Justice and Mercy/John Vennari

 

Esteemed John Vennari, equally esteemed Robert Siscoe, and all of their followers, especially the "Fatimists" - seem to me, in my very amateurish opinion, to be living in a contradiction.  The Catholic Family News for March, 2013 -  pages 13, 14 and 16, contains an excellent exposition by Robert Siscoe, of the worst form of Anti-Semitism, that which encourages Jews in the false belief that the Old Covenant still holds true.  But as Mr. Siscoe demonstrates, quoting St. Thomas Aquinas, it is mortally sinful for a Catholic to participate in any of the ceremonies of the Old Law, such as a Seder Supper – because “all ceremonies are professions of faith”, and to partake of a Seder Supper is a betrayal of Jesus Christ, Our Lord, Who is the new and real Paschal Lamb and Whom the Jews deny. 

 

Now to say it is a mortal sin – objectively speaking – to partake of a Seder Supper with Jewish friends, may seem to be overly strict on the part of St. Thomas – and the Church, (as in Mortalium Animos by Pope Pius XI), but followers of Father Leonard Feeney and his dogma of Sola Aqua, by which he explicitly denied the teaching of the Ordinary Magisterium – that salvation is also attained by desire and/or by blood (martyrdom), are unreasonably strict.  The traditional authority for this doctrine is found on pages 356-357 in Ludwig Otts’ – Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma.  The most compelling defense of this teaching is given by St. Thomas in the Summa, Part III, question 66, article 11 and 12.  To deny the traditional doctrine is to place one’s self outside the Magisterium – as represented most explicitly by the Council of Trent and the phrase “aut eius voto”.  (Ott, p.357 and see, Canons and Decrees….)

 

The true teaching has been poorly taught, especially in North America, where the heresy of Americanism, based on a sentimental pluralism, among other factors, (such as an exaltation of activism over more “passive” forms of intercessory prayer and virtue).  It needs to be emphasized, for example, that those saved by desire, (plus faith), and/or blood (martyrdom), do not receive the mark that alone grants admission to the other sacraments.  Therefore, if a person survives whatever death threatened them, they are absolutely obliged to seek water baptism.  For “desire” and/or martyrdom are not sacraments.  There is only one sacrament of baptism, just as we say in the Nicene Creed at Mass:  Confiteor unum baptisma in remissionem peccatorum….This is the Sola Aqua of the sacrament.  The followers of Fr. Feeney focus exclusively on the words of Our Lord to Nicodemus, and on the three ecumenical councils that clearly taught the necessity for sacramental baptism in order to be saved.  Only Trent added the voto, but on the authority of a very strong tradition of Sententia fidei proxima, the second degree, after de fide, of theological certitude. 

 

This whole area of “criteriology” – is a late theological development occasioned by the rising tides of unbelief, which have come to a pitch of rampant atheism, both theoretical and practical, - an almost universal loss of faith, in our times of apostasy.  Who, for example, amongst the most devout followers of Father Feeney, would doubt that every human being born into this world, possesses as a doctrine of the Church – a guardian angel.  Only the degree sententia certa, -  the 3^rd degree but pertaining to the faith and theologically certain.  (Ott, p.9-10).   But the doctrine, indeed, the dogma of the necessity for water baptism or the desire thereof, is more certain than sentential certa, because more closely related to the de fide dogma itself, pertaining to the very nature of what we must do to be saved.  We must, first of all, have the supernatural virtue of faith, infused at baptism – with hope and charity and the gifts of the Holy Ghost – all in potential as to their perfect actualization by a life of service of God in whatever state. 

 

The subject is vast because every dogma/doctrine of faith is somehow related to every other.  In the last analysis, everything presupposes Creation, because Creation concerns the nature of God, and if we get that wrong, everything else is awry.  As our times abundantly demonstrate.  If anyone is interested, there is quite an extensive literature on the subject.  I,myself, wrote a lengthy study entitled, “Conversations with the Followers of Father Feeney.”  It is said that Father Feeney was not excommunicated by Pope Pius XII for any doctrinal error or heresy, but simply for his disobedience in failing to follow the orders of his Jesuit superiors.  That may be true, but there were doctrinal issues involved in the “Letter”, concerning the case.  If my memory serves me correctly, I tried to deal with the serious ambiguities I found in this “Letter.”  I believe the case is still open and that some day, the Church must deal with it again, especially in view of Karl Rahner’s – “Anonymous Christian”, and Pope John Paul II’s universalism.  These two heresies require the Church’s attention, especially in view of their widespread acceptance by the so-called “faithful”, today as a consequence, not only of the modernism permeating and motivating all the documents of Vatican II, but also of the ever-evolving heresy of Americanism, which canonizes democratic equality of truth and error, grants evil practices such as abortion, equal rights in law with whatever might be deemed virtue, and so on.  But the Feeneyites go to the opposite extreme and refuse salvation – even in a place of merely natural happiness – to those guilty of no explicit sin against Divine or natural law…

 

Kyrie, Eleison

Christopher Ferreira, The Remnant & Catholic Family News

Christopher Ferreira writing in the Remnant and Catholic Family News, concerning the abdication/resignation of Pope Benedict XVI, needs to be reminded of what Vatican Council I dogmatically taught concerning the power of the Supreme Pontiff. If any shall say that the Roman Pontiff has the office merely of inspection or direction, and not full and supreme power of jurisdiction over the Universal Church, not only in things which belong to faith and morals, but also in those things which relate to the discipline and government of the Church spread throughout the world – or assert that he possesses merely the principal part, and not all the fullness of this supreme power – or that this power that he enjoys is not ordinary and immediate, both over each and all the Church and over each and all the pastors of the faithful – let him be anathema.



Pope Benedict has not just resigned the office of the Papacy, - he has abdicated and tacitly denied the supreme power of the Papacy as defined by the First Vatican Council in its dogmatic definition of that power. According to Christopher Ferreira’s opinion, the Pope acts as if he did not have the power that the Church has conferred upon him. He has not the faith of previous councils – obviously. God help us.



This statement of Vatican I disposes at once of “collegiality” of the Bishops. The Bishop is always and everywhere subordinate to the Pope. Robert Siscoe quoted the Council of Florence in a footnote in Catholic Family News. The three early medieval councils do not mention salvation by desire or blood – only Trent does. The Church will have to settle this dispute in the future.

Some Remarks on MEP, Mario Borghesio's Second Speech (Fatima Crusader)

These remarks refer to the Fatima Crusader of Winter 2013, pages 52 etc…

Mr. Borghezio proposes to introduce a “free culture in opposition to the dominant, mainstream one which is homogenizing information and politics to a “pensee unique” – a single thought in which everyone thinks the same.” This “pensee unique” can be specified more clearly as an evolutionary world view, in which all things are becoming, and therefore, there are no real, stable beings and norms of behavior. In this fictional, unreal world of perpetual becoming, all things reduce to an equality and “everyone thinks the same”. This is the democratic utopia of modern politics wherein everyone is supposedly equal in every way and all intellectual values and positions are equally “good” because it is yours. It is a glorification of the subjective.

