RELATIVISM AS RELIGION
TRACING
ITS HISTORICAL ROOTS TO THE MODERN DAY CRISIS
By Roger LeBlanc
Foreword by Malachi Martin
Cover Art: “Expulsion from the
Garden of Eden”
By Thomas Cole. Gift of Mrs. Maxim Karolik for the M. and M.
Karolik Collection of America
Paintings, 1815 – 1865
Courtesy of the Museum of Fine
Arts, Boston, MA
Copyright © 2015 by Roger Trudeau LeBlanc
Permission in writing must be obtained
from the publisher before any part of this work may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including
photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system.
Printed in the United
States of America
Originally printed by Simon @ Schuster Custom Publishing
Http://CatholicSeries.com
†
Dedication
This book is dedicated to God the Father,
God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, One God who is
Absolute Truth in His Essence
Table of Contents
Introduction – 7
Foreword – 11
From the Author – 15
Relativism – 25
The Origin of Religious Relativism and its Consequences – 31
Out of Eden – 39
The Results are in – 51
Relativism, the Root of Secularism in Society and Politics – 69
Protestantism, the Ultimate Religious Relativism – 87
The Bible – 99
Reason or Feelings – 109
The True Rule of Faith – 123
The Bible or the Papacy – 141
No Salvation Outside of the Catholic Church – 157
The Boston Globe – 169
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Six months prior to the publication of the Encyclical "Fide et Ratio" (Faith and Reason) Mr. LeBlanc's book, "Relativism as Religion," was published by Simon and Schuster. Mr. LeBlanc met with Fr. Walter Abbott who was one of the leading Scriptural scholars in the world.
Fr. Abbott asked Mr. LeBlanc to bring with him two copies of the book he had written on Relativism to a meeting that had been arranged. Before their meeting was over Fr. Abbott placed a call to his contact at the Office of the Secretary of State at the Vatican with the following request:
"I am going to send you 2 books, and I would like you to personally take them to Pope John Paul II, and Cardinal Ratinger. No one is to touch them, they must go directly into their hands."
The books were delivered to the Holy Father and Cardinal Ratzinger as Fr. Abbott had requested.
Mr. LeBlanc had been working to expose the dangers of Relativism by helping to bring this issue into the light of day for which he received bitter opposition, including a death threat in a major Boston Newspaper where a Protestant Minister said, "Men like LeBlanc, and John Paul II, MUST be eliminated." Mr. LeBlanc received vindication with the publication of "Fide et Ratio."
There are also endorsements at the end from:
Patrick Madrid, Fr. George Rutler (Frequently seen of EWTN), Fr. Scanlon (President of Stuebenville College), and Fr. Robert Fox of Fatima Family Apostolate.
----------------------------------------------------
†
Foreword
Those who read
this book by Roger LeBlanc will begin to realize about half-way through their
reading that the author has pulled off the almost impossible. He has handled
and treated the most explosive (and for believers the most exasperating)
element in Christianity today, but has done so with all the calm skill,
technical accuracy and mental balance that we associate with those who have to
work with nitroglycerine
The explosive
element in question is religious relativism, the denial that there is one true
religion and only one. The fecklessness, the saucy presumption, the suicidal
ignorance displayed by our modern religious relativists evokes a great disgust
and is an incitement to violent language. This relativism is subtle, inserting
itself everywhere in religion and effectively introducing a blight into
Christianity and, in particular, into the ranks of Roman Catholicism.
Yet, Roger
LeBlanc conducts his examination of relativism without any heat or violence. He
dissects and analyzes relativism in its origins and its destruction of Roman
Catholic beliefs concerning marriage, sexuality, the family, the Papacy, the
Sacraments, social and political relations, education and science.
All this in
eleven highly readable chapters! He never once engages in "ad
hominem" arguments nor savages those who are busy destroying Catholicism.
Rather, in sheer, clear logic, he demolishes all the arguments used by the
relativists. He reaches far back into our origins in the Garden of Eden,
correctly citing the sinful relativism of Miriam, the sister of Moses. She was,
in one quick instant, cursed by God and turned into a snow-white leper in order
to pinpoint for all generations the innate perversion of relativism. But
throughout LeBlanc's demolition of religious relativism, you will see no
ranting abuse or denunciation. His monograph is a perfect example of what St.
Anselm pithily defined as "fides quaerens intellectum" (the believer
seeking to understand his beliefs).
For this
reason this book will be a Godsend for all classes of people: for believers who
must refurbish their religious acuity, for those whose faith went cold in a cold
world, for teenage and college students who must decide what they believe, and
for all those who realize that, if there is a true Revelation on this earth
from God, it must be unique, monopolar and accessible to the genuine seeker.
Malachi Martin
†
From the Author
There is a rapidly progressing diabolical disorientation taking hold of people about what it means to be a "good person," and the destructive consequences are nearly incalculable. We have to ask, "Who gets to define what makes a 'good person?'"
To answer that question we must first look at the plague of moral, philosophical, and theological relativism which is worse that any bubonic plague could ever be. Relativism has brought about an abject failure to make a distinction between Natural Law Morality and an understanding of Morality based upon Revealed Truth. It has gotten into the blood of many, many people, and it is wreaking havoc in reason, morality, and theology in the secular world, and in the Church.
In former
times when man had a lesser degree of explicit Revelation he was not without
knowledge of what it means to live a decent life according to the moral norms
of the Natural Law. But a failure to understand the distinction between
the Natural Law and Revelation has resulted in a false understanding of
spirituality which is on the rise. We
now see that 1 in 6 people claim to be spiritual and non-denominational apart
from, and against, the Church that Christ established. They no longer
consider themselves religious as they distance themselves from creed, doctrine,
and denomination.
Once you
abandon objective reality, and objective authority, your life will be distilled
down to one common denominator which is Relativism. We must be on guard
not to be taken in by Relativism, and that requires we see where it is fast at
work in all facets of life. The stakes are high, and in fact, the
salvation of souls is in the balance.
From the
outset we must have a clear and proper understanding of the distinction between
the Natural Moral Law and Religious Morality which is dependent upon Revealed
Truth.
Without
exception all “religious moral principles” are contingent upon an authentic
Revelation from God. To have faith one must have the gift of grace to
believe authentic Revelation, and this means religious moral principles are the
“object of faith." So, we can say that authentic religious moral
principles are anchored to authentic revelation as taught by the only Church established
by Jesus Christ which is the Catholic Church.
All claims of
religious morality outside of an authentic connection to Revealed Truth can be
discerned as coming from the inventions of men. However, as we explore this fact, we will see
how salvation is open to all men and the means by which this is possible.
Outside of
religious moral principles there is only the Natural Law which is different in
its nature, and has nothing whatsoever to do with the nature of religious moral
principles. The Natural Law is inherent in our human nature, it is the
way God made us; it is the parameter of our conscience by which we naturally
distinguish right from wrong.
The Natural
Law is also different in its nature than the 10 Commandments because the 10
commandments are an authentic Revelation from God. Although the Natural Law
(inherent in our nature) and the 10 Commandments (authentic revelation) are
different in their nature they compliment each other because they both come
from God. But we must never become confused and think they are the same
thing. The Natural Law comes from the
creative hand of God in the way He made us, and the 10 Commandments come from
the intervention of God in time and space when He spoke to Moses.
We also have
to look at the flamboyant use of the so called "broad-minded"
individuals who refer to anyone as a "good person" irrespective of
how they live, or whether they accept or reject Church teaching.
Relativism has
brought people to think it no longer matters if one lives a life according to
Christ and what He teaches through His Church so long as they are doing “good
deeds.” But that is tantamount to saying one can literally buy, or obtain
salvation without the need to cooperate with the grace that flows from the
redeeming act of Christ on Calvary.
And here is
the danger. This lack of understanding, this lack of clarification between the
Natural Law and Religious Morality serves Satan in his quest to bring into the
world a view of religion that is one of utility, an understanding of religion
which does not respect man and no longer serves God. It is a place where “good
deeds” are now defined as "religious acts" even if the acts
themselves are evil and done by someone who is in the deepest, darkest mortal
sin separated from all that is authentically religious. Such acts are now
heralded by the world where all can be inverted so that these people can say
with a wry smile "evil be my good." They use such things to silence
their troubled conscience knowing in their heart they do not serve God.
How do we
identify Relativism at work in these people? We hear them speak; they get to
sound "religious" when in fact they do not believe in God.
In an
interview for the Mar. 27 issue of ‘Rolling Stone’, among
many questions, Bill Gates was asked: “You’re a technologist, but a lot of your
work now with the foundation has a moral dimension. Has your thinking about the
value of religion changed over the years?”
Gates said, “The moral systems of religion, I think, are super
important. We've raised our kids in a religious way; they've gone to the
Catholic Church that Melinda goes to and I participate in. I've been very
lucky, and therefore I owe it to try and reduce the inequity in the world. And
that's kind of a religious belief. I mean, it's at least a moral belief.”
Gate’s
reference to “the moral systems (plural) of religion” is evidence he fails to
see morality differs according to religion. What he actually appealed to is the
Natural Law inherent in people of all religious belief and concludes the Natural
Law is the same as a “religious” moral system.
And for men like Gates it does not matter to
which Church you belong for a moral perspective, as long as you have one. His response illustrates his failure to make
the distinction between Natural Law morality and Religious Morality as taught
by the Church in which he claims to participate. His understanding of morality
not only fails to represent Natural Law and Religious Morality, but he
crucifies them both.
He is living a
life according to a subjective view of “religious moral principles” which have
nothing at all to do with religion to convince us, and himself, that he and his
wife, Melinda, are doing “good” philanthropic things through the “Bill &
Melinda Gates Foundation.” In fact, Gates and his wife are funding Planned
Parenthood, sterilization, and abortion through their Foundation as they go
about sounding like oracles of “religious moral principles.” They are giving financial support to things
and organizations that are diametrically opposed to authentic Church teaching.
This is an attempt to elevate the Natural Law to that of Religious Morality
resulting in full blown syncretism and religious
relativism where no one Church has a voice of authority over all others either
in morality or doctrine. The Gates’ have successfully blurred the
distinction between the Natural Law and Religious Morality to justify what they
are doing with their Foundation. Given
that the world offers adulation to the words and actions of its own Kings, all
the more responsible will these Kings be at judgment when they have to answer
for the rebellion they fostered by those who ate up their rebellion like candy.
‘Rolling
Stone’ then asked,
“Do you believe in God?” Gates said, “I agree
with people like Richard Dawkins that mankind felt the need for creation myths.
Before we really began to understand disease and the weather and things like
that, we sought false explanations for them. Now science has filled in some of
the realm – not all – that religion used to fill.” “I think it makes
sense to believe in God,” said Gates, “but exactly what decision in your life
you make differently because of it, I don't know.”
Gate’s is also
confused about the distinction between Natural Theology (the fact that God can
be known by the light of reason alone) vs. the Knowledge of God which comes to
us through Revelation.
Yet, we have
"Catholics" defending people such as Gates with his philanthropic
endeavors just because he occasionally goes to Mass, in spite of the fact that
he and his wife reject Church teaching as they go about doing evil in the name
of “religious moral systems.” And it is
because of the prestige of his wealth and name recognition that the sycophants
give ear to a man like Gates in matters of morality. When Relativism and human respect mingle with
motivation to support philanthropies that are evil you end up with a cauldron
of evil. Certainly doing good things for others predisposes someone to greater
things, but no deed can be considered a “good deed” when it takes souls from
the state of grace.
Bill Gates is
just one example of what we see happening in our day as attempts are made to
elevate the Natural Law for the purpose of supplanting Revelation and the
doctrines of the Church. It is an attempt to undermine an authentic understanding
of Revealed Truth and authentic religious moral principles. This is accomplished by masquerading the
Natural Law with the veil of "spirituality" and "religiosity,"
as though it were authentic revelation from God. The Natural Law has
erroneously morphed into what people now refer to as "Religious
Morality" lived out by alleged “good people” doing alleged “good things”
which are actually “evil things.” It is
a deception. Spirituality cannot be separated from the
Catholic Church, and those who have been deceived and embraced the “appearance”
of spirituality have embraced the fall of man rather than redemption.
The importance
of why a clear distinction between the Natural Law and authentic Revelation has
now come into view. Natural Law Morality
is not Religious Morality because
it has nothing whatsoever to do with Revealed Truth. This is where we
find the nexus, the manner in which relativists are attempting to redefine all
that is true in the Natural Law and Church Doctrine, and we must not let them
do so. Even if we are hated for it, at all costs, we must not let them do so.
And what is
the goal of the relativist in this regard? They put forward the great
temptation in our day which is to be "broad-minded." The objective of
that temptation is based upon the false idea that we can only go forward in
every sphere of life by what we have in common with all peoples, and all
religions. We are told
if we move forward by what we have in common we will obtain a proper
understanding of what it means to “love one another.” But this gives birth to a
false understanding of ecumenism because it excludes doctrine and dogma. It is false because it excludes Revelation
and God Himself.
The Natural
Law, now redefined as Religious Morality, becomes the new mosaic where
everything fits together. It is the new
face of God, an understanding of religious morality that defines us as a people
without respect to religious creed. It
is claimed to be the fullest revelation of God so that anyone, or anything,
that opposes this blueprint for peace is an idolater of doctrine and an enemy
of peace worthy of scorn and rejection. Doctrine, it is said, brings about
division and war. The deception of redefining the “Natural Law” to be
“Religious Morality” became the full blown redefinition of authentic religion
which has now become “Relativism as Religion.” This corrupted view of morality
and religion is totally cut off from the Catholic Church and Revealed
Truth. It is a call for the Church to
give up its doctrine, to give up its claim of authority vested by Christ
himself. It is a call to come down off the Cross in the midst of
persecution. The faithful must stand firm, it is our lot to suffer this,
and we must not let the relativists cast that ignominious pall of shame over
the Church.
Our brothers
and sisters in the faith need support, and so called "broad-minded"
Catholics need to be silent and sit down if they are not willing to look at
fact and yield to what Christ teaches through His Church. Let those
willing to stay with the Church, those willing to defend the doctrine of the
Church do so for the sake of others. Let real Catholics do what they must
without hindrance from the constant barbs and harassment from those who are
Catholic in name only, or those who refuse to do a scintilla of critical
thinking. The dilemma for faithful Catholics begs the question, how is it
there are so many who do not see the need to set things straight? This is
what we need to explore.
It is very
troubling to see the problem of relativism gaining steam day by day, and it
does not portend well for the church. It is a great difficulty that must
be faced by those who adhere to what Christ has always taught through His
Church. The dilemma posed by relativism can hardly be over stated.
We have the
startling comment made by Pope John Paul II when in 1976, as Cardinal Karol
Wojtyla, he said,
"We are
now standing in the face of the greatest historical confrontation humanity has
gone through. I do not think that wide circles of the American society or wide
circles of the Christian community realize this fully. We are now facing the
final confrontation between the Church and the anti-Church, of the Gospel and
the anti-Gospel. This confrontation lies within the plans of divine providence.
It is a trial which the whole Church . . . must take up."
We must take
what he said seriously. There have always been confrontations between the
Church and Her Gospel, but notice Cardinal Wojtyla did not say "another
confrontation.” He said "the final confrontation."
Pope Benedict
XVI astonishingly cautioned us about the world order called for by President
Bush saying,
“…a similar
unified civilization and its power to destroy the spirit. The anti-Christ is
represented as the great carrier of peace in a similar new world order."
“We are moving
towards a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as
definitive and which has as its highest goal one's own ego and one's own
desires.”
I, for one,
will never yield to that demonic attempt to undermine the Church by raising the
Natural Law to the equivalent of Revelation and Religious Moral Principles as
the object of faith. This is one of the greatest threats the Church, and
mankind, will have ever faced because a corrupted understanding of the Natural
Law will now be used as a means
to persecute the Church.
Roger Trudeau
LeBlanc
†
Relativism
J. R. Tolkien
said, “All that wander are not lost.” This summarizes the entire purpose and
hope of this work which is to free those imprisoned by Relativism. It is an invitation to come home to the
Catholic Church, the fullness of Christianity.
