrance observed in Israel and by Jews around the world.

  1. see John XXIII’s changes to the liturgy in a later section ↩︎
Problems with 'Nostra Aetate'

Problems with ‘Nostra Aetate’

Published on by Kathy ClubbLeave a comment

Some of the problematic sections from Nostra Aetate are given below. For a fuller explanation of how this and other Vatican II documents deviate from traditional Catholic teaching, please read here.)

Tolerance for Eastern Religions


The Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true and holy (vera et sancta)in these religions. She looks with sincere respect upon those ways of conduct and of life, those rules and teachings which, though differing in many particulars from what she holds and sets forth, nevertheless often reflect a ray of that Truth which enlightens all men….

… Thus in Hinduism, men contemplate the divine mystery and express it through an unspent fruitfulness of myths and through searching philosophical inquiry. They seek release from the anguish of our human condition through ascetical practices or deep meditation or a loving, trusting flight toward God….

…Buddhism in its multiple forms acknowledges the radical insufficiency of this shifting world. It teaches a path by which men, in a devout and confident spirit, can either reach a state of absolute freedom or attain supreme enlightenment by their own efforts or by higher assistance….

Nostra Aetate §2

Tolerance for Islam

Upon the Moslems, too, the Church looks with esteem. They adore one God, living and enduring, merciful and all-powerful, Maker of heaven and earth and Speaker to men (qui unicum Deum adorant etc…., homines allocutum). They strive to submit wholeheartedly even to His inscrutable decrees (cuius occultis etiam decretis toto animo se submittere student), just as did Abraham, with whom the Islamic faith is pleased to associate itself….

…”Though they do not acknowledge Jesus as God, they revere Him as a prophet. They also honor Mary, His virgin Mother1 ; at times they call on her, too, with devotion.”

… Although in the course of the centuries many quarrels and hostilities have arisen between Christians and Moslems, this most sacred Synod urges all to forget the past and to strive sincerely for mutual understanding. On behalf of all mankind, let them make common cause of safeguarding and fostering social justice, moral values, peace, and freedom.

Nostra Aetate §3

JOHN PAUL II AT ASSISI IN 1986 – A LOGICAL CONSEQUENCE OF NOSTRA AETATE

Misrepresentation of the Jewish Religion

True, authorities of the Jews and those who followed their lead pressed for the death of Christ (cf. Jn. 19:6); still, what happened in His passion cannot be blamed upon all the Jews then living, without distinction, nor upon the Jews of today. Although the Church is the new people of God, the Jews should not be presented as repudiated or cursed by God, as if such views followed from the holy Scriptures.

Nostra Aetate §4

Refuting Nostra Aetate’s Claims about Judaism

“Necessary to note here is the attempt to limit the responsibility for Deicide to a small group of quasi private individuals, whereas the Sanhedrin, the supreme religious authority, represented all of Judaism. Therefore, in the rejection of the Messiah and Son of God, it had collective responsibility for the Jewish religion and the Jewish people, and this irrefutably is stated in Holy Scripture: “And from then on, Pilate was looking for a way to release him. But the Jews cried out, saying, ‘If thou release this man, thou are no friend of Caesar; for everyone who makes himself king sets himself against Caesar'” (Jn. 19:12); and “And all of the people answered and said, ‘His blood be on us and our children'” (Mt. 27:25).

“Also striking is the statement that “the Jews should not be presented as repudiated or cursed by God, as if such views followed from the holy Scriptures.” This lacks the necessary distinction between individuals and the Jewish religion. If the subject is individual Jews, the statement is true, and is exemplified by the great number of converts from Judaism in all eras. But if the subject is Judaism as a religion, the assertion is both erroneous and illogical: erroneous, because it contradicts the evangelical texts and the Church’s constant faith from her origins. (Cf. Mt. 21:43: “Therefore I say to you, that the Kingdom of God will be taken away from you and will be given to a people yielding its fruits.”) And it is illogical, because if God did not reject the Jewish religion or the Jewish people in the religious sense (which in Jesus’ time was one and the same thing), then the Old Testament has to be viewed as being still valid, and contiguous and concurrent with the New Testament. This, then, would sanction the unjustified awaiting of the Messiah, a hope still entertained by today’s Jews! All of this is a totally lying representation of Judaism and its relationship to Christianity.”2

  1. She is honoured by Moslems as mother of a prophet, not mother of the Son of God ↩︎
  2. All taken from the SSPX Asia website ↩︎
Ecumenism: the Utopian Dream

Ecumenism: the Utopian Dream

Published on by Kathy ClubbLeave a comment

Like the side events staged by NGO’s at the UN, the Pope’s ecumenical side-event at the Synod might be where the real work of demolishing the Catholic Church is taking place.