But it goes against the principle upon which God created all things and that in the Principles of Hierarchy. What Mr. Borghezio refers to as “real freedom”, I prefer to define as the hierarchical grades of perfection – wherein each kind of being is and enjoys its own created nature. We observe the plants of the vegetative kingdom thriving each according to its kind, just as God created them on Day Three of Creation Week. St. Thomas also uses this hierarchical structure of reality as the 4^th of his 5 ways of demonstrating God’s existence. Each kind of being in its own created grade of perfection enjoys and practices the freedom that Mr. Borghezio describes as something we must fight to preserve. This same inequality that we observe in the plant kingdom, from lowly daisy and violet to soaring California Redwood, we also observe among the animals and mankind. The ideal society is one in which each individual is free to realize his created potential. Let women cultivate their various talents within the domain, which is specifically hers, of the domestic family unit. And let men freely seek to contribute their God-given gifts to society at large. Very few men are truly gifted in the area of public leadership and governmental administration. Those who are will naturally seek such positions, and they should be free to do so, all other things considered. It is for the Church in union with Heads of State – to oversee the moral order of society.

 

The ancients, especially Aristotle and his medieval followers, have much to teach us about what constitutes a civilization and society according to the laws of the Creator. Today, the modernist’s evolutionary worldview obscures the true Order of Creation – and this is why the world descends more and deeply into the abyss of moral depravity. I join my prayers and sacrifices with all those of the Fatima Crusade for the success of the petitions to the Pope for the consecration.

 

The Hidden Connection

 
 I think Father Gruner has perhaps inadvertantly, but nonetheless, accurately, hit upon the hidden connection between Our Blessed Lady's Fatima Message and the natural sciences - these latter being so prominent, even dominating, in our society today. In the Fatima Crusader, (Winter 2013), Father Gruner is replying to a question put to him by members of his own organization. He is asked why non-believing members of Parliament can be expected to take his proposal seriously. Besides their having nothing to lose and everything to gain, he points out that it is beginning to dawn on some European leaders that the European Union has no solid, unifying principle...-- a unifiying principle that only the Catholic faith can provide. They have tried to build a united Europe on economic cooperation and a common currency. But obviously, this effort is failing "big time", as Father Gruner asserts, most truly.

The unifying principle to which Father Gruner refers, can come only from a higher science than either politics or economics. It must come from a theological science that is supported by the natural sciences whose objects reflect the truth about reality and its structure. Today, what theology there is to guide all the other sciences, is a false theology or better, an ideology of evolutionism and a philosophy of becoming. Such a theology and such a philosophy are simply not Catholic. They are not only false, but diabolically conceived, as is evident by the increasing moral degradation of society. The only theology and its supporting philosophy capable of providing the one true unifying principle is the Catholic philosophical theology of creation found in the Hexaemera of the Fathers and summed up by St. Thomas Aquinas in his Summa.

Everything presupposes Creation; and a political economy that deviates from and even denies the truths established by God in the Order of Creation, simply cannot work, as is increasingly obvious. The Order of Creation requires all heads of state, in obedience to the Law of God as taught by His Church, to acknowledge God's sovereignty, in Jesus Christ as King, and to worship God, according to His Will, made known by His Church. The Church throughout time has taught men the Will of God in the temporal areas of government and morality. There is no lack of intellectual knowledge. It is the will of modern man that must be touched and turned back towards God the Creator, and upwards towards the proper order for all things temporal and eternal.

May modern man respond to the call of Our Lady, the Mother of God, before it is too late. As our true Mother, she wants only our real and true good!

 

The Catholic Contribution and Our Lady's Plan for Peace

 
Somewhere in his poetry, T.S. Eliot speaks of "my end is in my beginning." He got this metaphysical principle most probably from some late medieval mystic such as Juliana of Norwich, to whom he was especially devoted. The ultimate source is in Aristotle's Four Causes which St. Thomas elevated to the supernatural order in his Summa. It was St. Augustine who defined peace as the tranquility of order. This being so, the Catholic contribution is much more than any one contributory part: it is the Whole Plan for Order - from whence alone issues that peaceful tranquility that will only come about when Our Lady's requests at Fatima are obeyed - just as she specified. Order means a structure in which the individual entities function as they were intended to or as they should. Order, at the lowest level, is inescapably MORAL.

The moral order flows directly from the higher, metaphysical and theological truths of Reason and of Faith - not in a democratically arranged dichotomons or symmetrical kind of "order" - but in a hierarchically arranged structure of grades of perfection. (St. Thomas' 4th Way). Our Lady's Plan for Peace can be realized in no other way than in this Catholic hierarchical way - in which a truly Catholic Theology functions at the summit of reality showing forth the Order of Creation, that is preserved intact and acts as the stabilizing principle for all things in the temporal Order of Generation. How does this relate to Russia and her errors? Russia was the first nation to fall into schism back in the 12th century or before. Russia was the first nation to make atheism an official part of its national constitution. Both schism and atheism have spread throughout the world since 1917. Russia was also the first nation to legalize abortion. All moral, rational and supernatural evils follow from the disunity of schism and the irrationality of atheism. Only an atheistic mentality preceded by the schismatic mentality of failing to recognize the Roman Papacy as the one principle of unity for the entire world - can bring about such an amoral and barbaric mentality that sees abortion, homosexuality, so-called "gay" marriages, and the evils of pornography as natural or normal.

This is committment to insanity - the definition of which is loss of contact with reality. "Our end is in our beginning." This is because when God created all things in the Beginning, His divine intention and purpose or end...was first - His own glory - but secondly, the happiness of His creatures. We can only be really happy when we realize, in our own lives, that tranquility of Order - which is peace. And so, the consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary will ensure the conversion of that nation in the healing of its schism from Rome and in the acceptance of the divine Catholic faith that fulfills all the truths, both of reason and of the supernatural - thus healing her atheism. Russia will thence become the primary missionary nation - evangelizing the rest of the world. Her missionaries will be great Apostles of Creation, based on a Theology of Creation, that corrects and replaces all the errors of the current evolutionary modernism with a Catholic Science, that is geocentric in cosmology and in biology, based on the immutability of the substantial forms created during the Six Days of the Creation Week. Anyone can see how much work has yet to be done in order to replace the current evolutionary worldview, with true Catholic cosmology and biology and a Catholic Science and Theology of Creation. 