So, what is
Relativism? It is the claim that it is “absolutely true” there is no “absolute
truth.” Those who embrace Relativism are known as relativists who argue that
everyone gets to determine or create their own subjective view of truth in
philosophy, morality, and religion. But any thinking person knows that
claim is self contradicting and patently absurd. Why? Because they are claiming
it is “absolutely true” for all people that there is “no absolute truth” for
all people. It is a self-contradicting proposition.
By extension
the inherent contradiction in Relativism is evident when you hear people say
there is no absolute “right” or “wrong” because, in fact, they are claiming to
be “absolutely right” there is no “absolute right or wrong.”
They also
claim there is no “absolute good or bad,” but in saying that they are claiming
it is “absolutely good” to know there is “no absolute good or bad.” And when
confronted with their contradictions they retreat into silence which they
perceive as a “good” refuge to hide from being exposed in the contradictions
they embrace. They live in their mental constructs of confinement.
Going forward
we need a working definition of Truth. We can say that truth is “The
conformity of the mind to reality.” This is what is known as “Objective
Truth.” So, when speaking of reality we are speaking about the world of facts,
and in that world everything that “IS” in itself is an “Absolute Fact.”
In the world of reality it is impossible to deny what is real without first
affirming the very thing you are attempting to deny, so it is absurd to deny
what is real.
To make this
point in a rather stark way, suppose an elephant was sitting on your dining
room table. You do not say the “elephant” is “in fact” really a jar of
“peanut butter” on the table. Elephants do like peanuts, you may even
like your peanut butter smooth or chunky, and your dining room table will
likely have been destroyed, but the reality IS your claim the elephant is a jar
of peanut butter is not connected to reality no matter how much you insist your
claim is a fact. The fact is, reality informs us of what it is in itself,
and the existence of its reality does not need our permission to be what it
is. It is independent of our free will and exists as it is in itself.
In the world
of Relativism, delusion forms the basis for all false claims of fact.
Anyone can make a claim about anything and claim it is a fact, but it does not
mean their claim is in fact reality. The fact that Relativism itself is
delusion and deception, all claims that come from Relativism are delusion and
deception. And when relativists apply Relativism to philosophy or
theology their claims are simply not in conformity with what is real.
Their claims cannot be considered facts.
It is a simple
fact that it is an absolute contradiction to claim it is absolutely true that
there is no absolute truth. Reason ferrets out the relativists who push a
philosophy that implodes on itself every time it is put forward as a workable
solution in any form. It is perhaps the most mindless of any philosophy
ever put forward in the history of mankind.
Tragically,
Relativism is a horrible, dark and sad place to be. It is a place cut off from
the world of meaning where men and women live in quiet desperation. And
there are so many unsuspecting people, often without any fault on their own,
who have been tainted and deceived by Relativism without even realizing its
effect on them. Even the Church has not been left untainted from its
destruction.
Worst of all,
Relativism tears away innocence. It targets the heart to fill it with
guile and lewdness. It corrupts the mind to embrace absurdity and
contradictions. It strikes fear in the soul when it takes its victim into
isolation. It takes up residence in the conscience and intuition to set
up a struggle to embrace a love for sin in desperation to quiet a troubled
conscience. It corrupts every sphere of life with a false understanding
of the individual, family life, politics, education, reason and faith.
Relativists do
not enter into critical thinking without bringing with them a bias against
reality itself, and therefore a bias against their fellow man. When faced
with choosing between reality and delusion they will either look for a way to
escape from their delusion or they will plunge headlong into it with a
masochistic view of reality. Once they enter into that dark world they
can even go so far as to delight in the torment of others, and that speaks of
the demonic hatred of man working through such people. Nothing is spared,
so we need to look at its impact and the toll it takes on all things, but first
we must look at its origin.
†
The Origin of Religious Relativism and its Consequences
As was the
case for our first parents, intellectual objectivity and intellectual
relativism, objective morality and moral relativism, Revealed Truth and
religious relativism stood side by side waiting for them to make a choice
between life and death. And so it is for each of us, with our hearts and
minds we face the same choice.
Every bit as
much as scientific researchers have determined that mitochondrial DNA confirms
the account of Genesis proving that all of mankind comes from a single woman
(and therefore one man with whom she mated) the struggle with Relativism has
been passed down in the DNA of sin.
At this
juncture some questions must be asked because many are quick to dismiss the
account of Genesis as fable or myth. The deepest cry of every human heart
is to love and be loved. Is it too remarkable to see that for a man
to be capable of love, he must also be capable of turning away from love?
Is it incredulous to say that for a man to love he must be endowed with free
will to make a choice to freely love?
Man is part of
creation and it is only natural and fitting that God would use the creation He
made for man to choose between life and death; between love and hate. The
last time I looked there are actually real fruit bearing trees that exist, and
surprise, they have nothing to do with mythology, a fact you may want to
consider the next time you eat an apple pie. The notion that such an
event is for the simple minded comes from the species of arrogance. In
fact, there are fruit bearing trees with people who actually stand about them
picking fruit. How uncanny! There is no reason a fruit bearing tree
cannot be used to test a man every bit as much as telling him not to put his
hand in the cookie jar.
Furthermore,
God has planted natural laws thick in the universe, and He will not bend them
for the whim of man. One of those laws is that He does not create us as
individuals out of thin air without parents for a good reason. Each of us
is made in the Image of God, and we must come into this world through a law in
creation which is a reflection of the unity of persons in the Trinity itself.
From the love between two proceeds the third. And the attendant
consequence for man’s sin is that in the procession of persons are the effects
of Original Sin because we derive our fallen human nature from the fallen
nature of our parents. That is why we must struggle because of Adam’s sin
even though we did not exist to commit his sin. The consequence of his
sin is a debt for that sin which is passed on through the procession of persons
from his fallen nature. Adam knew we would suffer if he chose to sin
because God told Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply before he
sinned. So, we cannot blame God for what we suffer because Adam could
have chosen to love God rather than go against him.
Furthermore,
each of us comes into this world endowed with a free will to make the same
choice between good and evil, love and hate, life and death as our first
parents. Yes, it is more difficult because of the choice made by Adam and
Eve, but “where sin abounded, grace did much more abound” (Romans 5:20).
The mercy of God actually provides us the opportunity to be at a much higher
place in Heaven than was possible for Adam and Eve if we only cooperate with
His grace. It is that simple.
When man fell
from grace he did violence to his own reason, his conscience, and the moral law
to commit original sin which was in fact a rejection of Divine Revelation. This
is where all intellectual, moral, and religious relativism joined together as
one unholy trinity to attack the very nature of Revealed Truth that came from
the Holy Trinity. And now relativists are in the business of redefining
the Natural Moral Law to be “spiritual or religious morality” in an attempt to
divorce authentic religious morality from divine revelation. They aim to
replace divine revelation with the “Imposter Natural Law” that has nothing to
do with divine revelation. The result is a relativistic understanding of
religion and religious moral principles. Tragically, the relativists have
been very successful in corrupting man with this demonic disorientation.
This goes
beyond stating the nature of Relativism.
Once this corruption enters the heart and mind the door of Relativism
springs wide open. The result is a false understanding and proclamation
of "religious morality" which has lost its anchor to the
Church. The added layer of political correctness steeped heavily in the
tea of Relativism has entered the scene and is now demanding that we no longer
appeal to the Church as the absolute in determining religious morality.
We must be
mindful that even though Adam and Eve were in a perfect state of grace they
were not yet confirmed in grace. They were in an infused state of
contemplation, yet they chose to sin. In so doing they lost the preternatural
gifts, meaning beyond what is natural, to the fallen state of man. The preternatural
gifts established a perfect unity and harmony between body and soul, but they
lost that harmony, as well as the marriage between the language of the heart
and mind when they sinned. The soul lost its mastery over the body
resulting in a condition where the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. The
natural appetites of the body became inordinate making demands to use
legitimate goods in sinful ways, most often in lust. Though it was pride
by which man fell, Relativism was the agent Satan used to tempt man into
sin. And once the preternatural gifts were lost, once discord between
body and soul began, the struggle of Relativism entered into the equation and
would be passed down to all generations. One can be certain that
Relativism will be the platform of the anti-Christ at the consummation of the
world as it was with the fall of man, like corrupted bookends of time put there
by the hand of man as he yields to Satan.
Intellectual
relativism began when man went against the truth he knew in his intellect before
he fell. In his God given gift of “reason” he knew as a fact that all
things were good and made by God, and he knew this without the aid of Revealed
Truth. He also knew by way of “Divine Revelation” what God expected of
him. God said to Adam,
“From every tree of the garden you may eat,
but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you must not eat for the
day you eat of it you will surely die.”
We have just
seen Scriptural evidence that Adam also knew that all things were good by way
of a direct “Revelation” from God.
If Adam was to
go against what he knew was good with his intellect he would be going against
reason itself. This was the beginning of intellectual relativism+ where
sinners began calling “good evil” and “evil good.” This is why, in the
justice of God, man’s intellect was wounded for his sin. For Adam to deny
what he knew as a fact in his reason, and then to call a fact something other
than what it is, sets up a delusion to make his choice against God where he
became blinded by his own love for sin.
As was the
case for Adam, and as it is now, the denial of reality with the intellect is
the nature of Intellectual Relativism.
He also went
against the Natural Law, and in so doing he went against every principle of
Natural Law Morality. His sin against
the Natural Law gave birth to Moral Relativism.
God’s speech
to our first parents was authentic Revelation. They literally went
against the Revealed Word of God when He said to them,
“Thou shall
not eat …”
When Adam
refused to give God his due in the matter of Revealed Truth he turned instead
to worship himself in his delusion that he would become God. This was the
beginning of Religious Relativism.
When man fell
he attempted to define intellectual truth as relative rather than objective,
morality as subjective rather than objective, and Revelation itself as
subjective religious truth divorced from the nature of objective Revealed
Truth. To violate his God given reason to the point he thought he could become
God was a leap into the abyss. To
believe that all intellectual, moral, and religious truths would proceed from
within himself as the author and dispenser of his own truth is the price he
paid for grasping at divinity.
Satan will use
Relativism as a weapon in the battle for souls until the end of time, and we
see the slashing whenever we see Relativism at work. In fact, to see
Relativism at work is to see a direct line of tragedy back to Eden where
it all began.
When our first
parents chose to sin they broke the only “true rule of faith” which, in every
case, is dependent upon an authentic Revealed Truth from God. The
authenticity of Revealed Truth is the means to objectively understand all
matters of faith. This is true from the beginning of man to the last man
who will be born into this world. A true rule of faith is critical to
understanding authentic religious morality and Revealed Truth.
As a rule of
faith, Protestantism emulates the fall of our first parents at its core.
Just like our first parents, those who embrace Protestantism make a choice to
invent a false rule of faith which is unfettered religious relativism. It
is a forgery, disguised and embedded in the concept of Sola Scriptura which is
the belief that the Bible is the final authority.
A simple fact
is this: man cannot make his way back to God by embracing the very thing which
separated him from God to begin with. There must be an objective way back
to God according to the nature of Revealed Truth, and since the nature of
Revealed Truth is the intervention of God in time and place it can only mean
the objective path back to God cannot be established by man. It must be
established by God himself to sanctify us, and it must come down to us through
the centuries without having anything to do with the nature of man’s reason or
the Natural Law. We see this in Matthew 16: 16 – 19 where Christ
established His Church. It is a call for all men and women to abandon
relativism in any form. Any refusal to do so is a plunge into relativism
in all of its destructive forms.
To be clear,
since all men and women are made in the Image of God, all men and women are
bound to the law of love. Man is
therefore bound to be charitable to everyone regardless of what views a person
may hold, but love and mercy without truth is cruelty on both counts. It
is neither love nor mercy. It is
essential for us to recognize the reality of objective truth in reason,
morality, and one “true rule of faith” in religion if there is ever to be hope
for unity among men.
The nature of
objective truth is such that where there is truth there is unity, and that
means the true rule of faith is found only in the event when Christ gave the
Keys to the Kingdom to St. Peter and his successors. The Papacy is the
ultimate anchor and sign of this unity between Heaven and earth among men. This is another reason we have to explore the
fact that Protestantism is religious relativism by nature. But first we have to
look at what Relativism has done to the heart and mind of man in the secular
order and how it affects his relationship with the Church.
†
Out of Eden
Every age
since the fall of man there has been a struggle over the great questions of
life. But these questions became amplified as time passed and people
dispersed over the earth. However, something very important must be understood.
Even though man moved further away from the more explicit and direct line of
revelation and salvation over time, he still retained some degree of revealed
truth even after the fall of man. There is also the fact that the degree
of revealed truth he retained became more corrupted and over shadowed by pagan
rituals and sinful lives as it was passed down to successive generations. Nevertheless,
some degree of Revealed Truth remains present in the life of all people.
We will explore this later in greater detail, but for now the salient point is
that man becomes more cut off from objective truth the deeper he enters into
Relativism.
The great
questions such as, “Who am I? Why am I here? Where did I come from? What
comes after death? How am I to live with purpose?” must not be pushed to the
side. The fact that we seek truth by asking these questions is itself evidence
that our soul hungers for absolute truth. And make no mistake about it,
we are made to digest objective truth and internalize it in our soul every bit
as much as hunger in the body move us to keep the body alive by taking in
food. The search for truth is innate in our very being, and we naturally
seek goodness because truth is goodness. Without truth our soul would
whither up and die.
We also seek
love because the heart needs to love and be loved, and only “absolute goodness”
can nourish this hunger. We long for God to speak to us, and that longing
opens us up to our need for God. This is why authentic Revelation is most
natural to the heart of a natural man.
Sadly,
Relativism has brought about a great tragedy in the Church. Many who call
themselves Catholic are, in fact, Catholic in name only. They no longer
seek out Church teaching when making moral decisions, and they have abandoned a
life according to the precepts of the Church. This fact shows up in the
numbers of those who no longer keep the precepts of the Church, starting with
our obligation to attend Sunday Mass and to confess our sins. Fewer than
1 in 4 still attend Mass, and that number continues to drop, particularly among
young adults. And Relativism is right there as an ally to take them
captive, to encourage them in their love of sin, all the while justifying their
lifestyle with the false doctrine of Relativism.
The real
tragedy for young adults is they have been poorly catechized and often turn away
from the Church without fully realizing what they are leaving behind. But there are also those who turn away from the Holy Mass
in their heart, and we see the same in Judas who turned away from Christ when He
said that we must consume his body and blood to have Eternal Life. That was
when Judas broke. It was afterwards that he turned away from the
Eucharist at the last Supper. Barring a special grace that will show the
next generation they have been lied to by the evil of Relativism, and through
our efforts to expose the evils and errors of Relativism, it will be extremely
difficult for many people to find their way home to the Church.
We need to
look at what happens if we do not confront the relativists. If men and
women turn away from their need for objective truth two things will take place,
and we need to see how the consequences of that decision unfold.
First – Man will
conclude that he is the author of his own truth within himself, so that truth
is relative to what each person determines the truth to be according to his own
mind. As we have seen, the nature of Relativism is delusion, so the more
deluded he becomes, the more he cuts himself off from objective reality and he
will close in on himself.
Second – When his
intellectual dishonesty fails, and after he turns inward on himself, he will
now turn towards what he “feels” rather than what he “thinks” which is very
convenient when you love sin. Feelings and emotions will take over and
man will become a slave to his every whim, and his master will be his emotions.
As the world
becomes more of man’s own making he will languish like he is in the desert
without water. And given the fact that society is made up of individuals
whose deepest need is to love and be loved, society will turn from fraternity
to isolationism. In his desperation for meaning the relativist will look
away from God for another solution due to his inability to answer the great
questions of life. In his heart which he has hollowed out he will cry
out, “Somewhere, someone must know the answers to life.” In his delusion,
and very often due to love of sin and impenitence, man will take the attitude
that when science speaks about anything it must be true. He will often
look to the scientific method as though it was God, and he will turn what is
good in science into something of mythology. This will become his playground
where he can take the drug of the scientific method like an anesthesia in the
hope he can find meaning in skepticism. Not only is he quite blind to the
fact that science does not speak with one voice, but he loses out on the fact
that good science glorifies God, and that Relativism has cut him off from the
answers he is looking for as he drowns in his skepticism. If he had not
been a relativist to begin with his false assumptions could have been
avoided.