On October 11, the Pope led an ecumenical prayer meeting at a very special non-church venue: the Protomartyrs Square, an area right near St. Peter’s Basilica where the first pope is thought to have died. Francis excelled himself, managing to pack an unprecedented variety of blasphemies into one evening: continuing to promote the Masonic doctrines of religious indifferentism and naturalism, topped off by an egregious insult to every Catholic who shed his blood for the Faith.

The event marked the anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council which the organisers of Francis’ vigil hailed as the beginning of a ‘new ecumenical era.’

For the theme of his reflection, Pope Bergoglio chose the phrase from John’s Gospel: “The glory that you have given me I have given them” (Jn 17:22). This expresses his belief that the martyrdom of early Christians like St. Peter, the shedding of their blood in that very place, had some mystical ecumenical significance.

The Pope continued by saying that the martyrs are ‘accompanying the Church on its ecumenical journey’ – another error with no basis in reality or in Catholic tradition. Unsurprisingly, Pope Francis quoted the arch-ecumenist, John XXIII, linking the pursuit of ecumenism to the unbelievably boring topic of synodality, saying “The journey of synodality… is and must be ecumenical”.

That bit does make sense. Since faithful Catholics are not fooled by either synodality or ecumenism, Francis has to go outside the Church to gain any traction. But that poses no problem when one has no belief in the primacy of Catholicism. When one can give away the bones of St. Peter or sign heretical documents with anti-Christians, then nothing is off the table.

It seems lost on the Pope that the martyrs died rather than compromise their faith to even one degree, let alone completely handing it to non-believers on a platter as he has chosen to do.

The Pope continued to spout his own ‘magisterium of Francis’: “Unity is a grace. We do not know beforehand what the outcome of the Synod will be, just as we cannot predict how the unity we are called to will fully manifest.”

Artist’s impression of how Bergoglio’s ‘unity’ will manifest

In another direct contradiction of Church teaching, Pope Francis claims that a so-called ‘ecumenism of blood’ is a witness of Christian unity to the world. ‘Ecumenism of blood’ is another of Francis’ imaginary theological principles. There really is no such thing. Christians do not achieve unity through martyrdom and this certainly was not the meaning behind Jesus’ discourse at the Last Supper. At least, if it was, then Gnostic Francis is the first Catholic in history to find this hidden interpretation.

Scripture and tradition clearly state that there is no salvation outside the Church. There is no unity when some Christians are outside the Church and others are inside the Church. Further, despite Francis’ many claims to the contrary, heretics can not be considered martyrs. [See note below this article for further explanation.]

St. Peter made this abundantly clear in 1 Corinthians 13:3, when he wrote,  “… if I should deliver my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.” Charity, of course, means to love God with all one’s mind and heart – including believing everything which has been taught by His Church. Anyone Christian outside of the Catholic Church is by definition, lacking in charity.

The attempted martyrdom by non-Catholics was the precise context of that famous doctrine, extra ecclesiam nulla salus, as first recorded by St. Cyprian of Carthage:

But if not even the baptism of a public confession and blood can profit a heretic to salvation, because there is no salvation out of the Church, how much less shall it be of advantage to him, if in a hiding-place and a cave of robbers, stained with the contagion of adulterous water, he has not only not put off his old sins, but rather heaped up still newer and greater ones! 

Pius XII reiterated the importance of membership in the Catholic Church in his Encyclical,  Mystici Corporis Christi,

“Actually only those are to be included as members of the Church who have been baptized and profess the true faith, and who have not been so unfortunate as to separate themselves from the unity of the Body, or been excluded by legitimate authority for grave faults committed.”

And these are only a few examples of the constant teaching of the Church prior to Vatican II. Francis’ ecumenical side-event reminds us of his true priority: the deconstruction of Catholicism.

While chancery bureaucrats enjoy their Roman holiday at the Synod, deluding themselves that anything they do will make a scrap of difference to the Pope, Francis puts on his Masonic-coloured lens: promoting religious indifferentism instead of preaching baptism to all nations and promoting the heresy of naturalism by pursuing his Utopian dream of ecumenism.