 

Last Part of Quantum Physics & Thomistic Metaphysics

  

The angels have no bodies. The elements have no souls. The existence of these two kinds of beings requires, in the most absolute way, the existence of God the Creator - to act immediately, directly! Whereas all other creatures, having bodies, can pass on their material forms by generation. Thus, plants and animals, having only material souls which are principles of motion, pass on their substantial forms by reproduction in the Order of Generation, but only God can create the substantial form and this He did during the Six Days of Creation by His successive a-temporal transcendent acts, just as narrated in Genesis One. Mankind is the only exception here because man's soul is spiritual, which means, rational. Genesis 1:26-27 and Genesis 2:7, both indicate that mankind is special, requiring a special creation of both a material-natural creation and a supernatural life of divine Grace. Animals and plants have absolutely no capacity for this divine life of Grace because their "souls" are merely natural and material. They do differ quite radically from the elements which have no interior principle of motion, but must be acted upon by some external agent in act. This also proves that the elements are but accidental forms of some larger substance, which is responsible for their operations. The hierarchy of being is very evident when we examine all the creatures that God created in the Six Days of Creation - and when we look at them in the order in which they were created. 
 

The angels and the elements of the Body of the Universe were created on Day One, according to Tradition of both East and West. The angels are pure, substantial spirits of intellect and will. The elements are pure matter-form, but accidental properties of the equally pure matter of the Body of the Universe. In this way, the lowest and the highest grades of the hierarchy of being may be said to mirror each other in an asymmetrical way so dear to the modern physicist and biologist. Much material here for meditation and contemplation. Also in all the grades of perfection between the elements of the Body of the Universe and the Angelic Choirs of Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones, Dominations, Virtues, Powers, Principalities, Archangels and Angels, the hierarchy of Pure Spirits delegated by God to govern, under His providence, the movements of the celestial bodies as well as to guard and protect the corporeal inhabitants of earth, especially mankind and its societies. The plant kingdom presents its own hierarchical order, from parasitical viruses and living bacteria up to animals and mankind, given dominion over all creatures below him - but not above him. (See Genesis 1:28).

 

 

We see the hierarchical order manifested also in the animal kingdom, from those microbes considered to be animals rather than plants, up to the most noble or majestic lions or whatever a true science considers to be closest to man in the hierarchy. It is certain, however, that each grade of being has its own perfection, a degree and kind of perfection bestowed in the Order of Creation, that absolutely precludes any such fantastic fiction as an evolution or transformation of one kind or species of being into another kind or species. Variation within kinds, yes, from the Poodle to the Collie and German Shepherd, or even from domestic dog to fox and wolf, but from dog to cat, or from dog to cow or sheep - or vice versa? Absolutely not. It would be an insult both to the Creator and to His creature. No animal covets in any way, nor is it a potential of his genetic character, to strive to be any other than what he has been created to be. And so it is manifested throughout time as the Metaphysical Principle of Identity - preserves the hierarchy of Being throughout time in the Order of Generation. For men knew dogs and cats as dogs and cats - ten thousand years ago, just as they do now, in 2013! It is with all of the First Principles of Metaphysics. Men recognize the existence of things outside their own minds. Existence, as an affirmative judgment of the human mind from its earliest years of infancy, also knows by abstraction, the identifying nature or essence of each kind of thing. (Science of Epistemology.) 
 

In the Order of Generation, it is self-evidently manifest that only a living being with the power of Agency, i.e., actuality, is capable of reproducing its own kind. Thus, we recognize the principles of Act and Potency, of necessity and contingency in all living and non-living things. This succession leads inescapably and necessarily to the Being of God Who is all Actuality and the one source of all existence. This is the 3rd way of St. Thomas, (ST, I, q.2, a.3). Both quantum physics and the classical standard model need the certitudes of Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics and the openness to events interrupting the uniformitarianism of the current ideology by the catastrophic effects of the Universally Noachian Deluge and the fall of man in the garden of Eden/Paradise. Genesis relates the essential facts of Adam's fall and biblical history reveals the wickedness of the descendants of Cain, (Adam's first son), which provoked God's anger and caused the global flood. Read all about it in Walt Brown's latest edition of “In the Beginning”.

 

In the last analysis, as Marta Stafko has put it so well in her letter to the New Oxford Review, of Dec. 2012, page 14: “there really is no such thing as a new idea. God has thought of everything already. Discovery exists, but we can only discover what God already knows, and what we know must be in accord with what God knows. Truth is the reflection of the mind of God and is accessible to everyone. It is the job of Christian teachers of philosophy, or teachers in any other discipline, never to forget this.

 

 

Amen!

 

Part 2 of Quantum Physics & Thomistic Metaphysics

 

However, my suggestion that the continuous nature of matter may be the very constituent physical-material of the Body of the Universe, is in the area of opinion, not of infallible, metaphysical truth. The metaphysical principle involved here is that of the necessary physical-material nature of the Body of the Universe which has no soul. As Thomists, we speak of the material soul of the plants and animals. Man alone is composed of a rational, immaterial or spiritual soul directly created by God for each individual human being. The fact that the inanimate Body of the Universe has not even a material soul, absolutely precludes for this Catholic position, any possibility for a gnostic, emanationist or Spinozean, pantheistic interpretation. As described in some detail elsewhere, the element, when entering into a living form, such as that of the plant, animal and man, participate in some mysterious way, in the life-giving principle, because it is obvious that they obey the directions of that life-form. For example, the elements of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, when entering into a green plant, - one that supplies the necessary chloroplasts, perform the process of photosynthesis. In this process, these same elements produce the sugar glucose and separate the water molecule (H20) so that oxygen is expelled into the atmosphere, to the necessary benefit of all other air-breathing forms! Now it is most significant that these same elements do not perform the process of photosynthesis in any other life-form. The implication is, and one borne out by research, that each substantial form contains in its central intelligence agency, very specific and precise directions, that are really laws for how the elements are to behave in each specific form and what laws they are to obey.

 

Any textbook in biochemistry will show you the different forms the atoms take in each situation. This is the Order of Creation operating in time as the Order of Generation, and since the Fall of Adam, we must add to the Order of Generation, that of corruption. But getting back to my suggestion that the Body of the Universe may be constituted of continuous matter that contains the principles governing all the operations of the discrete atomic particles, the article "Strange and Stringy” by Subir Sachdev (Sci.Amer., Jan. 2013), concerns the newly or recently discovered states of matter beyond those of solid, liquid and gas. The two new ones are of extreme heat, the plasma state, and of extreme cold, the condensed state. It was in this condensed state of matter that quantum entanglement apparently was observed. In entanglement, not just pairs of electrons, but vast numbers of electrons, as in superconductors, are coordinated“without mediation” but only by their “direct physical linkage.” The metaphysical necessity for material mediation or the existence of a universal medium (there is no such thing as a vacuum), seems to be supplied by String Theory. But this is an illusion. 
 