Science is
actually very limited. It cannot prove anything about the meaning of life;
nor can it speak to the needs of the human heart, the meaning of love, or the
meaning of what the mind longs for in its need for truth. In fact, the
answer to “meaning” is found only in philosophy and theology. Science cannot
even tell us why anything exists because there is no necessity that things
exist. Everything had to be willed into existence. And when faced
with this fact the relativist will plunge into the absurd, a kind of illness
develops and settles in the soul. He will often turn to love of sin like
a drug to temporarily forget his misery.
He tightens his grip on Relativism which will take him from depth to
depth as he plunges into the absurd, ill equipped in matters of
philosophy. At his lowest point he will attempt to make the absurd into
an absolute, and in his delusion he will proceed to make philosophical
declarations where he truly is a like a fish out of water. He will go about
flopping on the ground, desperate for the air of meaning. In his pride he will
become militantly dogmatic as he goes about denying the reality of absolute
truths as an absolute truth until the flopping eventually stops.
The depth of
pride in Relativism can be nothing short of stunning. It is in fact deadly, and
it continues to drive relativists into isolation where they prefer to wallow in
a place where they cannot make sense of the world. It is a place where they find no meaning, no
real purpose or happiness in life as they live apart from objective
purpose.
This begs the
question as to why someone would choose Relativism as a way to live. In
one way or another, and in varying degrees, it is a choice rooted in ignorance
often accompanied with confusion and lack of education which is then made
critical with pride and love of sin. The Relativist, in principle, becomes
an atheist seeing through the lens of their own delusion thinking they are the
only real God just like Adam tried to do in his rebellion. They live for
self, and everything and everyone else is merely a function of self in their
self constructed prison of desperation and isolation. And they are doomed
to a life of desperation unless they step back into the world of reality.
The longer they hold out on coming back to objective truth the more cynical they
will become in their inability to answer the great questions of life.
Nevertheless,
relativists have set up society for a fall, all the while promising a land of
milk and honey in a pluralistic society if we would only get out of their way. But to let them have their way would be the
destruction of all that we know. Unlimited pluralism rooted in
reductionist relativism, which is reducing everything to Relativism, when
applied to society makes for chaos. It would be the equivalent of
dropping a nuclear bomb on all the functions of a well ordered society, and the
fallout would result in a pluralism that tears down society rather than
building it up. It would obliterate any possibility of honest dialogue
and inquiry in the exchange of ideas, and it would mercilessly cut off people
who are searching for meaning with complete sincerity and without guile.
Objective, honest inquiry as to why another person may feel what they feel, or
think what they think, is shut down by Relativism which makes true fraternity
impossible.
The corrosive
nature of Relativism is producing a society clearly being overrun by illusion,
delusion, and deception, all which serve at the altar of Relativism because in
the end, Relativism is worship of self. For all that has been lost in a
languishing society the relativist now tries to put on the face of
sophistication, but it is void of wisdom and right living. We are
advancing towards a cold, heartless society without substance because
Relativism has no substance.
When dealing
with relativists we are dealing with very small minded people who live only for
self, their entire world view is about self, and in the end they can love only
self. That is what narcissism is all about. They have embraced nihilism
which is the rejection of all religious and moral principles, and the belief
that life is meaningless. The effect of Relativism is trickle down
isolation which we see in the explosion of cell phone “selfies” which is
symptomatic of a society where people are more and more beginning to think they
are the center of the universe.
There are some
relativists who also develop a false belief of the afterlife in the hope of
avoiding accountability for the way they lived their lives. Their view of the afterlife is modeled after
the way they have lived their lives of isolation on earth. In so far as they are culpable, as they have
lived apart from Christ they will be granted what they have chosen, unless
there is contrition. Otherwise, having made the choice to live oblivious
to objective truth, their own death will be the final meaningless plunge into
despair and oblivion until their delusion of oblivion is taken from them when
they meet God. And then the consequences will be too horrible to consider
if they are facing the isolation of Hell at judgment.
When we think
of a crisis in our society today there is no greater crisis in meaning brought
on by Relativism than the crisis of sexual identity. There are now
hospitals in New York City which are required to ask a mother who just gave
birth to a child if she is male or female in order to avoid litigation from
offending a woman if she feels she is a male trapped in a woman’s body.
This is just one example of the insanity brought on by moral relativism.
People are now refusing to acknowledge the objective reality that only a woman
can give birth to a baby. Reality has been turned away and in its place
there is only delusion and deception touted as fact. Such is the nature of
Relativism. People have been robbed of seeing they are made in the Image of God,
and having been brought to such a sad state of affairs concerning their own
self identity and worth they are indeed worthy of pity and prayers.
We must never
forget that the fall of man brought on confusion laced with the drug of
Relativism where man first turned to love of sin in his pride, and it was
catastrophic to man’s self image. Pride can become so deep in man that he
will choose to remain blind for love of sin, as it was in the beginning.
This happened in the fall of man when Adam’s eyes were opened which resulted in
a loss of vision. Think of it, his eyes were opened which resulted in a loss of
vision. This speaks of the blinding nature of sin, and it is a perfect
way of understanding Relativism. You lose your vision as you open your
eyes to see through the delusion of Relativism.
It shuts down your vision of objective reality and the heart shrivels up
and dies.
The problem of
Relativism is compounded when there is contempt for all that is contemplative.
The image of a cloistered Nun wearing a habit praying hours on end in some
forsaken cloister practically unknown to the world seems like madness to the
relativist. And that is because Relativism has produced a culture where
people can no longer be at peace within themselves in silence. They have
to silence the silence that is screaming at them from the emptiness within
their own soul. They have to turn on
the radio or the television and crank it up because they are no longer
comfortable in their own skin. The emptiness within becomes desperate to find
meaning and acceptance which gives birth to the need of “affirmation” with the
explosion of indulgence in all manner of body art and piercings. Some are so extreme in their shock value one
can only imagine these are people who are so wounded and confused that it might
well be a defense mechanism which they think will keep people away from them so
as not to be harmed. The tragedy is
Satan is wreaking havoc with them even if they are trying to convince themselves
they are comfortable in their own skin. In reality such things are a crying
out for attention, needing to be affirmed in all the wrong things.
Relativists
are socially cut off from the true meaning of living in fraternity with others,
and they come together to bond in noise, chaos, revolution, indulging often in
music which resembles the demonic laced with drugs. The need for
fraternity is strong, yes, but Relativism inflates their pride and confusion which
locks them in the prison of isolation and self destruction. In his denial of absolute truths the
relativist cuts himself off from true joy found in fraternal participation in the
great things of life that are filled with meaning and great purpose that are
greater than themselves. And that hurts a man deeply because man is truly a social
being. Relativism cuts them off from what it means to be a community of
persons which is a reflection of the community of persons in the Most Holy
Trinity.
The moral
deficiencies that have come from moral relativism make subjective morality as
common place as buying clothes according to your personal taste. One only
needs to look at what has happened to the educational system to understand why
teaching the Natural Moral Law and ethics have been abandoned. In its
place we now find raw Relativism in the classroom. This has diminished
the value of education so drastically that a need for cliques and fashion has
taken over to a degree never seen before, and the result is a catastrophe by
any standard of measure.
Students, and
society at large, are being conditioned to believe there is no longer sin, only
mistakes. And if there is to be any acknowledgment of sin it will be
understood and defined as being out of sync with your own relativistic,
subjective view of morality. If you think premarital sex is okay then you
are sinning if you do not indulge in premarital sex because you are denying
your true self. Any consideration of Natural Law morality and ethics has
been thrown out. Your ego and your own
subjective truth is now the papacy in your little deluded world view.
In the Papal
Message for World Day of Peace 2012 from the Vatican Radio Pope Benedict XVI
said,
"Today, a
particularly insidious obstacle to the task of educating is the massive
presence in our society and culture of that relativism which, recognizing
nothing as definitive, leaves as the ultimate criterion only the self with its
desires. And under the semblance of
freedom it becomes a prison for each one, for it separates people from one
another, locking each person into his or her own self. With such a relativistic
horizon, therefore, real education is not possible without the light of the
truth; sooner or later, every person is in fact condemned to doubting the
goodness of his or her own life and the relationships of which it consists, the
validity of his or her commitment to build with others something in common”
And if you
want to talk about hate crimes, Relativism in any form is a worse form of hate
crime than all others because it is hatred against all that is true. The
great lie of Relativism is veiled under the guise of human respect which is no
respect at all for others. You cannot even see the objective nature of
another person to give them the due respect they deserve. Relationships
are reduced to utility which most often sexually objectifies women.
Relativism reduces love of others to love of self at the expense of others. Objective love between all men and women is
destroyed. Countless souls are being educated and convinced they can justify
anything under the banner of “choice” which appeals to a corrupt, relativistic
understanding of freedom in any society. Just one case to make the point
is abortion.
Mediocrity is
incremental relativism where excellence is openly ridiculed and punished.
In fact, there is now celebration of mediocrity for those who wish to embrace a
notion of no self worth to be comfortable with their laziness and theft.
If a Catholic
man abandons moral objectivity, if he succumbs to a world that says you can no
longer speak about morals in the public sphere, or matters pertaining to faith,
what has become of his manliness? If he yields to being emasculated by
moral relativism he is denying the fact of objective morality in the Natural
Law. He is also saying the Catholic Church has no authority to speak about
morality any more than a Protestant denomination. If that is the lot you
have chosen, why do you call yourself a Catholic?
There is a
literal war taking place between relativists and those trying to bring sanity
back to societies that are crumbling. We are obliged to do our best to
bring back hope to the heart and sound reason to the mind because the social
structure itself is at risk. We must be willing to take the risk and
speak to a culture desperately in need because God made all of us with our
deepest need which is to find and love God which gives meaning and joy to us in
this life and in the next. In the name of Charity we must struggle
against a prevailing culture that is increasingly turning away from all that is
moral and true for the sake of others.
If we saw a
thief rob someone of their life earnings would we not at least call for help?
Relativism is a thief like no other, robbing souls of all satisfaction in every
day living, driving them into the world of sexuality and drugs to escape the
lack of meaning in their life. Life itself becomes activity for the sake of
activity as an end in itself, an escape from having no ultimate meaning and
purpose. But God did not abandon man in
the way He made him. The heart and conscience of the relativist, and
their God given reason are beckoning them to abandon Relativism in all of its
forms, if they would only abandon their pride and relax in objective
truth. But all too often the effects and love of sin have settled
into a way of life where it becomes hard to die to self. If they turn to God He
is waiting for them, and He will give them the grace to come home to a
resurrection of hope in heart, mind, reason, morality, and in theology.
†
The Results Are In
The results of
this bad experiment called Relativism are in, and the evidence for the toll it
is taking is overwhelming. The list is endless, but in particular we see
the toll it is taking on the young who are giving into despair in greater
numbers than ever before with suicides on the rise. There are probably
many parents who want to throw their remote control at the TV set when
listening to liberal educators telling us how smart they are, and how parents
have to give up their children to be educated by “the Village.” Parents are being told, actually forced in
many cases, they must forfeit their role as the primary educators of their
children. And worse, many parents are
falling lock step into the trap of political correctness with such rapidity it
is shocking. They bow down to a maniacal system spawned by Relativism
which encourages parents to praise their children for such things as having the
courage to come out in the open about their sexual orientation.
The family
which is the bedrock of society has been devastated. Once moral
relativism broke down marriage between one man and one woman anything
goes. The following is but one example of three fathers proudly walking
their daughters down the isle for a “throuple” lesbian marriage. From the
article,
“The idea for
the ceremony, culminated when each of their fathers walked them down the aisle,
came from Kitten. “Marriage had always been an important symbol of commitment
for me,” she said.”
https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/the-next-marriage-redefinition-massachusetts-lesbian-throuple-expecting-the
If you embrace
reductionist relativism you cannot really live for others. In order to
live for others you have to be able to enter into a relationship with them, you
have to be able to share your thoughts, your ideas, and truth with them. But,
if you are cut off by relativism you end up frustrating the very nature of
relationships because you have lost a proper understanding of “person.”
A decent man
has to be able to share his very self with others. He’s got to be able to
share what is good, and he’s got to be able to tell others what he knows to be
good without being shut down by political correctness and the concern of being
charged with hate speech for holding to objective truths in reason, morality
and in matters of faith.
One of the
things you are taught in martial arts is to be aware of your
surroundings. When you look about it is nearly impossible not to notice
the drama of “hate speech” that has taken deep root in your surroundings.
Ask any of your friends who are mindful of what is happening in society if they
are careful about what they say in public these days, even in a
restaurant. There is concern that if you say something about your views
on homosexuality the person in the next booth will be offended, and you risk
having them register a complaint against you as a hate crime. I was in a
booth at a restaurant speaking about pro-life issues with a friend. In the next
booth was a woman with her daughter who was probably about 7 years old.
The woman was apparently listening to everything I said in favor of pro-life,
and when I got up to leave she followed me and said “When it is the right time
I am going to teach my daughter that abortion is okay, even if the pregnancy is
just an inconvenience.” I turned to her and said “Really? How are you
going to explain to your daughter that your love for her was unconditional when
she realizes that if your pregnancy with her had been an inconvenience you
would have aborted her by tearing her to pieces and then toss her into a bucket
to be incinerated?” The rage on that woman’s face was palpable as I
walked out.
It is no
longer the same country when you have to be concerned about saying
non-threatening things that deal with morality in the objective order. We are threatened if we call out sin and
relativism for what they are. The charge of “hate speech” is rooted in
moral relativism and is an encroachment on free speech. It has no place in our legal
system as envisioned by our founding fathers. It was they who declared
and defined the Natural Law as indispensible to objective jurisprudence. But
Relativism has taken over the courts which no longer recognize the rights of
free speech in many cases. In fact, the Courts have violated the Separation
of Church and State. They are legislating the tenets of the State Religion of
Secular Humanism, thereby violating the rights of Conscience for Catholics and
a host of others. Catholics have an obligation to truth, in fact, all of
us are bound to seek what is true and we will be judged for what we have done
with that obligation. But any society that has turned away from objective truth
can only produce a people that digress and are now looking for a way to claim
they are a victim of one sort or another. After all, it pays these
days. One can take in a great pay day with financial compensation from
the most absurd settlements because their “feelings” were offended. Such
a society is doomed for collapse.
If you look at
the life of many people who claim to be a victim of hate speech you will find
they are riddled with Relativism. Hardly a thing that comes out of their
mouths is untainted by Relativism. And the curious thing which is those
who are “offended” are now willing to impose their subjective view of morality
and justice on someone else’s subjective view of morality and justice which
offends the offender. Such are the mental gymnastics of the
relativist. This is hardly a recipe for unity and fraternity in
society. The success of shows like Judge Judy comes about from people who
see themselves as victims, imagining what they would do if they had a say in
what they watch. They live in the delusion of moral relativism and
victimhood as though they find meaning in life screaming at the Television.
If these
people followed their own logic, which is the claim there is no absolute truth,
they should not be able to claim they are offended by anything someone else
says. Why? Because the other person’s subjective truth tells them
they are free to offend you. We can see that as Relativism advances the
world is coming to a place where moral insanity is fashionable. In fact,
it is profitable. It is becoming a place where objective truth is now
considered hatred and contempt which is the same as calling good, evil.
But it is the relativists who say there is no right or wrong. They are
the ones causing the destruction of all societies.
Who among us
cannot imagine a scene from an old black and white movie where a group of
maniacal planners gathered around a table putting their overarching master plan
into effect? Do you think the spread of Relativism happened by
accident? We are not watching an old black and white movie anymore.