[NOTE ON NON-CATHOLIC MARTYRS: For a nuanced approach to this topic, consider this: They may have been true martyrs, but only before God (coram Deo), not before the Church (coram Ecclesia). They would be martyrs coram Deo, provided they were habitually willing to believe whatever the Church proposed if they had the means to know it, and it is not their fault. They would not be martyrs coram Ecclesia because only God knows the internal dispositions of a person’s soul at the hour of death. Now the Church can only make a pronouncement about external actions that can be known by one’s senses. Thus, she cannot publicly consider martyrdom something that only God can know, namely, that a person in the state of invincible ignorance decided in his heart, even if only as a desire, to belong to the Catholic Church and who died united to her.]

JPII and his Christ-less Decalogue

Published on by Kathy ClubbLeave a comment

My previous article looked at a few secularists who have taken it upon themselves to create a new code of ethics for mankind, meant to replace the Ten Commandments given to Moses on Mount Sinai more than three thousand years ago. It also mentioned one of the current Pontiff’s flights into fantasy when he rewrote the Commandments for a group of adoring fans in Rome.

The Ten Commandments, also known as the Decalogue, were of course, intended by God to be binding for all time. They are engraved into our hearts and are the guide by which we are meant to “know, love and serve God in this life” in order to one day be happy with Him in heaven.

While “Decalogue” literally means “ten words” – without any reference to their divine origin – the dictionary meaning always specifies The Ten Commandments as recorded in the book of Exodus. No dictionary I consulted listed any meaning other than that used by Christians. Thus, the name doesn’t apply to any old list of ten principles.

So it was with some surprise that I came across yet another novel “Decalogue” created with input from modern-day Pope: none other than John Paul II, who co-authored a “Decalogue of Assisi for Peace” in 2002. (This link will take you to the Vatican website, so you know it’s legit.)

Seeing the word “Assisi” always raises a red flag for traditionally-minded Catholics. That series of meetings with leaders from other faiths, held first by JPII then Benedict, was notorious for its open-slather ecumania and for the utter disdain shown by the reigning pope for his distinguished predecessors who warned of the dangers inherent in such an approach.

There were many incidents during the Assisi meetings that caused great scandal among believers, but perhaps nothing was worse than seeing a statue of Buddha being placed atop the tabernacle in St Peter Church at Assisi. (Images courtesy TFP except where otherwise cited.)

A small Buddha was placed on the Tabernacle at Assisi in 1986.
JPII reached out to some very committed heretics.
JPII & the Dalai Lama’s representative in 2001
(Photo by GABRIEL BOUYS/AFP via Getty Images)
Benedict continued the craze. This is from 2011.
A close-up of the Buddha statue.

The Assisi “Decalogue”, like the secular versions already mentioned on this site, focuses on achieving peace on earth. However, as Christians we know that an earthly Utopia is impossible without the entire world acknowledging the Prince of Peace, Jesus Christ as Lord and King. In JPII’s ecumenical “decalogue”, references to Jesus Christ are not just thin on the ground, they are entirely absent.

So while the sentiments sound nice, (what sane person doesn’t want peace on earth, for crying out loud?) the entire project was obviously a complete waste of time. How is that “culture of dialogue” working out for you, Vatican II?

Source
Source

Perhaps the entire Modernist project will be abandoned when our prelates realise that the directives laid down by God are the best ones: the best for our souls and the best for the world.

But then, that assumes that the men who are driving the demolition of the Church are acting in good faith. And, given the Church’s widespread capitulation to the State, the attacks on the traditional liturgy, and a Pachamama-worshipping Pontiff, that is something one very much doubts.

Even Cardinal Pell has swallowed the Lie

Published on by Kathy Clubb7 Comments

A few days ago, I reported on a new ecumenical initiative that is going ahead with the apparent support of the Vatican and which relies on the conciliar mistruth (heresy) that the three monotheistic religions worship the same God. This is the idea that religions who reject the Trinity and specifically reject the Redeemer, Our Lord Jesus Christ, are on their “own path” to heaven. Is this a parallel path?

Parallel universe is more like it.

This week, in one of his many interviews, Australia’s Cardinal Pell gave his support to the same error. The interview was for the occasion of the Cardinal’s 80th birthday and touched on his time spent in prison for a crime he did not commit. The interviewer asked the Cardinal,

“In your diary, you say that you often listened to the prayers of Muslim detainees from your cell. What did it feel like to pray while listening to those prayers?”