We must remember that the modern physicist only studies processes. He really rejects, on the basis of his overruling ideology of evolutionism, any idea of a permanent substance underlying all measurable and observable changes. Dr. David Tong came closest when he admitted that the atom, as a numerical entity, is here to stay. String theory comes closest to discovering a unifying principle when it observes that an immense number of electrons “act together as an individual whole”. (p.50, box.) Now if a large number of any kind of individual entities, whether of the soldiers in an army or all the parts of a living body, there must of necessity be a central intelligence agency. This is the central argument for St. Thomas’ 5^th way of demonstrating God’s existence. (ST,I, q.2, a3.) It holds true for the entire universe and all of its inhabitants. Men and angels have free will. The angels once were tested. The nature of the test is not revealed in Holy Scripture, but it certainly had to do with the concept of humble service. It was pretty much the same with Eve and then Adam. But even for creatures with free will the over-ruling of God as the One Infinite, Omniscient and omnipotent Being must be admitted because He could have prevented the sin of both the angels and of Adam, but He chose not to do so – and continues to allow men the freedom to reject Him and His Will. He does this according to the consensus of the Fathers, because He loves us and wants us to love Him. But love is not love unless it is freely given. A forced love is not love at all but servility. God simply wants us to love Him with all that this entails – such as carrying our cross after Him.

 

The Little Flower put it in a nutshell when she said, “To live by love is not to set up our tent on Thabor, but to follow Jesus up the Mount of Calvary. (Poem) So much for creatures with free will. But what of all the rest? There are the irrational living creatures, the plants and the animals and the inanimate. It is specifically these non-rational beings that St. Thomas uses in his 5^th way to demonstrate God’s existence. The apparently intelligent actions of living creatures, such as the spider’s weaving of its web, etc., indicate the existence of an intelligent cause above and beyond that of the non-intelligent creature. Likewise, the magnificent order and periodicity of the celestial bodies indicates an intelligent cause above and beyond themselves. Now here is the most significant fact of all: Every single creature in the universe can point to a parent in the Order of Generation. However, the universe itself, alone of all creatures, cannot point to any previous creature that might have given rise to itself. God alone, the Transcendent Creator of all things, visible and invisible, can account for the existence of the universe, of its Body that consists of the Heavens and the Earth, and of the Angels and all else that is made. Of all corporeal creatures, the universe is the first and only substantial form for which God is the only immediate Cause. Every other corporeal creature is and has a secondary cause. We see this described in Genesis One. Day One sees the creation of the universe, heaven and earth. Day Two sees the separation of the waters and the creation of the firmament. The work of Day Two is a work about which I must admit to being unclear and I submit to the judgment of Dr. Robert Sungenis on this point. The Fathers and Doctors of the Church referred to the work of Day Two as a Work of Distinction. Day Three is the first agency of a Secondary Cause, the Earth, with God as the Primary Cause and direct efficient cause of the substantial forms – or kinds of plants. From Day Three onwards, secondary causes operate in the Order of Generation under God’s Primary governing Cause or (concursus) – the maintaining in existence –which only God can do. But on Day Three, it is the earth, as Secondary Cause under God’s Concursus, that “brings forth” the plants.

 

And so, it continues to do so today, though in greatly compromised conditions due to the abusive treatment of human beings. Here is where the so-called new science of ecology properly belongs. Day Four sees the making of the celestial bodies, namely Sun, Moon and Stars, from the Light created on Day One. St. Thomas considers the making of all creatures and substantial forms – brought into existence for the first time – to be equivalent to creation, even though God used materials already in existence to cause the new forms of the Sun, Moon and Stars, then the plants, animals and man’s body. This will undoubtedly cause debate and disagreements amongst cosmologists. My own opinion, for what it is worth, is that God brought forth the universe, ex nihilo and in toto on Day One. This universe included in its one Substance – a Material Cause, the Prime Matter, which is the finite, but virtually infinite “pool” of possibilities (potencies), which can be realized or actualized in time. However, it is infallibly by Genesis, as Divine Revelation, that God created nothing new after the work of the Six Days, (Gen.2). All the forms generated after the first Six Days, the first Week of the World of time, are limited and defined by the substantial forms created during the Six Days. In other words, there are no new kinds of things after Day Six, - only variations. The only exception to this absolute rule is the individual soul which only God can create, because it is a spiritual form.

Part One of Quantum Physics & Thomistic Metaphysics, (Scientific American)

Two recent articles in Scientific American, merit the attention of Catholic philosophers of science. These two articles are "Unquantum Quantum" by David Tong (Scientific Am., Dec. 2012), and "Strange and Stringy", by Subir Sachdev, of the (Sci.Amer. Jan., 2013.) Ironically, the second article by Subir Sachdev would seem to contradict the first one, by David Tong, because Sachdev, with no reference, however, to Dr. Tong's article, claims to prove action at a distance. However, in view of Tong's evidences, which confirm the medieval position on the continuous nature of matter, there is no action at a distance, because all action, as of the discrete particles, such as electrons, takes place, of necessity, in the medium of continuous matter. Only the purely spiritual substances of the angels are able to act apart from, and free of, this continuous nature of matter. All inanimate, i.e., atomic structures, (forms), though constantly rearranging in obedience to the substantial form in which they inhere, absolutely require a substantial medium or substance in which to inhere as the accidental (or non-necessary, only relatively non-necessary) forms that they are. This metaphysical necessity, which is testable, repeatable and therefore scientific in the modernist sense, supplies the certitude that quantum theory lacks. For quantum theory claims to be based entirely on probability.

 

The approximation of all modern measurements, due to our state of fallen human nature, is one thing and does not take away the certitude supplied by the metaphysical principles of existence-essence, act-potency, form-matter and substance with its nine accidental properties. Probability, then, is just the uncertainty of the inductive method which must always leave open the possibility, or even probability of some thing or event that would alter, in some necessary or significant way, a physical model and its predictions. Such, for example, is the geophysical theory and model of uniformitarianism, that processes have always and will continue to operate as they do in the present. This theory was summed up by Scottish scientist James Hutton in the 1790's, when he dogmatically concluded that since he could find no vestige of a beginning, nor any prospect of an end, therefore..... But he should have read all of the great Roman poet Lucretius, because the epic, De Natura Rerum, very emphatically and clearly, while asserting the cyclic nature of the Order of Generation and Corruption, at the same time recognized the "fixity of species", and made it impossible for anyone to claim a transformation of species and remain in the domain of sanity.

 

But Charles Lyell, in the early 19th century, seemed to give scientific credibility to Hutton's theory by his Principles of Geology, based on newly discovered strata in the earth's crust with their innumerable fossils. "Read all about it" in the copious literature. See how Darwin was instructed by his predecessors and his peers to see a "record" of past ages in the strata-containing fossils. It is a long and fascinating story, nor is it free from political connections. The Whig party in England, with its goal as the permanent destruction of the monarchy, in league with similar anarchic-liberal factions in Europe, and the control exercised in all the universities and societies, such as the Royal Society of England - all these political and economic movements were intensely interested in what was going on in the sciences, as they still are! And here is the intrinsic connection between so-called theoretical science and Baconian utilitarian, experimental, empirical or technological sciences. These latter are constantly running up against that "fixity of species" that Lucretius recognized and that the latest experiments with the hapless fruit fly continue to prove.