Relativism is spreading in full Technicolor. Relativists are busy at work
pumping Relativism into the veins of every facet of society to include
education, media, the body politic, and our understanding of human rights. They
have brought people to a place where they proudly say that we derive our rights
not from God, but from the State. They have embraced Socialism without
even a whimper, failing to see if the State gives you your rights it can take
them as well. That is the recipe for genocide as we have seen time and
again throughout history.
People are
becoming sheeple, willing to bend the knee and raise a hand in a diabolical
salute to a gathering storm just over the horizon. It is a storm being paid for and driven by
corrupt billionaires, organizations, and governments which are implementing
Relativism through economics and political correctness. The fact that “political correctness” was not
in our lexicon not long ago, but is now a legal concern shows you the rapidity
with which nations are collapsing. Do you really think political
correctness which has its roots in moral relativism came out of nowhere; that it
just happened by chance? If it were by chance mere sanity would kick it to the
curb, but the fact that it is now receiving legal protection shows us this is
yet another form of relativism orchestrated by the social engineers. It
is being enshrined in society by the overlords in any way they wish, and the
pride of the impenitent common man, ever trying to be erudite, is low hanging
fruit for this trap. We even have State Supreme Courts thwarting the will
of the majority opposed to homosexual marriage. Is that by chance as
well? No, they are the overlords shoving moral relativism down the
throats of the populace. And now we have the looming decision by the
Supreme Court itself which may soon sanction homosexual marriage, as if
abortion was not bad enough. All of these deviations from the Moral Law are due
to Moral Relativism.
We have the
added concern that the United States Supreme Court just turned down an appeal
from the State of Louisiana which may result in forcing a Catholic Priest to
violate the Seal of Confession. The Priest may have to choose between breaking
the Seal of Confession or go to prison. Even if the penitent in this case
says it is okay for the Priest to break the Seal, he cannot do so. Nor is
the penitent privy to everything the Priest may know about the matter.
This threat to the sanctity of the Seal of Confession is a result of secularism
rooted in moral relativism. The State is taking the position that it can strip
us of our God given and religious rights with its pseudo religious authority
now veiled as the Religion of the State from which our rights come. All
of this originates from moral relativism. Once the State can force open
the seal of Confession for what it calls “an “exception” it can do so in the
future for any reason. What the State of Louisiana is
doing is a clear violation of the separation of Church and State. The war
against the Church is on, and it is coming into full swing.
Even from a
pragmatic point of view, the philosophy of Relativism has been debunked.
It is cruel, intellectually dishonest, hedonistic, patronizing, isolating and
utilitarian in purpose at the hands of corrupt men responding to the
instigation of Satan. It breaks down people into 2 camps, the sycophants
who love their sin, and the authentic victims who are robbed of human decency.
First, the
sycophants – With
Relativism as a weapon in hand they are as a possessed people with demonic
purpose attempting to justify their sin with Machiavellian purpose. With their
employment of cunning and duplicity which is their drug of addiction to love
their sin and silence their own bad conscience, they are enslaving the world to
all manner of sin. Their own personal Hell has begun and misery loves
company. They are driving people over the brow of the hill of the absurd
like a people possessed making them twofold sons of Hell more than themselves
as they rush headlong into the sea in their madness, and they are legion in
command.
As the Book of
Proverbs says in Chapter 4 vs. 14 – 19,
“The path of
the wicked, enter not, walk not on the way of evil men; shun it, cross it not,
turn aside from it, and pass on.”
“For they
cannot rest unless they have done evil; to have made no one stumble steals away
their sleep. For they eat the bread of wickedness and drink the wine of
violence.
“The way of
the wicked is like darkness; they know not on what they stumble.”
Second, the
authentic victims – There are
those who simply do not understand the impact that Relativism will have in
their lives, or that they have been tainted by it. Growing up in a
society where you absorb and assimilate Relativism a conflict is set up in your
conscience and reason which produces a great struggle wherein people are trying
to find out who they really are and what life is about. It is these
people who we must look upon with authentic sympathy and pity. Often they
are people who have been beaten down in life, hurting, looking for some way to
find meaning and purpose and acceptance.
In a very simple
way they respond to the struggles of life and need for acceptance by attempting
to be profound in polite conversation with platitudes that are anchored in
Relativism. Maturing is natural, but to see the maturing process
assaulted by Relativism makes one’s heart break for them. Much of what
these people have to say comes from the recognition that something is wrong in
the world, even if they cannot yet define it. Their needs and concerns
are real and alive because they know, even if only at the intuitive level, the
light of faith and sound reason are being extinguished by Relativism. It
is hard for them to even know where to look to solve their problems, so it is
our obligation to be unafraid and defend objective truth to help free them from
the snare of Relativism. And it does not matter what the world thinks of
us, we simply have to redouble our efforts.
Perhaps the
most difficult of all the consequences that flow from Relativism is its impact
on the family. Relativism is embedding into the thinking of children,
brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, husbands, wives and grand parents.
This is a particularly difficult dilemma because these are the people we love,
and we must continue in that love, by all means. But we must not be naïve about what is trying
to take hold of them. When Relativism shows up in things said by those we
love, or in any conversation, we must not be afraid to speak up with as much
love and concern as possible, but there must be no misunderstanding or retreat
at the expense of what is true. We must say NO to Relativism and confront
it head on lancing it like an infection. It must be cut out at the root
otherwise its poison will rise up in the shoot and kill what was once
alive. And it serves us well to realize that relativists will label
passion in defense of what is objective as fanaticism.
The
consequence of Relativism does not stop with family. Relativism is
infecting friends, co-workers, those sitting in the pew next to you in Church,
and even the Pulpit in the Sanctuary. The danger is to everyone, without
exception. We even have to check ourselves to see if we have been tainted
by Relativism.
For those to
whom much is given much is expected, and Catholics in particular have an
obligation to reach out to others, but they must clean their own house
first. There are far too many people who were raised as Catholics who are
now Catholic in name only, steeped in Relativism like a tea bag that has been
used up. They are giving terrible examples and advice to other Catholics,
to Protestants, and to non-believers, as well as to their own children.
They have abandoned their family and in so doing they have abandoned their
children to the coming storm.
How then are
we to bring those who are Catholic in name only and the lukewarm back to a true
understanding of the Church and Her doctrine? In our approach we first
have to consider whether they may have had some pretty bad experiences at the
hands of those who represent the Church. Many have fallen away because of
things they have seen and heard, or experienced themselves, and Relativism is
right there to take hold of them and lock them up where they are kept as if
frozen in time. Tragically, due to poor catechesis and a lack of
formation in logic, they really know very little or nothing at all about the
Catholic Church in which they were raised. There is a common refrain
among many Catholics who no longer abide by the teachings of the Church who
say, “I went through 12 years of Parochial School, and I know better now, I do
not need the Church.” When you ask these people questions about the most
rudimentary things in Catholicism they are woefully ignorant of the Church and
Her teachings. In truth, one must be embarrassed for them because far too
often they have been deceived by those within the Church who dissent from
Church teaching.
There are many
onlookers at what is happening in the Church who are not Catholic, and they
know very little or nothing at all about Catholicism. They too are being
tempted by Relativism, and they are seeing it make its way into the ranks of
the common Catholic. Perhaps they are interested in the Church, perhaps
their conscience is crying out for help realizing they are in a place that goes
nowhere in life. But they are being denied the light of Revelation by the
darkness of Relativism which they see coming from those who call themselves
Catholic, but are Catholic in name only.
It is without
question that living an authentic Catholic life is an invitation for others to
believe the Gospel. The Catholic life is a testimony to the strength of a
Sacramental life which fortifies us as we try to live out life in union with
objective reality. Relativism shuts all that down. And if you
present Relativism as the face of the Church you are a deceiver of the human
heart, and those in rebellion will try to use your hypocrisy as an excuse to
justify their own sin and rejection of the church. You will make them
lovers of sin like yourself because Relativism not rejected is a sin.
Unless and
until Churchmen and the faithful put their foot down and wage a war on
Relativism the descent into darkness so manifest in society will continue, and
people will become more cynical. It is said that man is only nine meals
away from becoming a savage. If you apply the same to the spiritual life,
if a man is intellectually and spiritually starved for moral and religious
truth the picture is not pretty. The truly faithful have the obligation
to speak up with clarity and resolve, else-wise there is a great danger that
many, many people will plunge headlong into the vortex of Relativism where they
will experience the tornadic winds of doubt and skepticism. We have
heard that a piece of straw can be embedded into wood from the force of wind
from a tornado. That is a pretty accurate visual of what appears to be an
otherwise harmless piece of straw with the poison of Relativism on its tip can
do the heart and mind. Once it is embedded the poison spreads in the
system. And once that happens the injured will be found trying to stagger
our of the debris field that was once their home where they lived with
objective truth. They come from the destruction citing novel claims of
“spirituality” that have nothing whatsoever to do with authentic Revelation,
all in an attempt to find a new home as they search for meaning in life because
Relativism makes you homeless.
There is no
scaling it down, no obfuscating the problem of Relativism, there is no denying
what it is, nor is there any excuse for it. Sin is sin, and we have to be
contrite for all sin, otherwise we become crippled. Relativism will
gladly assist in crippling us so that we do not even consider repentance. Once
you think you are the arbiter of moral right and wrong you think there is no
longer sin in your regard. You sink into the delusion that there are only
“mistakes” and you live out that delusion in your heart and mind. When we
consider the ultimate and most severe consequence of Relativism it is always
related to pride which brings about death of the body and soul, “The wages of
sin is death” (Romans 6:23). How is it we do not see the urgent need to
help others turn away from Relativism in all of its forms?
Isaiah tells
us “But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden
His face from you, so that He will not hear you.” (Isaiah 59:2). Relativism is
becoming so deeply intertwined with iniquity and the ego it is adding layer
upon layer to the hard shell of pride. Yet, we must endure the
consequence of man’s initial rebellion against God which continues to bring
about a languishing society steeped in the philosophical and theological
desolation of Relativism.
And we must
remember that a failure to call sin a sin is to abandon people to
hopelessness. If we fail to show others the foolishness of Relativism we
abandon them to confusion. This cannot be overstated. The world is
becoming so confusing for people it is no wonder they are tiring of the
struggle. And if we do nothing, the world will soon enough paint
Catholics as the only sinners on the planet, and the only sin will be global
warming. Remember, like all of us, those who are searching are sinners
too, but they must be honest within themselves and stop making excuses for
fashioning morality in such a way as to assuage their own bad conscience. If
Catholics succumb to self-loathing because of hatred coming from those in
rebellion against objective truth, they need to understand the relativist will
despise them even more for caving in to their pressure. That is the nature of
evil. They will join in on our self-loathing with some demonic measure of
instigation for the extra measure of sadistic pleasure.
And while it
is true to say there are many calling out for hope in their need, if Catholics
succumb to the relativistic notion that the Gospel, as understood by the
Catholic Church, is just one more understanding of the Gospel that is no better
or worse than other interpretations of Scripture, Relativism as Religion
becomes enshrined. The Catholic Church is not a denomination. It is
Christianity in its fullness, and if we let the relativists frame the argument
by referring to the Catholic Church as a denomination we open the door for
destruction to make its way into the Church.
When Christian
denominations broke from the Catholic Church they retained certain Christian
elements, but they no longer have the fullness of Christianity. In fact,
Pope Benedict XVI declared Protestant denominations cannot be properly referred
to as a “Church” because they lack a valid Bishopric and a valid Eucharist.
They are merely an ecclesial Christian community by virtue of Baptism.
On July 10,
2007, Pope Benedict issued a statement clarifying the Catholic Church’s
position on “the church.” He stated the Catholic Church is the only true
church and that the Protestant communities,
“Cannot,
according to Catholic doctrine, be called ‘Churches’ in the proper sense,”
because they lack apostolic succession, that is, the ability to trace their
leadership back to Christ’s original disciples.”
That was a
call for all denominational communities to get back in line with the only
Church established by Jesus Christ himself. This caused a significant
uproar in the Protestant world, but the Pope is correct. We will explore
the role of Relativism in Protestantism in greater detail later, but, just as
the Natural Law has taken on the “appearance” of “religion” in our day, so too
has Protestantism has taken on the appearance of a “Church.”
The nature of
the Catholic Church is a divine institution established by God himself when He
walked the earth as the God/man. The divine nature of the Catholic Church
cannot be diminished by the sins of its members anymore than Christ could be
stripped of his divinity by the lashes He received during his passion and
crucifixion. It is therefore futile for relativists to point out the sins
of Catholics in their attempt to denounce the Church, or to redefine the Church
as just one more denomination in a relativistic view of Christianity.
If those
crying out with an authentic need for help from the Church are sincere of
heart, they will not be so ready to cry out “hypocrite” when a Catholic fails
by sinning. They may have justifiable disappointment when Catholics fail,
but none of them are as pure as the wind driven snow. They will recognize
the weakness of fallen human nature, even within themselves.
But the
seemingly ever present relativist, who, out of hypocrisy and bad conscience
which they have tried to silence, never fails to profusely “judge” any Catholic
who sins. A perfect example of this hypocrisy can be found in the
person of Gandhi, in spite of the fact that there are endless Catholic
apologists who refer to the virtues of Gandhi as though he were a saint.
One would think Catholics are to defer to the likes of that man and how he sees
Christianity. He is far from a saint they portray him to be.
It is reported
that Gandhi was asked why he did not become a Christian given that he often
read Scripture. Gandhi answered,
“If I had ever
met one, I would have become one.”
Well, how
about this? If Gandhi was not a hypocrite maybe he would have in fact had the
courage to become a Christian. But he
did not have the courage, he did not want to die to himself and his own sin, he
did not want to die to his own hypocrisy. His answer was not only a back
handed insult to all Christians, but he took a swipe at his own conscience
which accused him of his own bad behavior. He never met that kind of a
man who would be a cause for his conversion to Christianity even in himself
because he wanted his troubled conscience out of sight and out of mind. So much for his excuse not to become a
Christian!
Gandhi was
forced to admit to the evidence that he beat up his wife, and as a vegan he
turned down a doctor’s request to give his dying son the only medicine known at
that time which could save his life, beef soup.
The following
is just one source that exposes the Hollywood sanitized
life of Gandhi which was used to justify the hypocrisy of moral relativism in
person of Gandhi.
https://www.commentarymagazine.com/article/the-gandhi-nobody-knows
From the
article we read, “Gandhi’s monstrous behavior to his own family is notorious.
He denied his sons education—to which he was bitterly hostile. His wife
remained illiterate. Once when she was very sick, hemorrhaging badly, and
seemed to be dying, he wrote to her from jail icily: “My struggle is not merely
political. It is religious and therefore quite pure. It does not matter much
whether one dies in it or lives. I hope and expect that you will also think
likewise and not be unhappy.” To die, that is. On another occasion he wrote,
speaking about her: “I simply cannot bear to look at Ba’s face. The expression
is often like that on the face of a meek cow and gives one the feeling, as a
cow occasionally does, that in her own dumb manner she is saying something. I
see, too, that there is selfishness in this suffering of hers. . . .” And in
the end he let her die, as I have said, rather than allow British doctors to
give her a shot of penicillin (while his inner voice told him that it would be
all right for him to take quinine). He disowned his oldest son, Harilal, for
wishing to marry. He banished his second son for giving his struggling older
brother a small sum of money. Harilal grew quite wild with rage against his father,
attacked him in print, converted to Islam, took to women, drink, and died an
alcoholic in 1948. The Mahatma attacked him right back in his pious way,
proclaiming modestly in an open letter in Young India, “Men may be good, not
necessarily their children.”
He was also a
Hindu who believed the primary spiritual goal is to break free from the Samsara
Cycle and achieve a divine state known as Moksha. He looked within himself and
claimed divinity that needed to be liberated. The Christian, on the other
hand, looks within himself and sees intrinsic goodness but does not grasp at
divinity as did Gandhi. As Saint Paul points
out, we know the fact of God by what He has made, and therefore no one has any
excuse to deny that fact. Well, the reductionist relativism in Gandhi was
enough to turn him away from acknowledging that he was created by God and is
not divine in his essence, nor could he become divine. Nevertheless, he
grasped at divinity as did Adam. You
cannot turn from right reason to justify that depth of Relativism in reason or
in morality in any way, shape, or manner no matter how much the world wants to
crown its own like in the person of Gandhi.