To this, Cardinal Pell answered,

“For me there is only one God, we are monotheists. The theological conceptions of Christians and Muslims are obviously different, but we all pray in different ways to the same God. There is no God of Muslims, Christians or other religions, there is only one God.”

Cardinal Pell to Fabio Colagrande, of Vatican News, June 8, 2021

Forget for a moment that the good Cardinal should not merely give his opinion, and that he has a responsibility to state clearly the doctrine of the Church he represents. That is bad enough. But the comments themselves show a teaching that was entirely new at the time of the Second Vatican Council and which has come to be seen as Magisterial.

While of course it is true that there is only one God – Scripture tells us that all other gods are in fact, demons – the Cardinal is quite wrong in stating that the monotheistic religions worship the same God. He himself seemed to reject that idea in the past. For example, in 2006, the Cardinal pointed out that Catholics, Christians and Muslims do not universally believe that they worship the same God.

He said that “It is difficult to recognise the God of the New Testament in the God of the Koran, and two very different concepts of the human person have emerged from the Christian and Muslim understandings of God.”

Has the Cardinal come to change his position? It certainly would appear so. Has the Pope’s Abu-Dhabi project, that great triumph of Freemasonic indifferentism, influenced the Cardinal so much so he renounces the Church’s consistent teaching on this fundamental truth? I certainly hope this is not the case.

Please note that I do not in any way suggest that the good Cardinal is connected in any way with Freemasonry – other than that he has almost undoubtedly been the victim of its assaults over the years.

I will be most upset – perhaps litigiously so – if anyone accuses me of saying such a thing.

I draw attention to his comments only to show how prevalent religious indifferentism is today, even in conservative circles. This indifferentism has its roots in Freemasonry and has long been one of its goals.

Before the Council, this was the constant teaching of the Church, and the clergy warned of the dangers of religious indifferentism. Ideas like those put forward in the 19th Century by the Freemasonic occultist, Éliphas Lévi, who hoped for a Catholic Church that allowed Jews and Muslims to worship within Her without a renunciation of their own faith, were condemned. The errors were clearly exposed for all the faithful.

Similarly, academics like Hilaire Belloc warned of the heresy implicit in Islam, explaining the movement began as a corruption of Christianity from which Mohammed excised all that is supernatural from and then taught an erroneous, oversimplified doctrine.

Less than a hundred years later, this error was to find itself being promulgated by the Church Herself, in such documents as Lumen Gentium, which states that Muslims and Catholics worship the same God.

Hence a grave error has been sown in the fabric of the Church – a great contradiction that exhibits the hallmarks of a hermeneutic of discontinuity.

As Bishop Schneider remarked when speaking on this topic in his book, Christus Vincit, “We have to call all non-Christians to the one true path to God., which is the Catholic Church. The Apostles and the entire Church taught this for two thousand years. The Church could not err for two thousand years.” (p 97.)

Bishop Schneider is, however, not one to ignore or condemn individual members of other faiths. As he stated in Christus Vincit, he has good relations with Muslims in Kazakhstan and has, at times, joined in efforts with members of the Jewish faith. He is not xenophobic, but neither does he shy away from the truth that someone who rejects the Trinitarian God of Christians does not pray to that God, but to another of their own making.

A brief look at some of the Church Fathers will further illustrate the traditional Catholic view:

St Augustine: “This heresy affirms that all heretics are on the right path and that al teach the truth. This is so monstrous an absurdity that it seems to me to be incredible.”

Pope Pius VII: “By the fact that the indiscriminate freedom of all forms of worship is proclaimed, truth is confused with error, and the Holy and Immaculate Spouse of Christ is placed on the same level as heretical sects…” – Post Tam Diuturnas

Pope Gregory XVI: “…. those who pretend that the way to [eternal] beatitude starts with any religion at all should be afraid and should seriously think over the fact that, according to the testimony of the Saviour Himself, they are against Christ, because they are not for Christ, and that they are miserably scattering because they are not gathering with Him…” – Mirari Vos

It is to be hoped that Cardinal Pell and other conservative, yet sadly quite Modernist, clergymen wake up to the errors that were promulgated by Vatican II and begin to teach the Faith in its entirely and totally in accordance with tradition. Perhaps then, these well-meaning but deluded men will pray with St Celestine:

Pray that the Faith may be granted to infidels, that idolators may be delivered from the errors of impiety, that the light of truth may be visible to Jews….