Not only does uniformitarianism fail to account for this fixity of species, which is evidential fact, it also gives a false picture of earth history in its refusal to allow for catastrophic events that have altered earth's topography. The evidence for a universal deluge is ever growing. See the works of Protestant creationist Walt Brown and Catholic geophysicist, Guy Berthault, available on the internet. If the moderns had been faithful to their inductive method, they would have recognized the fixity of species which recurs in every variation on the stable form and which admits catastrophic events in earth's history - thus forcing some modification of Hutton's dictum, "no vestige of a beginning and no prospect of an end." In fact, this is both: A beginning is heralded by the very same process that presage an end: the Second Law of Thermodynamics. And so, too, in theoretical and experimental physics, as David Tong's article shows, there are certain fixities or constants that simply will not transform or change, such as the atomic structure and number and color unique to each element in the Periodic Table. 

That the elements intermingle and form compounds and evermore complex molecules is proof that they are not substances in themselves, but accidental forms of some larger substance in which they must inhere for their very existence. The elements, in their inanimate state, are properties of the very first created form, the substantial form of the universe, with all its accidental properties, created ex nihilo and in toto, on Day One of Creation Week. The natural laws that God established at Creation in each substantial form, constitute the Order of Creation and persist throughout all time without any substantial change. All changes affect only the accidental properties of the substantial form. The best example today is evolution and its claim that the substantial forms of "species" change over long eons of time into a different substantial form. They tell us that over these long ages of time, dinosaurs, for example, which are reptiles, changed their scales into feathers, their arms into wings, etc.. and so became birds. The evolutionist will tell you that he has evidences of this gradual transition. However, a close examination of these so-called evidences reveals their purely imaginative character. The fact is that this transition or transformation is as fictional as that from one of the primates into homo sapiens or true rational man. The primitive forms, such as Neanderthal Man, used as examples of this transformation, are proven to be every bit as human as contemporary man. The abnormalities of Neanderthal man are still found in contemporary man who still suffers from such diseases as rickets, arthritis, and other bone-altering conditions. Geographical isolation and inbreeding also cause various abnormalities such as those we see in the Australian Aborigines and the Pygmies of Africa.

The literature on this topic is immense and growing as the Protestant creationists continue their investigations in the areas of genetics and anthropology. Our Catholic contribution to this ongoing controversy must be mainly in the area of Aristotelian-Thomistic Metaphysics. This philosophy posits the fixity or stability of the Order of Creation. This Order of Creation is divinely revealed in Genesis 1-3 and specified most clearly in the Ten Commandments given to Moses, as narrated in the Book of Exodus. Furthermore, the stability of the Order of Creation is constantly exemplified and verified by the minor variational and accidental changes that preserve the integrity of the substantial form throughout time, which temporal dimension we signify as the Order of Generation. This Order of Generation would have persisted according to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, even if Adam had not sinned. But Adam's fall, plus the catastrophic event of the Universal Flood, have undoubtedly caused the Second Law to be greatly accelerated in its operation. This is demonstrated by such spectacular evidences as the decline of the earth's magnetic field, and the increased number of mutations in the human genome. (See the landmark works of Thomas Barnes and John Sanford.)  

 

Dear Donachie!

   

When I was in Graduate School at Catholic University of America in the 1950's, working on a doctoral thesis in literary theory, it was very much impressed upon us that we must consider what everyone else had said about our particular thesis, in order that each one's particular contribution might be truly of some value in our chosen field, and neither redundant nor meaningless with regard to others. In other words, research and writing were supposed to take place in an atmosphere of charitable conversation or even debate, not unlike that of the medieval university.

Today, the internet is going far towards replacing, if only temporarily, that medieval institution, whether for good or for evil. And so, I take up my pen and begin to converse with Mister or Master Donachie. A friend has sent me some 29 pages of text on the subject of heliocentrism and in defense of geocentrism, fully exposing the contradiction of a heliocentric cosmology. Hooray! It is about time! Master Donachie is obviously an engineer and what in Europe is termed a polytechnician. He is also equally skilled on the golf course and his analogies are very enlightening. I rejoice at his demonstrations that our blessed temporary home of earth is of necessity, a body-part at rest, having much influence by reason of its centrality in the rest of the cosmos. I hope Master Donachie will take the time to read and conside my papers on Newton's laws of motion and my thesis that the universe is a vast body, entirely physical-material, but with a spherical shape and hierarchical form, as its formal cause. This is explained at length elsewhere. Here I would only wish to take some exception to Master Donachie's definition of motion as a quality.

The scholastics and St. Thomas, all following Aristotle, defined motion as the passing from potency to art in some subject acted upon by an agent in act. The subject acted upon must have the proper disposition with respect to the potency being targeted for actualization. We think of most motion as transitive, that is, a change from one place to another place. This is local motion. But actually, all motion is local because all motion, - all change (motion and change are the same), occurs in a place, whether exterior to the agent and patient or interior to the agent and/or patient. Therefore, we have transitive or immanent motion. When I walk or drive or fly from one place to another, both distance and speed of the motion/change can be measured. Time is precisely the measure of the motion. Therefore, we say it takes me an hour (time), to walk from Nazareth Village to Bardstown, the distance of two miles, if I walk briskly. The only quality here is that of the briskness, but even that depends upon the speed, i.e., quantity of my briskness. So, this local motion is entirely quantitative. Immanent action issues more likely in qualities such as heat and light.

The exercises I must do in my body, in order to keep healthy, (so they tell me), proceed from the agency of my will in act and are aimed at those parts of my body in need of stimulation, for example, my arms and legs. So I am put on the bike by my will in act, though with some trepidation with respect to the sciatic nerve which lurks there somewhere waiting to be activated, which is to say inflamed, causing great pain. These potentialities for pain and for disease and eventual corruption, are the direct effects in our human nature of Adam's sin, - effects which, by the way, were completely absent only in the Sacred Humanity of Our Blessed Lord and His Immaculate Mother Mary. The nurse is always asking me to tell her where my pain registers on a scale of 1 to 10. This, of course, is a completely subjective value, but it is quantitative, not qualitative. They really don't care much for my subjective, qualitative effects of the pain. The medicine they give me is scaled to the measurement, as far as they can get it, of the exact amount of my pain! Impossible task! But the only way. And so it goes.

All motion is change of some kind, and all change involves motion of some kind, whether exterior or interior. The motions of the particles of the atomic elements, especially the electrons, are the most interesting. We need to incorporate all this polytechnic information into our supporting sciences: The mathematical certitudes of the earth at rest and the heavenly spheres revolving with their celestial inhabitants. The authority of the Church and the clarity of the Divine Revelation are the ultimate sources of authority that come from God.    