No culture is free
from some degree of Relativism which makes us consider what George Orwell said,
“The further a society drifts from the truth the more it will hate those that
speak it.”
We have to
consider that if we want to be at peace with others we have to be honest within
ourselves, we cannot be wrapped up inside ourselves in the cocoon of
Relativism. If you do, you will never be a butterfly. You will only be cut off from the real world
of contemplation rendering your contemplation objectively fruitless until
honesty prevails and leads you out of the insane world of contemplating your
belly button. You will not be born again
that way.
We have come
to a place where it is not so much that people no longer want a god; it is just
that THEY want to be god. And in so doing they worship a false god, the
god of self so they can love their sin rather than forsake sin. Relativism
predisposes them to sin so they can fashion their golden calf of moral
relativism with the hammer of subjectivity.
When
man turns in on himself the very things he hoped for in abundance will now
become his spiritual poverty. And the more he grasps at Relativism the
deeper the hunger in his heart will be, and so too his despair. He moves
away from being the person he was made to be, as St. Bernard said “In those
ways we are unlike God, we are also unlike ourselves” because we are made in
His image. To embrace Relativism is to become something hellish that will
be lived out for all eternity if there is no repentance.
Relativism
also stifles our talents; it renders our ability to live in the moment with
transcendent purpose null and void. The natural satisfaction and joy that comes
from creativity is reduced to the time you have here on earth, and then the
delusion of Relativism tells you it ends at death. You will give no regard to last things and
become unwilling to face the fact of mortality.
When
Relativism becomes the dominant philosophy of any culture several things will
take place, each of them contributing to the demise of that culture bringing
with them a diabolical disorientation ending in a crisis of ethics.
Extreme self
centeredness will cultivate the thought of people wanting to know what they get
out of everything, rather than what they bring or give to anyone or
anything. More and more people are choosing to follow the path of Moral
Relativism that says pleasure is the ultimate goal in life. There is no
anchor in moral relativism, so if it feels good relativists will do whatever
they fancy without any thought of consequences. This is the same
seduction man has faced since the fall of man, and there is no doubt this is
the precursor for the platform of Relativism that will be used to stage the
final battle against all that is decent in humanity.
People are
also being ensnared to serve up their allegiance for the exaltation of state
control over their lives. Moral Relativism is perhaps the greatest factor
in the break up of the family, and now the Government has become the husband
for women who have lost their marriage because the government gives out the
money to provide for them in place of the husband. Many women have become
addicted to their relationship of government dependency in the form of handouts
and assistance in swap for a vote. In turn, the nanny State has taken
over the role of handing out discipline when needed to keep them in place and
dependent. This enables the State to enact laws entrenched in Relativism
because people do not want to resist and risk forfeiting their ability to milk
the system for all they can get.
†
Relativism, the Root of Secularism in Society and Politics
The Church
tells us that Christ does not want us to judge the motives of the heart, or to
play God by judging the eternal destiny of anyone. Those things are known
to God alone, absolutely. But the Church also says we are to make
judgments every day if we are to live a Catholic life. We can and we must take an objective judgment on what people say and do.
For example, we
must say abortion is evil and that it is objectively wrong to kill a
child. Yes, that is a judgment we are obligated to make. Can we
then say someone who procured an abortion is going to Hell? No, we cannot
make that kind of judgment. It is not our place to do so because
repentance is possible till a person draws their last breath.
The list of
judgments that we have to make everyday in our lives is endless. We could
not even avoid sin without making the judgment of calling sin a sin. But
relativists are having a field day with the words of Christ as they go about
telling Catholics not to judge them for what they say and do because in their
mind everyone has their own truth. They
have literally turned Christ’s warning not to judge motives or the eternal
destiny of someone into “everyone has their own truth,” and that corruption
comes from Relativism.
When you get
right down to it, every law on the book is based on whether or not something is
right or wrong. However, laws that protect evils such as abortion came
into play because the legal system embraced moral relativism. In charity,
without a scintilla of compromise, we must be mindful that some people find
themselves in a truly frightening place. They see society is all but crumbling
in front of our faces. So, as citizens we have to look at how
philosophical relativism is impacting society and politics regarding our rights
and conscience as Catholics under the founding documents of the United States. In principle, the
same would apply to all men of all nations because our rights come from God,
even if not recognized by various governments.
We are faced
with a call of responsible citizenship, so how are we to go about being good
citizens guided by the Natural Moral Law conscience inherent in us, and with a
Catholic conscience at the same time? How are Catholics to vote on major
non-negotiable issues in Catholic teaching, issues such as abortion,
euthanasia, homosexual marriage, redefining marriage, and all those things on
which we simply cannot negotiate as Catholics?
We also have
issues such as infant stem cell research, in vitro fertilization, and other
forms of genetic experimentation that threatens human life that are being
looked at through the lens of Relativism. There is simply no room for any
compromise on these issues in the Catholic heart and mind, so we must first lay
out the case as to how we are to live as good citizens and as Catholics where
there is no conflict between the two.
A distorted
understanding of individualism which used to mean self sufficiency has become
the hallmark of a relativistic philosophy that legalizes theft of one man’s
goods by decree. Systems are in place where the government is extorting
money to pay for things that are abhorrent to the Catholic conscience, such as
abortion via organizations like Planned Parenthood, and that is just one
instance.
So then, let
us consider what we face. We as Catholics have been confronted in our
beliefs directly by various government policies that deal with the question of
religious freedom. This forces us to look at how we are to understand
what is non negotiable in light of the pressure being exerted on the Catholic
Church.
If you are
Catholic, and I mean an authentic Catholic, it is this simple; if you see any
politician who advocates positions that are contrary to Church teaching you
must cast your vote against them. You must vote against all that is
non-negotiable. Why? To support
them with your vote puts them into office where they implement policy opposed
to church teaching. This makes you as a voter party to the evil the elected
official perpetrates in society and against the church. You would be an
accomplice to evil. If there are two candidates who advocate something
non-negotiable you must vote for the greater good, meaning you must vote for
the one who advocates a more moral society and will perpetrate less evil.
We must also
look at the question of religious freedom in light of Catholic teaching which
means we have to consider whether a candidate or a political party threatens
religious freedom.
Let us first
go directly to Catholic teaching rather than the political considerations and
all the attendant ramifications.
Consider two
letters put out by the Bishop’s Council and committees that represent the
National Bishop’s Council.
In light of
the HHS mandate we have to ask what is behind these attacks on the Catholic Church,
and where do these attacks come from? What is the goal of these attacks
on the Church?
The goal of
political secular relativists is to make religion “private in practice,” not
just in theory. They have bombarded citizens of America with
the mantra that religion should be kept private. Those at war with the
church want to make that “ipso facto,” and they will not rest until they
succeed, if they can. They want to convince us, indeed force us, to think
that our religion is to be a private matter. Pope Benedict XVI warned us
about this. In fact, he talked about grave threats that come from this
pressure being put on the church. Speaking to the Catholic Bishops, Pope
Benedict said:
“It is
imperative that the entire Catholic community in the United
States come
to realize the grave threat to the Church’s public moral witness presented by a
radical secularism which finds increasing expression in the political and
cultural spheres.”
He also said:
“The
seriousness of these threats needs to be appreciated at every level of
ecclesial life. Of particular concern are certain attempts being made to limit
that most cherished of American freedoms, the freedom of religion.”
Interestingly,
the Holy Father wrote this the day before the current administration came out
with the HHS mandate.
The Holy
Father said:
“Many of you
have pointed out that concerted efforts have been made to deny the right of
conscientious objection on the part of Catholic individuals and institutions
with regard to cooperation in intrinsically evil practices.”
Catholics will
now be forced to pay for intrinsically evil practices such as abortion,
euthanasia, contraception (which often acts as an abortifacient),
sterilization, and other forms of birth control. To deny the right of
conscientious objection on the part of Catholic individuals and institutions is
not only a terrible injustice, it is an attempt to reduce religious freedom to
mere freedom of worship without guarantees of respect for the freedom of
conscience.
This is a huge
issue for Catholics. Indeed, this is why the Holy Father, after speaking
with the Bishops, turned to them and said,
“Get to work
with your people. You are not going to resolve this alone.”
The Holy
Father also said this,
“Here once
more we see the need for an engaged, articulate and well-formed Catholic laity
endowed with a strong critical sense vis-à-vis the dominant culture and with
the courage to counter a reductive secularism which would delegitimize the
Church’s participation in public debate about the issues which are determining
the future of American society.”
In other
words, the real threat from the HHS mandate is for the government to deal with
the Church in such a way as to make sure the Church and churchmen do not have a
public voice. In a very real sense the government would have us neutered
and make us eunuchs for the kingdom of Hell on earth, i.e., Relativism.
The HHS mandate has made the Church ineffective in law to influence morals and
standards of life in a country where Christianity represents the majority of
the people.
We must
therefore look at what is behind the present evil and we will find the culprit
known as “reductive secularism.” It means the church and religion have no
place in society. It is a movement with a root system of Relativism, and
we have to be on guard against it creeping into our own lives. In a real
sense we Catholics are called to be the guardians of society at large.
So let us look
closer at “reductive secularism.” What does it mean? Secular means
“of the world,” by definition it is non-religious. Those who buy into
secularism want to live only by what is measurable according to the scientific
method in life, only what can be gathered by our experience and nothing that
has to do with faith, revelation, or God. “Secular” is everything that
belongs to us, everything that is man made, everything that we can control,
see, and measure. We see that secular humanism which has been developing for
many years is rooted in modernism. Secularism is an entire ideological movement
that would replace God with man. No matter how you cut it, that is the bottom
line, and it is rooted in Relativism.
In secularism
man defines himself thinking he has no need for God. To his mind God is merely
an artifact who gets in the way of man who is content in his self-sufficiency
because in Relativism man thinks he is God.
What then is
“Reductive secularism”? Everything is reduced to what is human and everything
is a human construct. Societal function is reduced to a man made product at the
hands of self made men. Even faith and religion are to be reduced to a
man made product which renders it utilitarian while gutting its essence.
One might want to read “Lord of the World” by Msgr. Hugh Benson recommended by
Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis to consider what “Utility of Religion”
means.
To the
secularist, religion is the invention of human imagination because man is the
center, man explains everything; man is “all knowing.” That is the implication of secular humanism.
Leave God undefined so that man defines God, man is god. Anything that can be
known, man knows. To the secular man God cannot be known so faith and
religion does not fit into his world view. If you reduce something to
only one element that one element is the dominant element. That element
explains everything and everything comes from and finishes with that
element. In the end it is absolute relativism which is a full
manifestation of Relativism as Religion at work in every strata of life in our
society today.
For
Catholicism, which is Christianity in its fullness, everything is reduced to
the Word of God through whom God made the universe, and through whom God is
saving mankind. Our life, our faith can be reduced to the life, death,
and resurrection of Jesus Christ, in short, to the Apostles Creed. The
secular man tosses it all out, he will have none of it, and in fact, he reduces
every man to the “ism” of secular humanism.
We need to
look at a couple of other “isms” started by men such as Freud. He reduced
everything to sexual instincts where people have perverted sexual experiences
early on in life that explain all psychological problems.
Marx brings
about Marxism which reduced everything to collectivism claiming that man is a
part of the state, and if you don’t think the objectives of Marx are at work in
the United States consider this video from the Democratic National Convention
where we are told “The government is the only thing we all belong to.”
http://www.humanevents.com/2012/09/05/dnc-video-government-is-the-only-thing-we-all-belong-to/
Considering
that Marxism is alive and well and at work in many politicians we must remember
it was Karl Marx who said the state is the ultimate reality. That is why
he said “religion is the opiate of the people.” Do you not hear that echo in politics
today? Are you listening? And behind the deceiving “gentle smiles” and
the big, disrespectful sneering smiles of white iron teeth during a political
debate you will find the attempt to reduce religion to utility by
statesmen. They retreat from their moral obligations and hide behind the
“relativistic religion of the State” which is the religion of secular humanism
claiming they cannot impose their moral views on others. If their moral
views were in line with reality, in line with the Declaration of Independence
at a minimum, there would be no conflict. We have an obligation by way of
argument as responsible citizens to stop liberals from making the charge that
we are bringing religion into the discussion when we maintain the laws of
morality that are enshrined in the Declaration of Independence itself.
The basic
point is to say that secularism comes from the philosophical rejection of
something that we all know. It is the rejection of the fact that you can
know objective truth with certainty. Secularists have decided that no one
is allowed to say that man can know objective truth, except that “objective
truth” of course. They always love to allow exceptions for themselves
which bespeaks their arrogance. From the beginning of time until the day
of the secularist it was universally known that knowledge of objective truth is
natural to human understanding. As an example, we know the Greeks celebrated
the discovery of an absolute in Math for up to two weeks.
Secularists,
however, are merely men full of themselves. They are small minded men who
decided to push their ideas in a more serious way through modernism which came
about from rejecting God. This produced a wanting world steeped in sin
and guilt, yet unwilling to repent. Men like DesCarte, Kant, Hegel, and
others developed the very destructive and quite insane view that truth
originates within man, and not outside of man. If you consider the
modernistic re-evaluation of how we know things, if truth begins and ends in
man subjectively, how can you know that your truth is the same as my
truth? The secularist, therefore, says we can no longer go about saying
there is just “one truth.”
Modernists’
craft a society in which each man is to live in his own bubble, but this does
not make for fraternal unity, it makes for a bludgeoning. Consider what
the societal prison they create really means for themselves and others.
If you are to live in your own little isolated world view and you want to know
reality around you, reality itself becomes an obstacle for you in your own
little mental prison you have constructed. All reality outside of your
delusion, and all the people outside of your “splendid isolation,” can be known
to you only according to your “subjective truth.” You are not willing to
break outside of your little prison because your ego defines truth.
Outside of your ego prison someone else has their own little mental ego prison
where they get to define truth, so you are cut off from each other. The
result is something we refer to as “solipsism” which is from two Latin words, “soli”
and “psism,” it means “yourself” and “alone.” That is the sad and
sinister reality of Relativism, and that is what we have come to in this
country and beyond.
Pope Benedict
XVI said something in the homily he gave when all of the cardinals were going
into the conclave just before he was elected pope which was an extraordinary
statement. He had no idea at this point that he was going to be elected
pope. He said:
“How many
winds of doctrine have we known in recent decades? How many ideological
currents, how many ways of thinking?”
He was talking
about all the “isms.”
“The small
boat of thought, the thought of many Christians, has often been tossed about by
these waves from one extreme to another, from Marxism to liberalism, even to
libertinism; from collectivism to radical individualism; from atheism to a
vague religious mysticism; from agnosticism to syncretism, and so forth. Every
day new sects are created and what Saint Paul says
about human trickery comes true, with cunning which tries to draw those into
error (cf Eph 4, 14).”
To summarize,
all these “isms,” including “Protestant-ism,” are different ways to manipulate
thought. It is to manipulate peoples’ way of thinking to create new
trends, new groups, and new religions.
The Holy
Father goes on to say,
"Having a
clear faith, based on the Creed of the Church, is often labeled today as a Fundamentalism,
whereas relativism - is letting oneself be tossed and "swept along by
every wind of teaching."
That is an
outright condemnation of religious relativism found in the concept that the
Bible is the only authority, namely, Sola Scriptura.
Consider what
relativism is actually saying to you, “Your truth is relative to you, my truth
is relative to me, and there is no absolute truth outside of us that we can
know.” That is Relativism, and the Holy Father says by letting oneself be
tossed here and there by every wind of doctrine, each person defines one
understanding of “church” over here, another person another way over there. One
person interprets scripture one way and the other person another way. That is
in fact why we have over 40,000 different Christian denominations, and it goes
further than that.
As many people
as there are in the tens of thousands of denominations, each person is
potentially another denomination because what they hold themselves bound to in
belief today they are free to reject tomorrow because they accept no authority
outside of Scripture as the measure of “them.”