St Celestine, Council of Ephesus. 431

Catholics are encouraged to appreciate the “internal logic” of Islam

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Vatican News this week published a story on a new ecumenical initiative designed to help Catholics find “a new understanding of their faith by taking Muslim questions seriously.” One wonders why the old method of teaching Catholics their catechism was found to be wanting. 

“Reasons for our Hope” is a joint project of the Cardinal Angelo Scola’s Oasis International Foundation and the McGrath Institute. 

The current phase of this Islamic-Catholic dialogue involves the release of three videos, designed to teach Moslems and Christians to appreciate the Internal coherence of each others’ faiths. The videos are animated and very simplistic – even insultingly so – distilling two thousand years of Catholic teaching into a feel-good fairy-tale and completely ignoring Islam’s 14 centtury-old animosity and blasphemy toward the Person of Jesus Christ.

The video entitled, “Jesus in the Bible and in the Qur’an” looks at similarities=es and differences between the two holy books’ approaches to Jesus Christ. Nowhere is it mentioned that Christians believe Jesus to be the Son of God, the Second Person of the Trinity, not that He Himself made that claim. Instead, the presentation focuses on the way both faiths present Jesus as a prophet who performed miracles.

A second video, “Reasons for our Hope” features images that look eerily like the temples planned for the Pope’s Abrahamic House project. “Parallel universes of meaning, each governed by its own law”

“Many prophets, one message.” – to remind the people to worship God. 

This video inches a little closer to the truth about Jesus, saying that His identification with “Emmanuel – God-With-us” is “inconceivable” to Moslems. No problem, the video purrs, all that is necessary is to “journey into another universe of meaning” aka the Christian Bible, where an alternative, internally coherent Truth is taught.

The narrator then males the extraordinarily false claim that “Bible is the story of God’s search for humanity.”

The final episode, “The Place of Jesus in the Bible”, also fails to mention the Trinity and the fact that Jesus is more than the Messiah, but is the only-begotten Son of God. The video closes with the hope that “ … with a generous heart, everyone can see coherence and beauty in the universe of the Qur’an and of the Bible. With this as a beginning, fraternity and friendship are the next steps.”

Cardinal Scola was part of the Nouvelle Théologie of the Conciliar years, and contributed to the publication, “Communio” along with Henri de Lubac, Hans Urs von Balthasar and then-Fr Ratzinger. Like many proponents of the “New Theology”, Scola was relatively orthodox in matters such as the indissolubility of marriage, non-reception of Communion for those in irregular marriages and the existence of the devil. He even defended the traditional Mass when he became Archbishop of Milan in 2017. However, one area in which the “New Theology” went dangerously wrong was in its attitude toward ecumenism.

Cardinal Scola founded the Oasis International Foundation in 20014. Typical of projects attempting to find a “third way” and “common ground”, the Foundation omits much of the truth about Catholicism and the Person of Jesus Christ while glossing over fundamental problems with Islam.

A quote from Cardinal Scola on the Oasis website states that the Christian faith recognises that non-Christian cultures are “inalienable and intrinsic dimensions of its own nature.”

The website features  this logo from the Pope’s trip to Egypt several years ago. It looks less like an image of Catholicism and more like the emblem for a One World Religion.

Collaborating with the Cardinal’s Oasis Foundation is the McGrath Institute for Church Life. A look at the McGrath Institute’s History and Mission page proves quite illuminating and the “Origins” section tells you all you need to know about this outfit. The organisation began as The Centre for Pastoral and Social Ministry, under the guidance of the late Monsignor John Egan, and the website cites his “Chicago-based urban ministry projects.” If that rings an alarm bell, it should – Monsignor Egan was a protege of Saul Alinsky, the communist agitator who actively sought out members of the Catholic hierarchy to collaborate with during the 1940’s.

The videos’ New Age background music and fluid graphics cause one to wonder what kind of subliminal message may be presented to the unwary viewer. 

At a time when the world needs more than ever to hear the saving message of the Gospels, in its pure and unadulterated form, it is more than irresponsible for members of the Church to suggest a “deeper look’ at Islam. However, if one is committed to promulgating a Freemasonic, indifferentist religion, then a project like this ticks all the boxes.