Genesis 1 - 3 and Women

According to the immutable Order of Creation established and revealed in the earliest chapters of Genesis, a woman, because of her creation, must be quite radically different from a man in every way. In every way, that is, except for the essence of a common human nature. Oh.... what we women have lost by being deprived of the lessons taught by the literal sense of Genesis! In Genesis I, the narrative delivered by God Himself, and given to Adam, the First Man, Adam is created and given dominion over all things below him. In Genesis 1:27, God specifies that mankind is a human nature consisting of "male and female": to the image of God He created Adam: male and female He created them. And God, blessed them saying: Increase and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it, and rule over it. (Gen. 1:26-27)

There is great mystery here; but I pass on to Genesis 2. (I accept the patriarchical theory of Henry Morris as described in detail in his Genesis Record.) Even in Genesis 1, God gives us the first of many dietary laws: both mankind and all animals are to be herbivorous, eating only plants. In Genesis 2, the narrative attributed to Adam by the patriarchal (based on the Toledoth) theory, there is the description of Eve's creation. As noted, it is radically different from that of Adam, and surely contains many lessons for us women of today. Adam was made (body) - directly from the moistened earth (slime) - and created (soul) directly by God's own breath - not His Word of command as were all other things, but by His own very Life which in us is Divine Grace, the supernatural life of an infinitely higher order than merely natural life, which Adam received either just before, or simultaneously with, the Divine Life of Grace. Now this is a great mystery, indeed, for us women!

How and when, did and do, we receive this divine life of Grace? Well, it is certainly a question for the theologians, and in the absence of the literal sense of Holy Scripture today, we have only tradition to guide us. In the light of this tradition (and relying on my own memory), I suggest the following: based on Genesis 2:18-25 and St. Thomas' summation of all his predecessors: human nature was complete in Adam, but not completely good. Human nature, as in Our Divine Lord Jesus Christ Incarnate, was absolutely complete and even completely Good because He is God. But in the human order, Adam simply, or per se, is not complete nor completely good without the added perfection of gender, the female woman. Our Divine Lord conceded this in what we see and must acknowledge as the real necessity for Mary, the Woman of Genesis 3:15 and the mother of all those who live in the Order of Divine Grace (Gen.3:20)

The position of Duns Scotus, that the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity would have become Man even if Adam had not sinned, is an extremely precarious position, because it calls into question the very essence (potency) of human nature in Adam and in Our Lord Jesus Christ. If Adam had not sinned, there are two possible scenarios: First, in the presence of Lucifer - serpent - who tempted her, Eve's intellect was equal to Adam's and she was not deceived, as he was not deceived, but seduced. (See Genesis 3:13, and Genesis 3:12 and 17 and this writer's study of the question in St. Thomas.) This scenario is impossible in the light of both scripture and tradition. Duns Scotus was in serious error. Second, if Eve had sinned but Adam had not sinned, the result would have been a tragically and really impossibly divided human nature. Just try to imagine it! In fact, much of modern literature, especially in the novels written by women like the Bronte's and thereafter, is based on just such a scenario. This is why such novels, as Wuthering Heights and George Eliot's -- Middlemarch --, are so very unsatisfying. They are not true to reality. They lack the necessary quality of verisimilitude. Aristotle's definition of a good plot, a mimesis, includes this verisimilitude in its definition as mimesis.

But there is a third possible scenario that is as unreal as the previous ones, and that is that Lucifer did not fall, either, and so there is no enemy of God and human nature. All of subsequent history gives the lie to such scenarios. And so, the position of John Duns Scotus must be rejected as the Neo-Platonic idealistic heresy that it is. The Franciscans who follow Duns Scotus must be converted to the realism of St. Thomas and the tradition of the Church. As St. Thomas teaches, Eve was not created from Adam's head because she is not Adam's equal in the strength of his intellect. Therefore, he could not spare any of that superior strength. Nor was she created from Adam's feet or lower extremities, because she was never intended to be his or anyone's slave. This is where the Muslim religions are greatly in error and need the example of our Catholic Tradition. But Eve was created, St. Thomas teaches, from Adam's side, - the side where his heart is, because this defines her vocation: to be Adam's helper, to supply the warmth and tenderness he lacks in his heart. As the theologian quoted in the National Catholic Reporter for Feb. 15-28, 2013, says, in his defense of the traditional position on women as priests, "none of this means that women hold an inferior place in the church.." Well, actually, it is more accurate to admit, as St. Paul and all of history testify, that woman is inferior to man, intellectually as well as physically. But the theologian speaks most truly when he asserts that "women have a special access to the Heart of Jesus..." What greater power could we ask! And is this not the very vocation of woman in essence, from Cana all through history?

Examine all the women saints, especially those who wrote theological treatises, like Hildegard of Bingen, St. Catherine of Siena, St. Teresa of Avila, St. Therese of Lisieux, and see the emphasis upon the will, which is to say, the heart, the seat of the emotions. And to whom did Our Lord reveal the infinite Mercy of His Heart but to a woman - St. Margaret Mary Alacoque!

Oh, the depth of the mercies of the Merciful Love of God in the Sacred Heart of Jesus!

Please, all you women who labor in the workplace while your children and your husband wreak havoc in the "home"! My grandmother used to complain that all she did was cook, eat and wash dishes! When I knew her, she certainly would not have been happy doing anything else! She loved feeding those hard-working men who came in at the sound of the big bell, to sit down at her well-supplied table with a plentiful supply of meat and vegetables, all from the farm, and her wonderful hot biscuits with newly-churned butter and fresh milk from the dairy. Father Denis Fahey knew what he was talking about when he called for Catholics to return to the land. On a farm, no one is ever idle, summer or winter, spring or fall. The doctor to whom my mother took me as a child, had received his entire elementary education at his mother's knees!

Women, return to the home, full time! Men, return to the land, or to the crafts of the guilds. It is the only way to begin to build a truly Catholic State and civilization. We have the example of scripture and tradition to teach us this. In the meantime, read Solange Hertz on the "Valiant Woman" of Proverbs and on Mary, the Mother of all who live in Divine Grace.

But wait!! Does not all this mean that Adam's sin was inevitable and therefore willed by God? No. If Adam had not sinned and if Eve had not been deceived, the only possible scenario, I submit, is that Eve first took counsel from Adam, discussed with him the proposition of Lucifer, for she possibly saw in the tempter, merely an angel, perhaps not knowing then or yet of the Great War in Heaven, although in Paradise Lost, she and Adam knew of it, (if my memory is reliable and it may not be.) Check on that.