They are the ones who actually attack the Bible because they have
embraced reductionist relativism at the core of their attempts to understand
Scripture correctly, definitively, and with authority which they can never do.
This is about
authentic Christianity, and there has never been the debate we need to have
about the influence of Relativism inherent in Protestantism in this country
which has opened to door to Relativism in politics and in law. This is
why we never became a solid a Christian nation under God, and we are witnessing
that fact because Christendom in the United States is
had died. There are Christians, of course, but the government has shut
down all principles that recognize what comes from God.
The secular
man rejects authority outside of himself which is directly related to
Protestantism, and this has had great influence in the history of the United
States. The very nature of Protestantism is reductionist relativism at
its core where “spirituality” based on the principle of Sola Scriptura
ultimately reduces Christianity to agnosticism in which nothing of faith can be
known with certainty. The proof for this fact is evidenced in the tens of
thousands of Christian denominations bickering with each other over who is
right using the very same text in Scripture. For each and every claim any
one of them makes as to why they are right, the other Protestant can make the
same claim, but in the end division remains, all to the detriment of our
culture and Christianity. The problem of Protestantism will be examined
in more detail when we consider a “true rule of faith,” but ultimately,
Protestantism goes beyond agnosticism, and it is atheistic in its nature as
noted by Pope St. Pius X in his famous encyclical “Pascendi Dominci Gregis.”
Speaking of
modern man the Pope Benedict XVI said of Relativism,
“… Looks like
the only attitude which is acceptable in today's standards.”
What an
interesting statement! Relativism is the only acceptable attitude in
modern times, the only attitude that can cope with modern times. So let
us look at what that means for Catholics.
If you are not
speaking, acting, and behaving according to Relativism which is now the only
acceptable manner of “being accepted” you are not going to get along with many
people in the world. The secularists’ insist that everyone needs to be
free to live according to their piccalillis, but Pope Benedict told us this:
“We are moving
towards a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as
definitive and which has as its highest goal one's own ego and one's own desires.”
Why is
that? Because if you are in your own little world what is your objective
in life, what becomes of your life? It is “only” and “lonely” to satisfy
yourself. In fact, the real genesis of this is much deeper, so let us see
if we can capture it.
Our countrymen
are telling us that we are individuals, and as such each one of us has to seek
our own happiness and define for ourselves what happiness is for us. So,
the church is not about to impose the perfect idea of happiness on anyone, but
what the church will do is reveal certain truths that will help us all find our
own path (not our own subjective truth), but the right kind of path to
happiness. Isn’t it interesting that in the end it all comes down to
authority?
The Holy
Father is telling us to wake up and be careful because this secular world wants
to cut us off from God. Secularism cuts us off from authority and in so
doing it cuts us off from each other.
The founding
fathers would turn over in their graves if they saw that freedom of religion in
the 1st amendment was now being used against basic family morals and decency in
what was meant to be a moral civilization. The fact is there is no such
thing as private sin. Whenever we sin everyone is affected because the
sin and its effects are in fact communicated to others either directly or
indirectly. It’s the nature of sin.
Naturally
speaking, man does not want to live alone, but in our day many men lack the
courage to live according to dogma because dogma has a connection to revealed
truth, and there is a cowardly and nefarious instigation that wants to redefine
the Natural Law to be Religion so you have neither Natural Law nor Religion,
but a forgery of both as a weapon of utility.
The
Declaration of Independence states,
“We hold these
truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are
endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are
Life, Liberty and
the pursuit of Happiness.”
We need to
note something very important at this point. The Declaration does not state: “We hold these truths to be
self-evident according to a religious creed, an interpretation of a religious
creed, or according to any claim of revealed truth.” Therefore, the Declaration
does not establish our unalienable rights according to a particular religious
creed.
In fact, the
Declaration speaks of self-evident truths which stand on their own and inform
us directly of what they are without the need of our free will to assent to
their being to make them what they are, and they do so without respect to any
religious creed. Self-evident truths simply are what they are. They
are self-evident.
The
Declaration also speaks of the ‘Creator’ as a self-evident fact through what
has been created, and the rights that we are endowed with from the Creator
without respect to any religious creed.
As long as
there is no injection or projection of a religious association onto the use of
the title “Creator” as stated in the Declaration itself, or the name of
“God,” it is impossible to make the charge that anyone who speaks of
morality as enshrined in the Declaration is bringing religion into the
discussion. It is also true that God and the Creator are one and the same
because only God can be the creator and only the creator can be God as a self-evident
fact. This simple self-evident fact is recognized in the Declaration of
Independence, a fact that does not depend upon, and has no association to any
particular religious creed.
Furthermore,
the government has an obligation
to recognize the Creator as does the Declaration without respect to Creed. If
this were not the case the Declaration of Independence would itself be a
violation of the establishment clause and the separation of church and state
because it speaks of God as the Creator as a self-evident truth without
appealing to any religious creed. The goal of the Secularist is to
convince people that to speak of the “Creator” or “God” is anathema to
jurisprudence and our way of life. To
acknowledge the fact of God is not to speak about religion, so there is no
violation of the separation of Church and State and the Establishment
Clause. The “fact” of God known by means of Natural Theology in the light
of “reason” alone is acknowledged by the Declaration. You would have to
dispense of reason itself to satisfy the secularist, but that would be to yield
to a lunatic for the sake of relativists who are trying to make “Natural
Knowledge of the fact of God” to be that of authentic Revelation which it is
not.
So when we
hear groups like the ACLU lay out their straw man argument by claiming the
recognition of the Creator or God in law and in public life is a violation of
the separation of Church and State and the Establishment Clause do not be
fooled. The motives, tactics, and agenda of the ACLU, atheists, and other such
parasites leeching off the principle of free speech become evident when they try to associate religion with the
use of the word “Creator.” The anti-God
crowd does this in an attempt to shut down free speech in public life and to prohibit
the government from acknowledging its obligation in law to recognize the
Creator. The secular relativists are plundering our rights as citizens of the United
States, and they have contempt for the obligation of government to acknowledge
the first principle of our Constitutional Republic which is to acknowledge God.
Their straw man argument needs to be shut down once and for all because it is
bitter to the soul of this nation.
What brought
about the false argument which says to acknowledge God violates the
Establishment Clause and the separation of Church and State? There are many
reasons, but we can look at the primary cause which is a failure to recognize
the distinction between the Natural Law conscience and a conscience formed by a
religious creed.
As we have
seen, the Natural Law defines the parameters of our conscience, and is
enshrined in a fundamental way in the Declaration of Independence which are the
rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. This Natural Law morality
is completely independent from any morality based upon a particular religious
perspective or creed. We simply must not let the relativists claim
Natural Law morality is religious morality, because it is not dependent upon
authentic revelation.
Man has an
obligation to Natural Law morality which is the basis of our judicial system.
The Natural Law conscience and the conscience formed by a religious perspective
are as objectively different in nature as oil and water which do not mix,
though one may confirm the other. The failure to make this distinction
has served the secularists well as the catalyst to put forward the prejudiced
argument which says all morality is religious morality. They argue that all morality must be kept out
of politics if we are not to violate the establishment clause and the
separation of Church and State, and we can demonstrate their tactic.
Take the issue
of abortion. A person cannot be accused of being pro-life because they
are religious. The pro-life person can argue their position without appealing
to their religious conscience by saying "No, I have a Natural Law
conscience and a conscience formed by my faith, but I am appealing to my
Natural Law conscience for my pro-life position.” The pro-life person is
appealing directly to the right to life expounded as a self-evident truth
enshrined in the Declaration of Independence itself. Therefore, no one
can accuse the pro-life person of trying to impose a religious moral
perspective regarding life issues on anyone.
By trying to
identify all morality as being associated with some religious perspective,
groups like the ACLU have been able to attack Natural Law Morality with
impunity, all for the purpose of creating a vacuum of moral relativism which
attacks Natural Law morality enshrined in the Declaration of
Independence. We hear the straw-man cry from groups like the ACLU, and
the atheists, that the mere mention of God at events such as high school
graduations is a violation of the Establishment Clause and the separation of
church and state.
The Declaration
of Independence gave birth to the Constitution and the States ratified the
Declaration as the spirit of constitutional jurisprudence. Groups like
the ACLU should not be allowed to use the Constitution to shut down our
unalienable rights enshrined in the Declaration of Independence for the purpose
of shutting down religion in this country. It is time the folly of the ACLU and
the atheists be exposed for what it is.
By trying to
identify all morality as being associated with some religious perspective they
intend to achieve an absolute independence from Natural Moral Law as they
reject God in all temporal affairs of societal life. With their
prejudiced reading of the Declaration of Independence they intend to take over
God’s role for the purpose not so much of opposing religion, but to annihilate
religion all together. They are the ones who fail to respect the proper
boundaries of the Establishment Clause; they are the ones who fail to respect a
proper understanding of the separation of Church and State which forbids the
State from establishing the religion of Secular Humanism for
jurisprudence.
One could make
a solid argument that a Catholic Monarchy would be better if led by a
Saint. For example, there is a debate over whether or not pornography is
constitutionally protected as free speech. Those of the “Enlightenment”
(so-called) appeal to the silence of the Constitution which could appear to be
ambiguous on the matter. In one way that is an unfair assessment.
It is like saying a ladder manufacturer must have a safety label that warns of
every conceivable danger known to man. One ladder manufacturer was in fact sued
because a man put a ladder on frozen manure when he climbed atop his
barn. The sun softened the manure while he was on the roof and when he
came down the ladder sunk into the manure and he fell and hurt himself.
He sued the ladder manufacturer and was awarded $350,000 because the ladder did
not have a label warning against that danger. The Declaration and the
Constitution spell out the fundamentals, like the ladder manufacturer, but
every possible thing one could say about Natural Law Morality could not fit on
a founding document. Nor could the
Founding Fathers ever think that man would be so reduced in morality that he
would be able to bring litigation against the fundamental rights enshrined in
our founding documents. This is one of the reasons why abortion is
protected by the law of relativists.
This abuse is
not limited to one party or another; they have essentially become the same in
the Hegelian Dialectic, creating polarities which purpose is to get the masses
to embrace the middle ground which was the incremental objective to begin
with. In the end that so-called middle ground becomes
Relativism. But we must deal the best we can to preserve what is
good and decent in the society we were born into.
†
Protestantism, the Ultimate Form of Religious Relativism
The Inside and Outside of the Cup
Truth is its own reward. If you are
a lover of truth you would likely be without guile which means truth is not
offensive to you. St. John said,
“Then you will know the Truth, and the
Truth will set you free.” (John 8:32)
If, on the other hand, you find truth to
be offensive and do not yield to it you will become a relativist and attempt to
create a subjective philosophy for your own religion. Authentic religion
can only be authentic if it is united to authentic revelation and objective
authority that springs from Christ.
There are only 2 possible views of
Christianity; the Catholic Church and then all the rest. Outside of Catholicism
you have Sola Scriptura (the Scripture alone) which is the Protestant belief
that the Bible is the supreme authority in all matters of doctrine and practice.
Protestants believe they are guided in all truth by the Holy Spirit when they
read the Bible. So let us first look at the belief that the Bible is the
sole authority.
In order to demonstrate the inherent
contradiction within the concept of Sola Scriptura, imagine that a Catholic
walks into a room where there are 12 Protestants sitting around a
table. The Catholic places a Bible
on the table and says,
“Here is a Bible. There is no Easy
Bible Button on the cover to push where the Holy Spirit will come out from
Bible like a genie and tell us what each verse in Scripture definitively
means. Nor are there any words coming from it that anyone can hear.
And unless someone opens it up to read it the text will not be known.”
The Catholic then puts down the gauntlet
and says,
“The 12 of you believe Bible is the sole
authority for doctrine and practice, and the 12 of you represent the literal
tens of thousands of Christian denominations who believe there is no authority
outside of the Bible just as you believe. Now, it does not matter if you
call yourself a Protestant or a non-denominationalist, you all believe in the
concept of Sola Scriptura. Furthermore, every one of you believes the
Holy Spirit will guide you in all truth when you read and study the Bible.”
The Catholic would then select any text
from Scripture and ask the first Protestant to read it out loud, and when done
that person is to tell everyone in the room what the text definitively
means. It is now the turn of the person to his left to read the same
verse, and in turn he gets to tell everyone in the room what the text
definitively means, and so on down the line for every Protestant sitting at the
table.
When each Protestant is done telling the
other Protestants what the verse definitively means there will be arguments and
tension, each telling the other they got it wrong. And the evidence for this
fact is seen in the 10’s of thousands Christian denominations.
The Catholic then says to the Protestant who
read first,
“You claim that you interpreted the text
correctly, and that if everyone else would just agree with you then everything
would be okay, there would be no arguments because you were guided by the Holy
Spirit in your understanding of the text. But the person next to you makes the
identical claim, that if you would just agree with him all would be okay
because he was guided by the Holy Spirit for a correct understanding of the
text.
“Then all the rest of you joined in with
the same claim and start bickering over the same
text and authority.
Since none of you can point to an authority “outside” of the Bible to confirm
and ratify as “fact” that you are guided by the Holy Spirit, then you must
allow those who disagree with you to make the same claim of authority because
they too claim they were guided by the Holy Spirit in all truth. Now stop and take a good look at what all of
you are doing! Look at the absurdity and
insanity of Protestantism once and for all. Each of you believes the Bible is
the sole authority, each of you believes you are guided in all truth by the
Holy Spirit. Which of you has the truth about the text and the authority to say
your view is absolute and final?”
One can almost hear the fidgeting and toe
tapping under the table at their dilemma.
The Catholic then says to them,
“In your debate and bickering each of you
claimed that you have rightly divided the word of God, and that you have put on
the mind of Christ, and that the Bible is clear and speaks for itself, that
verse supports verse, that you used the proper hermeneutical tools, and so
forth. But for all the reasons and excuses each of you makes as to why you are right, the other Protestant can
make the identical claim, and in the end none of you can point to an authority
outside of the Bible to prove you are right, or that the Holy Spirit in fact
guided you in your interpretation of the text. You can go no further to
support your claim that you are correct.
You will end up in the same place.”
The Catholic continues and says,
“Look closer at what you are doing! In
claiming that you are guided by the Holy Spirit each
of you are claiming, as a fact, that your interpretation of the text is not an opinion. You just finished saying that you are guided
in all “truth” by the Holy
Spirit. And since truth is objective in its nature and free from error,
you are in fact claiming to speak
infallibly as an oracle of the Holy Spirit the truths you claim are contained
in Scripture. But here is the fact.
Not only are you unable to point to an authority outside of the Bible to show
you are right in your interpretation of the text, but your claim reveals the
hypocrisy within you because that is the very
thing you reject in the Papacy. You reject the claim that one man
can speak infallibly for everyone else when you speak of the Pope, but not when
it comes to you. You are in fact trying to be the Pope.
“Even the Pope would forthrightly admit
not everything that he says is infallible. He would, without hesitation,
acknowledge there are certain conditions he must meet to be assured the Holy
Spirit is infallibly guiding him in what he teaches. But you Protestants
think you can just pick up a Bible and you are infallible whenever you open
your mouth.
“Not only that, lacking any objective
authority outside of the Bible, and your subjective claim that you are correct
in the way you understand Scripture, it is impossible for any of you to know if
you are right or wrong about anything, or when you are right or wrong about
anything. Some of you even claim miracles as confirmation of your proclamations,
but there are many of you who make the same claim of miracles who still
bitterly disagree with each other over the same text. So that does not
resolve the question as to how you ever know when you are right or wrong about
anything in Scripture.
“None of you has any certainty about
anything. In fact, you have just reduced Christianity to Agnosticism in terms
of an objective understanding of Scripture. Agnostics make no claim to know
with any certainty whether or not God exists. Protestants make claims for God, but you can never know with any
certainty if what you interpret Scripture to mean actually comes from God. You can never know if you are objectively
correct in your reading of the text. And
that is because Sola Scriptura denies an objective authority exists outside of
the Bible to have a definitive and proper understanding of Scripture in
relation to God.”
Continuing, the Catholic says,
“St. Peter talks about the “gift of
reason” when he says “Be ready with a reason
for the hope within you” (1st Peter 3:15), so here is the simple fact.
The gift of “reason” and our ability to recognize the principle of
non-contradiction is evidence for the FACT that you cannot all be right! Reason now tells you that you have an
obligation in conscience and before God to reject Sola Scriptura because the
principle of Sola Scriptura refuses to recognize the principle of
non-contradiction which says you all cannot be right.
“Nor can you make the claim that all
Christians believe the same thing when it comes to the essentials. You
differ even when it comes to the Person of Jesus Christ over who and what He
is. There are Protestants who read Scripture and say Jesus is the Son of
God; others say He is the Son of God but not God by nature. Others say He is the
first Son of God, but we are all sons of God. Some say He is a perfect
human person, others say He is not a human person. Others say He is a
human person and a divine person, and others say He is a divine person and his
body is a phantasm, and so forth, and they all claim they are guided by the
Holy Spirit in all “truth” when they read Scripture.”
So, the Problem for Protestants is that
they turn away from the fact that
they cannot all be correct in their differences. Nor can they make an
objective case as to why they are right, and why all who disagree with them are
wrong. If you turn away from a fact and pretend you have no obligation to
the truth contained in the fact you have turned away from reality, and this is
precisely where Relativism enters into Protestantism as a delusion about how to
properly understand Scripture.
Protestants first turn from reason and
become an intellectual relativist which creates a delusion by which they now
live. They take their delusion and turn it into a subjective philosophy
and apply it to “faith” which adds to their delusion. And because there
is no way for them to objectively interpret Scripture their delusion shows up
in the claim that they are guided by the Holy Spirit in all truth when they
read Scripture. And when they battle over interpreting Scripture it all
becomes very tiresome because they will not hear or see the contradiction
inherent in Sola Scriptura that brought all of them to such a dilemma. So
what is their solution? Start your own denomination where you can play a Pastor
Pope. They have carried their delusion which is rooted in Relativism into religion
which gives birth to “Relativism as Religion.” Satan has a field
day with pride and Protestantism just like he had with Adam and Eve when they protested
in their pride rooted in Relativism. Protestantism is a replication of
the fall of man.
There are also those who make the
assumption that since Protestants make some of the same claims about
Christianity that are made by Catholics that Sola Scriptura, therefore, must
have some validity. While it is true that the Grace of God is operating
to move Protestants to the fullness of Christianity found in the Catholic
Church, the light they have proceeds from the Grace of the Church, not from
Sola Scriptura. But there is an interior difference in disposition
between Protestantism and Catholicism even when the same claims are made
externally. The difference can be seen in the Scriptural verse which
says,
“"You foolish ones, did not He who
made the outside make the inside also?” (Luke 11:40)
A Catholic has an interior disposition,
like the inside of the cup, which assents to the cup being filled up with the
definitive teachings of the Church because it is Christ himself teaching
through HIS Church (Matthew 16:18). Protestants lack that interior
disposition so what they hold by way of belief today is subject to change
tomorrow, and they “Church hop” just like they “Bible pop” which shows the
constant state of flux in their belief lacks certainty. So, even though a
Protestant may say the same thing on the outside of the cup, it does not spring
from the necessary internal disposition of assent to Christ through His Church.
We can even see “Protestant”ism in the
Jewish camp. Moses had to deal with
religious relativists in his day when his own brother and sister, Miriam and
Aaron, rose up in rebellion against him, the one man chosen by God to lead his
people. Moses was a typology of the Papacy, but Miriam cried out against
him saying,
“Who is Moses that he speaks for us all,
don’t we all have a voice?”
God would deal with her for that, but look
first at what she tried to do. She claimed she could speak for God not
only with authority, but authority equal to Moses even though she was not
commissioned by God to do so. She claimed the Spirit of God to speak for
God because Moses spoke with the Spirit of God, and she claimed Revelation from
God, and the ability to interpret what God said equal to Moses.
Furthermore, Miriam tried to inject
religious relativism into the Jewish Camp by saying “don’t we all have a
voice?” What becomes of that? The next person in rebellion says,
“Who are Miriam and Moses to speak for us all, I have a voice of authority and
the spirit is guiding me too, and I disagree with Moses and Miriam when the
Holy Spirit tells me they are wrong.” And so it continues that way
throughout the entire Jewish camp. We see
that same rebellion in the 12 Protestants sitting around a table fighting and
bickering with each other over what the Bible definitively teaches.
What did God say to Miriam for her
rebellion? He summoned Moses, Aaron, and Miriam out in front of the
meeting tent. From the pillar of cloud
God said to Miriam, “To Moses I speak face to face. I do not speak face
to face to you. I have chosen Moses, one man to lead my people.
Just who do you think you are?”
Well, there was a consequence for her Protestantism
anchored in religious relativism. When God lifted up in the cloud He punished
Miriam for attempting to introduce Protestantism into the Jewish Camp. He
left her standing there as a snow white leper, and Moses had to intercede with
God that He remove it from her. And that, by the way, is another Catholic
thing; Moses interceded to God in
behalf of his sister.
Set us look at what the punishment of
Miriam indicates. Leprosy was the dreaded disease of the time that
eats away at the body until death takes place. By making the entire body
of Miriam as a snow white leper it was a sign and a warning of how God sees
Protestantism. He sees it as religious
relativism inherent in the nature of Protestantism which gushed forth from
Miriam as she invited the entire “body of the Jewish people” in the camp to
join her in rebellion.
Sola Scriptura is identical to the cry of
Miriam in the desert that would turn the mystical body of Christ into snow
white leprosy. The Miriam cry of rebellion in our day is, “Who is the
Pope that he speaks for us all? Don’t we all have a Bible? Do we not all have
the Spirit of God to guide us as we speak for him? Do we not all have the
authority and the ability to definitively interpret the Word of God like the
Pope?”
God stopped Miriam cold in her tracks to strike
fear into the hearts of the people in the Jewish camp as a warning to all
generations about the corrupting nature of Religious Relativism. But the
Protestants of our day will not listen, and that is precisely why there are now
tens of thousands of Protestant denominations bickering with each other over
the identical text in Scripture. The simple, bare faced fact of Sola Scriptura
is that it has never worked. It cannot be found anywhere in Scripture as a
principle of authority, nor was it ever taught by the Church. Centuries after the reformation Protestants
stand in need of repentance for the damage they have done to the Mystical Body
of Christ.
Consider their
need for repentance. You can thank Protestantism for abortion that came to this
country via the gateway of birth control.
In 1931, the
Committee on Home and Marriage of the Federal Council of Churches (an
ecumenical body that embraced Methodist, Presbyterian, Congregational, and
Church of the Brethren denominations) issued a statement defending birth
control to allow limiting the size of a family through artificial means, and
they urged for the repeal of any law prohibiting contraceptive education and
the sale of birth control products. They
were now aligned with Margaret Sanger.
And on February 23, 1961, The
National Council of Churches representing the major Protestant religious
denominations came out supporting birth control. And since then many have been “coming out.”
When we think
of freedom we think of Patriots who fought in the cause of Liberty at
great expense, but Relativism has squandered all that. When we think of
Catholics we think of those faithful to Church teaching. Since when did freedom become license to do
whatever you wish, whenever you want, regardless of what you want? It was moral
relativism that brought about birth control, followed by abortion which became
the gateway for all the evils that have flooded our culture. None of this
is freedom, it is enslavement.
†
The Bible
Protestants
are fond of speaking about the King James Bible, but King James was no
authority of the Church to determine a valid Canon of Scripture, or to
interpret it any more than Bill Clinton. You may as well say you have a
Bill Clinton Bible, at least that way you are out in the open admitting you
think you get to determine the meaning of whatever IS, IS when interpreting
Scripture, so in keeping with Relativism.
The Bible did
not drop down out of the sky on a golden parachute with a booming voice from
above that said “This is my beloved Bible; he who reads it and believes will
interpret it correctly and be saved.” Here is a simple fact of
reality. No book can compile itself, let
alone declare itself to be inspired text. It is therefore an indisputable
truth that there had to be an authority “outside of the Bible” to compile it to
begin with. And if the men who compiled the Bible were not commissioned and
infallible in their declaration that the Bible is inspired, it is impossible to
know if they included the right Gospels, Letters, and Epistles in the Bible
that you hold and claim to be the Word of God.
In short, we are dependent upon men commissioned by God to even know the
text is inspired to begin with, and the historical fact is that the Bible came
from the Catholic Church. If you reject
the Catholic Church you have rejected the Bible itself because the Bible is a
Catholic book. It is an indisputable
fact that the same authority “outside of the Bible” that gave us the Bible to
begin with is the Catholic Church.
It was the
Catholic Church that compiled only what it deemed inspired and necessary for
the Bible. And this took place at the
Council of Rome in the year 382 AD where Pope St. Damasus 1st
decreed the definitive Canon of Scripture for the entire Church which remained
intact for over 11 centuries until the age of the Reformation. The Pope gave us the definitive Canon of
Scripture to have an accurate account of Christ’s life and teaching. And
the authority of the Church that gave us the Bible is the only authority on
earth that can definitively interpret Scripture as the custodian of Scripture,
a fact that is supported in Scripture itself.
In 1440,
German inventor Johannes Gutenberg invented a process to print books that would
allow for refinements and increased mechanization in the printing
process. He invented a printing press that had movable typeset. The
first printed Bible from this type of printing press was named after him, so it
is referred to as the “Gutenberg Bible.” Most Protestants are not aware
that the Gutenberg Bible contained all 73 books of the Catholic canon of
Scripture.
It was printed
at Mainz and
required several years to finish the process which began in 1452 and was
completed by 1455. There were about 180 copies printed in the 1st
edition. It was printed in Latin and it was the standard for printing
until modern technology and the age of computers.
What many
Protestants fail to realize is that before the Gutenberg printing press
Scripture had to be hand written on plain parchment or ornate material by
Rabbis and Monks. But in each case the task was very slow and laborious,
and it was very costly to have one made. Protestants nowadays go about telling
people the Church did not want the average man to have a copy of the
Bible. The fact is the average man could not afford a Bible. It is
simple economics. Furthermore, the clergy were the only ones who had
enough training and education suited to the task. But Protestants would
soon enough turn this into a conspiracy of opportunity for the Church to
manipulate Scripture.
Protestantism
is an incredible insult to all the loving care and zeal of these Monks who
dedicated their lives to this work. We are indebted to these Monks, and
no one should be excoriating them. They were holy men doing a holy work
for God and His Church, and their work was tedious and very slow. And
given the nature of the task, one can understand that errors did creep in at
different times.
Once the
Reformation (more properly a deformation) took place, the Reformers, and all
Protestants who follow them, are like common thieves on the street robbing
someone of their property, and afterwards they go about selling what they
stole. And they capitalized on this with the invention of the Gutenberg
press. With this new invention they could mass produce subjective
versions of Scripture in which they could corrupt the text to justify their bad
theology. Even worse than that, they tossed out entire Books from the
Bible in spite of the fact that you often hear them say not a word in Scripture
can be added, removed, or changed. There is little attention paid to the
fact that relativists do not even have to change or remove a word from the
text. All they have to do is change the meaning of the words in the text
and they have done even worse than removing it.
Consider what
they do with the Book of Revelation which Televangelists capitalize on to build
financial empires selling prophecy and all manner of corruption. The Book
of Revelation would not have been in the Bible to begin with if Pope Damasus
did not insist it was the inspired Word of God. How many Protestants are aware
of that fact? How many Protestants are aware that Martin Luther rejected the
Book of Revelation for 15 years?
Many would be
shocked to know that Luther originally rejected four books from the New
Testament in 1522. From Martin Luther’s Bible, in his preface to the Book
of Revelation which he translated, he writes,
“About this
book of the Revelation of John, I leave everyone free to hold his own opinions.
I would not have anyone bound to my opinion or judgment. I say what I feel. I
miss more than one thing in this book, and it makes me consider it to be
neither apostolic nor prophetic …… I can in no way detect that the Holy Spirit
produced it. (Works of Martin Luther, Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1932,
copyrighted by the United Lutheran Church in America, tr. C.M. Jacobs,
488-489).
This is truly
amazing. If a person in our day anonymously penned what Luther wrote and
presented it to Protestants they would call such a person an anti-Christ and in
league with Satan. They might even call such a person Satan himself. How
shocking it would be for them to realize these are the words of Luther, the
father of the reformation.
Here is
another fact about Martin Luther and Scripture. In 1522 he wrote the
preface to the book of James. Luther held that it contradicts “the truth”
because it teaches falsehood about the merit of Works. He held it could
not be inspired nor Apostolic.
Here is what
he said,
“Though this
epistle of St. James was rejected by the ancients, I praise it and consider it
a good book, because it sets up no doctrines of men but vigorously promulgates
the law of God. However, to state my own opinion about it, though without
prejudice to anyone, I do not regard it as the writing of an apostle; and my
reasons follow in the first place it is flatly against St.
Paul and
all the rest of Scripture in ascribing justification to works. It says that
Abraham was justified by his works when he offered his son Isaac; though in
Romans 4 St. Paul teaches to the contrary that Abraham was justified apart from
works, by his faith alone, before he had offered his son … This fault,
therefore, proves that this epistle is not the work of any apostle.” (Works of
Martin Luther, Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1932, copyrighted by the United
Lutheran Church in America, tr. C.M. Jacobs).
Luther’s
reference to the ancients must also be considered in light of the fact that he
aligned himself with the Rabbis of Jamnia to toss out seven books from the
Canon of Scripture as did the Rabbis who rejected books in the Septuagint
because they proved the Divinity of Christ. Not only does Luther reject
what James said, he is clearly saying the Apostle was not inspired by the Holy
Spirit.
Where does
this leave Protestants who are unaware of facts such as these? There are
Protestants who follow the tenets of Luther without knowing the history of what
he did to the Bible and the errors in his theology. They are simply unaware of
these matters, and it drives many Protestants to reject the Catholic Church
without reason.
No excuse can
do away with the fact that Luther removed these Books. Nor can any excuse
can do away with the implications of what Luther’s actions meant. He was
in great error when he removed the books, and it is evidence that Martin Luther
was not infallible. And the claim that
the Reformation was needed to correct how many books should be in the Bible is
without foundation. He wanted to change theology, period. And his error
inherent in the concept of “Sola Scriptura” flows into the Reformation itself.
Then consider
that there are 200,000 variations of Scripture in available Manuscripts, and that
there are over 35,000 verses in Scripture. Is anyone surprised that
errors would creep in? Consider all the possible ways that various
corruptions, unintentional and otherwise, could have been introduced into the
many variations of Scripture. We know that Martin Luther introduced
changes, but he is not alone. Once he started, others changed Scripture
to suit their own perfidious doctrines.
And you have the
misguided scribe with good intentions who felt he was improving an older
version by leaving out, or adding a word here and there, to make a verse more
understandable.
For the most
part, variations were unintended, and many things can account for this.
You have the human element of someone being sleepy and simply missing a word,
even an entire sentence. Something or someone might have interrupted his
work, or maybe the Monk did not have good eyesight. He may not have known
the proper way to make divisions in what he was copying, especially if he was
working with the old Uncials that had no stops, divisions, or pauses between
words and sentences. He may have been scribing for someone who was
dictating and misunderstood what was said, thereby introducing an incorrect
word or phrase.
And then you
have the “glosses” which were notes written on the margins of the parchment by
a previous scribe who had intended to provide explanations of verses. Without
doubt, some of these crept into variations of Scripture and corrupted
them.
Many people
assume that the scribes were translating from an English version of Scripture
to make a new English version of Scripture, but the translations had to be made
from the Greek and Hebrew into English for us to understand it in our own
tongue. Consider how impossible all of this is without the Church.
If it were not for the Church there would be no such thing as a Canon of
Scripture for both the Old and New Testament. It is indisputable that
there are thousands upon thousands of old Biblical manuscripts written before
the days of the printing press that have multiple errors in them.