In other words, if Eve had consulted Adam, recognizing in him the superior nature of his intelligence and he had used it according to nature and grace, what St. Thomas considers to be the one and only cause of the Incarnation, would not have been necessary. Theologians have speculated, (a good research project for some seminarian or other student), how relatively easy it would have been to save one's soul. I remember Father Urban Snyder, (former Trappist monk and novice master at Gethsemane, replaced by Thomas Merton), speaking about this possibility, quite at length. However, I forget most of what he said. It would make an interesting novel - one of those "what if" possibilities. Realists prefer to meditate on St. Augustine's, O felix culpa! And it being Lent, that is a far more appropriate subject for meditation. Leave such other speculations to Duns Scotus and his Franciscan followers.

Kyrie Eleison!

The Miracle of Transubstantiation

 

Understanding the minimal about this miraculous sacrament requires some minimal analogous understanding of the Aristotelian-Thomist concepts of Substance and Accidents. It is not difficult. Accidents simply are all that we perceive by means of our five senses: sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch. Substance is the invisible form that our intellect abstracts from individual beings and thereby knows what any existing thing is. This is the natural order of things.

 

 

Thus: one aspect of the miracle, the one most commonly explained, is that the accidents of white-ness, the taste of bread, the feel, odor and possible sound -- all of these fail to tell us what the Substance really is after the words of consecration. It is not so much a case of the senses deceiving us, but more truly of their inability to report or witness to the Substantial form that has taken the place of the two substances of the bread and of the wine. For these two Substantial forms have merged or united, as in the Hypostatic Union of the two natures, - Human and Divine, in the one substantial form of the Divine Person of the Word of the Father and the Holy Ghost, Jesus Christ our Lord.

 

 

This is the real miracle: that there precious, humble elements that are the sensible qualities we perceive in the Sacred Host and the Precious Blood, remain suspended, as it were, for they have no Substance in which to inhere. Their natural Substantial forms of the Bread and of the Wine, have disappeared in the One Substantial form of the Person of Jesus Christ - His Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity union to nourish and fill our little souls with as much of Himself as we are capable of receiving. The real miracle is that these humble atomic elements, in their absolute obedience to the words of the priest as an Alter Christus, Our Lord Himself no longer obeys the Substantial form beneath them, for if they did, these same elements would literally explode with the Glory of the Immolated Glorification of this Eucharistic Miracle.

 

 

I am aware that some Eucharistic Miracles show the Body-Blood-Soul and Divinity in His physically immolated state, bloody and torn. This is true enough and sustains the faith of many. But a more realistic revelation would be one in which the elements rushed, as it were, to bury themselves in the Glorified Flesh of the Lamb of the Apocalypse, the Lamb eternally slain for our salvation. It is God's great condescension that forbids this. All of this tells us why and how it is that when we receive the Sacred Host, we also receive the Precious Blood - and when we are permitted to drink from the chalice, we also receive the Sacred Host. There can be no separation, because there is only one form. The two "matters" of bread and wine, have fused into the One Person of Our Divine Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who now comes to us in this immense condescension, under the appearances of bread and wine, for His Flesh is Food indeed, and His Blood is Drink, indeed!! (John 6:56).

 

 

The unity of the one form is stressed in the verses that follow: "He that eateth my Flesh and drinketh My Blood, abideth in Me and I in him. As the living Father hath sent Me, and I live by the Father - so he that eateth Me, the same also shall live by Me. This is the Bread that came down from Heaven. Not as your fathers did eat manna, and are dead. He that eateth this Bread, shall live forever. (John 6:55-59.), and other passages from the discourse after the Last Supper.) This is the real miracle: that the precious, humble elements that are the sensible qualities we perceive in the Sacred Host and the Precious Blood, remain suspended, as it were, for they have no Substance in which to inhere. This is a miracle that the theologians should contemplate and realize: that this miracle, perhaps alone of all recorded miracles, extends even to the atomic level. Let the Catholic scientist, with the greatest respect and reverence, search out the chemical formulas for the substance of sacramental Bread and Wine, and then behold, contemplate, in divine Catholic faith, the obedience of these elements in their physical structures, to remain in this sacrament, without any substance in which to inhere. So, there are two amazing aspects to this divine action of Transubstantiation:

 

 

Firstly, the change and fusion or fusion first, then changes of the natural substance underlying and sustaining the two substances of bread and wine, into the one Divine Substantial Form of the Second Person of the Most Blessed Trinity. Since the Word is consubstantial with the Father and the Holy Ghost, when we receive Him in His Flesh, we also receive - according to our individual dispositions and capacities, the Divine Trinitarian God in His totality - Creator of all things - visible and invisible. All things presuppose Creation; the First Article of the Creed. Secondly, the second aspect of the Eucharistic Miracle, the one not most commonly acknowledged as the emphasis upon the accidents of the substance and the replacement or change of substance, is that of the elements themselves remaining natural instead of literally exploding into the eternal Glory of the slain Lamb of the Apocalypse. Thirdly, there is a third possible miracle involved in Transubstantiation. It is the possible and even very highly probable, (thank you Father Spitzer!), incidence of a physical vacuum, wherein the physical substance of the bread and wine, - present before the consecration, in the miracle - disappears into the One Divine Substance of the Person of Our Lord Jesus Christ. This is the only vacuum in the universe, and it is present on our altars as a true miracle, because the physical substance of the Body of the Universe, as suggested elsewhere in these papers, consisting of the electro-magnetic spectrum universally diffused but localized in some spectacular places such as the earth's magnetic "lines of force" - this universal substance fills all of so-called space and thereby supplies the medium absolutely necessary for the motion of all physical objects, from the largest of the celestial objects down to the smallest nano-particle.

 

 

And even this very probable miracle, as part of the Eucharistic event requiring our divine Catholic faith, absolutely requires the actual omnipresence of God and His concurring providential governance and maintenance of all things in existence. So we can say absolutely, and with absolute certitude, that while there is no such thing as a physical vacuum, so also, there is no such thing as a spiritual vacuum. Simply, by absolute necessity, God is everywhere, by reason of His absolute necessity for the existence of any thing and of every thing.

 

 

To be continued with an analogy from literature.....

 

Are You Complicit?

   

Dom Gueranger relates a story of St. Peter Martyr of Alexandria (Nov.26), who was the first to cut off from the communion of the faithful, Arius, deacon of Alexandria, for favoring the schism of the Miletians. (This is the same Arius who denied the Divinity of Christ and was condemned by the Council of Nicaea in 325.)
 

When Bishop Peter had been condemned to death by Maximian and confined to prison, two priests came to intercede for Arius. Bishop Peter told them that during the night, Jesus had appeared to him with His garment torn. Upon asking Him the cause, Jesus replied: "Arius has rent My garment which is the Church." He then forbade the successors of Bishop Peter ever to receive Arius to communion, for he was dead to God.

 

 

Today, heresy, schism and scandal have not only torn Our Lord's garment, but have stripped Him, are scourging His Sacred Body and crowning Him with the most cruel thorns of infidelity. Soon He will be nailed to the cross of general apostasy and die mystically in His Body the Church.

 

 

Far more than any external enemies, there are the factions within the Church that by their internecine conflicts, rend and wound the Body of Christ. Their bitter zeal on the one hand, and a complacent embrace of error on the other, poison the springs of divine grace.

 

 

The most conspicuous of these warring factions are: The liberals strive to conform the Church to a secular humanist mentality with scant heed to traditional discipline, morality and doctrine. Secondly, the neo-conservatives slavishly adhere to conciliar directives concerning ecumenism and religious liberty on the basis of "development of doctrine." Thirdly, the followers of Fr. Leonard Feeney, SJ., vehemently proclaim the most rigorous and exclusivist interpretation of the dogma, "No salvation outside the Church" - adamantly refusing to recognize the traditional doctrine of possible salvation by non-sacramental baptism of desire and of blood. Lastly, the sedevecantists maliciously attack all other traditionalists who insist that only a Council and/or a Pope is able to declare the Chair of Peter to be vacant, however blatant and widespread the heresies emanating from it may be.

 

 

 

Because each of these factions, as well as the Church in general, is focused on a particular agenda, there is allowed to flourish and grow in strength, simply by reason of being ignored, the great Master-Heresy of Evolution. Never before in the history of the Church, has a major heresy been so complacently allowed to spread and go on un-exposed and un-condemned, even being tolerated and most often embraced by theologians at all levels. It should be noted, however, that even though the theory of transformation of kinds or macro-evolution is false, and so proven false by theology, philosophy and empirical science, and even though the discoveries of the secrets of nature that bring about the marvels of technology are true properties of natural beings, it is the same spirit of practical atheism that inspires both the false theory, now even proclaimed to be a law, and the applications of real discoveries by technology.
 

It is the evolutionary world-view that informs, that drives as motivating force all the reforms of the Second Vatican Council and its documents. (Cf. Pascendi.) And yet, all traditionalists refuse to admit this fact and fear to expose its evil, because, I can only suppose, of the awe that modern science inspires. Has it not become a veritable idol, upon which we depend to save us from all ills and supply all our needs? Catholics, have therefore become willing or unwilling, knowing or unknowing victims of a doubly-evil science "falsely so-called" (I Timothy 6:10). However, the major complicitor in all this is the Society of St. Pius the X, because this Society is the most highly organized, the most influential, and the most widespread of all traditionalist groups.

 

 

I suggest that the main purpose of this Society is not so much to protect, preserve and preach the truths of our divine Catholic Faith, as it is to gain power with Rome. The main goal of the Society is to force Rome to lift all previous censures from Archbishop Lefebvre and his four bishops and to allow free celebration of the Tridentine Mass. The Society is openly committed to fighting false ecumenism (religious indifferentism) and heretical religious liberty ("error has no rights"), but there is no place in its agenda for exposing and refuting the Master-Heresy of Modernism, which the 1907 Encyclical "Pascendi" of Pope St. Pius the X described as the synthesis of all heresies, the principal doctrine of which is evolution.

 

 

I suggest and even dare boldly to maintain that traditionalists who refuse or otherwise fail to expose the lie of macro-evolution or the "development of doctrine" as taught by the Modernists described in "Pascendi" - or who fail to protest the destructive effects of evolutionism on the authority and inerrancy of Holy Scripture, especially as regards the Six Days of Creation, the geocentric structure of the universe, and the universality of the Deluge, responsible for laying down the fossil record -- and those traditionalists who turn a blind eye to the devastating effects of evolutionism on the traditional faith and fail to expose such a public and prominent heresy, are complicit in the apostasy of our time. They are very much a part of the problem. They are certainly not part of the solution. By their complicity they greatly hinder the exposure of the root cause of our present crisis of Faith and greatly contribute to its continuation with the loss of divine Catholic faith in souls.

 

Most traditionalist Catholics feel secure in the fact that they have ready access to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass in the Tridentine-Roman rite. Daily they are exposed to all the deadly influences of our secular society, the world-view of which is decidedly and aggressively evolutionary. And yet, the Pope and the Bishops refuse to condemn such a manifest heresy that attacks Holy Scripture and our Catholic faith at every major point!

 

 

Psalm 10 laments: "When the foundations are thrown down, what can the just man do?" Therefore, it is certain that all our attempts and all our plans for remedying the situation are but ineffectual human strivings in the face of a divinely willed/permitted trial with a divinely planned solution of which we can have only the faintest conception. As Our Lady said at Fatima, "Only I can help you!" God has given it to Her to usher in the restoration of the Church and the Age of Mary. Meanwhile, God certainly does not want us to remain passive in the face of major heresies that go unrecognized as such by all and sundry. The Church remains militant as long as She is on earth. Triumphant rest is for Heaven! While in the last analysis, it is the mystery of faith that must confront the mystery of iniquity. It must be an integral faith that confronts Lucifer, - a faith that includes all the traditional supports of natural reason with a supernatural faith in the historical veracity of Holy Scripture. Can any traditionalist Catholic imagine the Church without Scripture? And yet, that is precisely the position of most liberals and the position they wish for all the rest of us!
 

I believe most traditionalists are painfully ignorant of many basic truths, especially those concerning the natural preambles of faith and the supernatural inerrancy of Scripture, not to mention its miraculous, that is, divinely inspired interlacing of all past, present and future truths. The predominant liberal views on these crucial subjects represent an heretical fusion of natural reason with an utterly false evolutionary "science" and an historicist view of Holy Scripture that reduces Divine Revelation to a merely human document with a "theological meaning" for "salvation history". Excellent examples of both of these non-Catholic ways of thinking can be found in the Dec.18-26, 2005, issue of the Jesuit weekly magazine - America: "Biologist and Believer", Andrew Szebenji, S.J. and the review of "How to Read the Bible" by Steven McKenzie, S.J., reviewed by John C. Endres, S.J.

 

 

Only by realizing the predominance of such liberal thinking in the Church at large, can the traditionalist Catholic understand the entrenched extent and depth and Luciferian craft of the Great Apostasy that has invaded the highest places in the Church. It is so much greater in extent and in importance than questions of the latest episcopal scandal or whether or not the conciliar popes are legitimate popes. For, in any case, the Mystery of Iniquity as an evolutionary-dialectical theology, ruling Catholics today, is a far greater threat to divine faith than any other issue and will certainly prevail over those who have already lost or greatly weakened their faith by becoming pre-occupied with much lesser evils. We know for certain that evil and error cannot triumph over the infinite Goodness, Mercy and Truth of Almighty God and His divine Mother Mary, working as They always have, through the divinely instituted authority of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, against which the gates of Hell will not finally prevail.

 

 

Meanwhile, what but the world, the flesh and the devil hinder traditionalist Catholics from uniting to fight the Major-heresy of Evolution, now reaching monstrous proportions, and threatening if not themselves, certainly their children? Please pray about it.