God never
promised every scribe who copied Scripture to be inerrant. There is no
guarantee that the scribe was not heretical, or inadequate for the task at
hand. Which version among these many thousands is the one free from
error? Can a Protestant be certain that what they profess as the Bible
contains only the exact words which came from the original text? Are they
certain that no error crept into their version? Can the Protestants point
to a Hebrew, Greek, or Latin version of Scripture that is not tainted with
errors since we know the same problems crept into versions written in these
languages as well? Without the Catholic Church there is no correct
version or understanding of Scripture.
As one example
of many, according to the manuscripts (copies) which still exist, the Gospel of
Mark has four different endings.
1st
– The short ending includes verses 1-8 of Chapter 16.
2nd
– The intermediate ending has between 2 and 3 lines of text between verse 8.
3rd
– The longer ending which includes 1-8 and in addition it has verses 9-20.
4th
– The longest ending has several verses after verse 14.
Since we don’t
have the originals, let the Protestants attempt to determine which one is the
authentic, inspired ending to Marks’ Gospel. They will not be able to determine
where Marks’ Gospel authentically ends from the Bible itself. And this means anytime a publisher prints a
Bible he is violating the principle of Sola Scriptura because the printer will
never know if they are adding to, or subtracting from, the original text of
Marks’s manuscript which no longer exists to confirm. Since the doctrine of Sola Scriptura depends
in its entirety upon having the entire Word of God present in the Bible this
renders Sola Scriptura an impossible concept.
In fact, any attempt to determine the correct ending must be done by an
authority “outside” of the Bible, so now the Protestant must go against their
own claim that the Bible is the Sole Authority in all matters Christian. An authority outside of Scripture is the very
thing that Protestants reject in Catholicism.
Furthermore,
Protestants cannot claim the explanatory notes for each possible ending are
inspired because they are not part of the Word of God. They are simply commentary that comes from
outside the Bible which Sola Scriptura does not allow.
Only the
official Canon of Scripture of the Catholic Church is free from error because the
Catholic Church is the very authority that put the Bible together.
It is
difficult to imagine anything more ludicrous than the Protestant position on
Scripture. We are indebted and able to proclaim what the Church preached
yesterday is the same as it is today and tomorrow. In fact, Scripture is a
cause of division without the Catholic Church.
It is to the Church alone that we are indebted for having clear and
definitive teaching in matters doctrines, dogmas, and morals.
Another
curious problem for Protestants which is so ironic is that Protestants make the
claim if something is not clearly supported by Scripture it cannot be true or
infallible. According to that logic, if they cannot produce a single
verse in Scripture that shows us the
inspired table of contents for the books that were supposed to go into
the Bible to begin with, they cannot know or claim the Bible has the right
books. Therefore, they must reject the
Bible because there is nothing in the Bible which tells us which books were
supposed to be included in the Bible.
In short, it
does not matter what version of Scripture to which anyone refers, because in
the end Relativists always want to subjectively interpret Scripture to their
own end. When they are faced with the facts about the necessity of the
Catholic Church to understand Scripture correctly they seek to digress into the
world of “feelings” which is the “modernist’s” way of doing things. So in this
regard the names Protestant and Modernist are one and the same, and their
efforts have taken us to a new low in Relativism that goes beyond the borders
of Christianity.
†
Reason or Feelings
When faced
with the absurdity of contradiction, Modern Relativists (Protestants) conclude
that every “religious experience,” every “religious feeling” in any religion
becomes a “valid religious experience” simply because man is alive. And
he concludes that all “religious experiences and feelings” are valid “living
religions” in spite of the fact that living men reject God and the Catholic
Church.
And due to the
fact that feelings are always changing, the Modernist/Protestant will conclude
that “faith” is always changing and therefore, forever evolving, as we shall
see. This is religious relativism with the face of “feelings.”
The Modernist
will then tell us that a “necessary ray of light” should be shined upon the
“feeling of Religious Sentimentality.” Religious relativism now appeals to the
sentiment so that “God may be discovered in the midst of the religious
feelings” and that “God” is revealing himself to them in their feelings, apart
from the intellect where they shut down the facts about the Catholic
Church. And they tell us the task of the intellect is to make the
distinction that only after God reveals himself through our feelings and
sentiment that the “office” of the intellect is to reflect upon the “religious
feeling” and analyze it.
So, in the
mind of the Protestant, these formulas (interpretations) therefore unite the
believer to his faith. But in reality, when it comes to the matter of
“faith,” his interpretations of his own “religious feelings” are “inadequate
expressions” about the “object of his faith” which traps him in
Relativism. He cannot define an objective view of faith in reality.
All he can say is that he has “religious feelings.” And the reason his
interpretations are inadequate is because when he goes to write down his
formulas on the chalkboard of “his conscious intellect” he finds out the
chalkboard is not solid, but instead is a “vapor” and his hand sinks through it
into his “subconscious” where nothing can be written. And the religious
feeling that comes from that vapor cannot write anything on the chalkboard that
he can read. He can only “feel what is written.”
In the end,
the Protestant ends up calling the results of his own interpretations “symbols”
which are mere instruments he uses to express his own interpretation of his own
“religious feelings.” It is all about him. Surely, such a person is
a most pitiful creature, puffed up in the insecurity that comes from open
rebellion to make such foolish claims.
Since the
Protestant maintains that is impossible for “symbols” to express absolute truth
he then turns and refers to his “symbols” as “images of truth,” and he requires
these “images of truth” to conform to his own “Religious Feelings.” Serving
now as “instruments,” these “images of truth” become “vehicles of truth.”
And these “vehicles of truth” in like manner must conform to his “Religious
Feelings” which form yet another basis of Religious Relativism.
Now understand,
there is one thing the Modernist will embrace as an “absolute,” and that
absolute would be “his religious feelings.” In reality, he has embraced a
vapor that cannot serve him. And that is because the “nature of feelings”
is such that they are always changing, from moment to moment, almost in an
infinite way. And this means there is nothing absolute in his belief
because there are an infinite amount of different religious feelings that he
may have as he passes through different phases of life. And as a result, this means his “beliefs”
change according to the “formula” (interpretation of his feeling) that he
chooses to interpret his “religious feeling.”
So, the
Modernist concludes that the “formula” which the Church calls Dogmas must
therefore be subject to change just like the “Modernist’s formula of religious
feelings” allows for change. Consequently, the formula too, which the
Catholic Church calls dogmas, must be subject to these unexpected changes, and
everything is to be determined by “Religious Feelings” which are always in a
state of flux and change in the wave of Relativism.
And this is
the method that many Protestants use to attack the authentic Dogma of the
Catholic Church. They want to make way for what they refer to as “the
intrinsic evolution of dogma.” And when we examine the “dogma” and “doctrine”
of the Modernists we see an immense collection of clever arguments known as
sophisms, but they are always flawed. They would use “sophisms” as a
means to ruin and destroy all religion.
And as a
result of this, simply because they are living individuals subject to change,
their “religious formulas” (interpretations) must also be subject to change if
they are to be “truly religious” and not “mere theological speculation.”
For them, “religious interpretation” must be living and follow “Religious
Feelings.”
But the
Modernists will then tell us that “formulas” were “made for religious feelings,”
especially if they are merely imaginations.
What they are
claiming is this: a proper understanding of “formulas” has more to do with
where the formula came from rather than the number or the quality of the
formulas that Modernists use to interpret their “Religious Feelings.” For
them, the necessary thing to understand is that “religious formulas” should
conform to “religious feelings.” In other words, religious formula should
be Religious Relativism.
And this means
whenever a Modernist embraces “original religious formulas” to interpret his
“religious feelings” he has sanctioned that particular formula in his heart,
for the time being. And this means that “secondary formulas of interpretation,”
and everything that comes from them, must also proceed under the guidance of
whatever the Modernist believer may “feel” within their own heart. So,
Relativism begets Relativism.
The Protestant
holds the view that “religious formula” must adapt to the “personal faith” of
the “believer” because they regard “religious formulas” to be alive in a living
person who changes. This is an absurdity. It is like saying we
cannot objectively know what “fatherhood’ is because we all have different
experiences with our father. But that is to say the subjective experience
determines the nature of fatherhood. Not so! A man is not a father
by virtue of being a man. There are many men who are not fathers because
they do not have children. The nature of fatherhood is the procession of
distinct persons having the same nature. So, it is erroneous to say that
subjective experiences between father and child determine the nature of
fatherhood itself.
But
Protestants will argue that if the “religious formula” is not allowed to
“adapt” (made relative) to the subjective “personal faith” of the “believer”
because they regard “religious formulas” to be alive in a living person who
changes, then “religious formulas” have lost the value of their “power to
interpret religious feelings,” and therefore the believer must change their
“original formula” and embrace a new one to interpret the next “religious
feeling” they have. Such is the world of the religious relativists.
Such is the world of Sola Scriptura and the explanation as to why there are
tens of thousands of Christian denominations.
This exposes the Relativism present in their subjective interpretation
of Scripture yet again.
And since the
lot and character of the “religious formulas” that Protestants embrace is so
convoluted, it is no wonder that their understanding of “dogmatic formulas” is
so corrupted and precarious. And because they view dogmatic formulas in
such a corrupt way it should come to us as no surprise that Protestants regard
the Authentic Dogmas of the Catholic Church with such contempt and open
disrespect.
But
Protestants have the audacity to accuse the Church of taking the wrong road in
the matter of Dogma. They accuse the Church of failing to have a proper
understanding that distinguishes between what is “religious” and what is “moral.”
And they make this claim accusing the Church of holding to its formula for
Dogma while they would have religion fall into ruin.
And anyone who
disagrees with the Modernists will be told that any person or religion that
holds to false things in any religion is due to the fact there was an
“incorrect interpretation of religious feelings” that came about from an “incorrect
formula” produced by the “conscious intellect.”
Protestants
cannot have it both ways. If religion is determined by the “interpretation”
(formula) of “Religious Feelings” that come from the “subconscious” within a
person to meet the “conscious intellect” that is waiting to analyze the feeling
which is done by producing a formula by which they may interpret the “feeling”
that can never be an “absolute,” what, then, gives a Protestant the right to
come along at any point and accuse someone of falsely interpreting anything in
Scripture when they are using the very tools the Protestant supplied them with
to interpret their “feelings”?
Protestants
will also try to make excuses for the differences of opinion that exist in
their own ranks. They will tell us that “Religious Feelings” may be more
or less perfect, more or less intense, but nevertheless they are all the same
in that they are all “Religious Feelings.” And if the “intellectual
formula” is to be true it must respond to and obey the “Religious Feelings”
according to the intellectual capacity of the believer. But Protestants
fail to see this does nothing to eliminate the relativism which is inherent in
their concept of Religion and what it means to have faith. Relativism
cuts them off from objective faith.
The Modernist
views the “Tradition” of the Church as a communication of an original religious
experience that occurred within Jesus Christ Himself which then came down to us
and evolved over the centuries through “preaching an intellectual formula.”
And Modernists maintain that in addition to the value this “experience
represents” there comes a kind of fruitfulness, a kind of suggestion within the
“believer” to produce or stimulate “religious feeling” within themselves. They
will do this when their “religious feelings” grow sluggish so they can renew
their “feeling” they once had to bring it back. Relativism always
disappoints.
They also
believe that a person who does not yet believe can become a believer by
suggesting, or producing a “religious feeling” within themselves. And
they will, from that point on, be a believer because they know what it is to
have a “religious experience,” and that they now know how to keep it alive from
that point on once having tasted it. The “religious experience” is now
Relativism in action based on feelings that can be produced.
Modernists
will argue that what we know of Christ falls within the category of
“phenomena,” but any kind of faith put in Christ would be rooted in
fabrications about His life and His person which came about from historical
accounts that “transfigured” and “disfigured” what we know of Him. Therefore,
Modernists use “science” to remove anything that would speak of Christ as being
divine in His person so that “Religious Feelings” are not connected to any
belief in Christ as divine.
This results in people questioning whether
or not Jesus Christ actually performed miracles, or that He made real
prophecies, or whether He truly rose from the dead and ascended into Heaven.
Cardinal Kasper is one such material heretic. This is what he said,
“The result of
all this is that we must describe many of the gospel miracle stories as
legendary. Legends of
this sort should be examined less for their historical than for their
theological content. They say something, not about individual facts of saving
history, but about the single saving event which is Jesus Christ. To show that
certain miracles cannot be ascribed to the earthly Jesus does not mean that
they have no theological or kerygmatic significance…The probability is that we need not take the so-called ‘nature
miracles’ as historical.” (Jesus the Christ, p. 90-91)
Tragically, this kind of thinking is not
limited to Cardinal Kasper. Many are
beginning to think this way, but this is a reductionist hermeneutic that is
underway to undermine the literal miracles of Our Lord. They are attempting to eliminate the literal
in all the miraculous to be understood only as spiritual events. And there are others alongside of Kasper who
even cast doubt on the physical resurrection of Jesus, relegating it to a
spiritual event rather than bodily resurrection.
Kasper goes on to say,
“[Mark 16] begins with a definite
improbability. The wish to anoint a dead body, which has already been put in
its shroud in the tomb, three days later, is not given any explanation, such as
being a custom of the time, and is unintelligible in the climatic conditions of
Palestine. The fact that the women do not realize until they are already on the
way that they would need help to roll back the stone and enter the tomb betrays
a degree of thoughtlessness which is not easy to explain. we must assume therefore that we are faced not
with historical details but with stylistic devices intended to attract the
attention and raise excitement in the minds of those listening….” (Jesus the Christ, p. 127)
And it is
because Modernists have split science and faith in this manner, thereby making
them incompatible. Using this method of
Modernists, the agnostic scientist will then say, “No. There were no miracles
and prophecies about Christ, they are all myths.” So then, when it comes
to “faith,” Modernists will say there is no conflict between faith and science
because they cannot conflict. This is reductionist relativism as work.
Therefore, God
now becomes made in the image of someone’s “Religious Feelings” and He exists
only within the realm of what a man can conjure up in his imagination.
Nevertheless, the Modernist adheres to the concept of “Immanence” which is the
idea that there is an invisible spiritual or cosmic principle that is not
measurable empirical data or phenomena, but is present within the natural
universe itself. And here we see the double standard in the Protestant
and where a proper understanding of the Natural Law and the nature of Revealed
Truth becomes confused.
Consider
“symbolism” according to Protestant thinking. Since symbols are but symbols
that correspond to their objects they are merely instruments in the hands of
the believer that he uses to paint a view of religion in terms of how he wants
to interpret his “religious feelings.” But the Modernist will tell the
believer not to stress over the “formula” that he uses to interpret his
“religious feelings.”
The believer
is then told the only purpose of a formula is to seek “absolute truth” which is
not admissible, and here is the temptation to the claim that everyone has their
own subjective truth when it comes to religion. Whether or not they wish
to admit the fact, Protestants can never arrive at absolute truth based on the
principle of Sola Scriptura. Nevertheless, the Protestant hopes he can be
united to “some truth,” and this is where he gets cozy with his own
“subjective truth.”
After having
corrupted religious truths with a formula devised by Protestants, they tell us
the formula itself reveals and conceals at the same time, that is to say, the
formula is a means to express something without ever being able to express what
it is. And this is directly related to the false formula of
Protestantism. As we have seen, and will see further, this corrupted
formula is given birth by the supposition that objective reality can never be
found because man, in his “conscious intellect” meets his “religious feelings”
which are ever changing, and he tries to interpret them which results in a
“symbolism” of what he feels. He has closed his eyes to objective reality
outside of himself, and enters into a land of Religious Relativism in
all that he considers religious.
Protestants go
on to deceive people and tell them that the phrases used in the Sacraments are
to impress the populace by creating “Religious Feelings,” but nothing more.
They tell us the sacraments have been instituted for the sole purpose of
fostering faith according to “religious feelings” rather than to receive grace
“by the action of God.” This view is held by Protestants and it has been
condemned by the Council of Trent which says,
“If anyone
says that these sacraments are instituted solely to foster the faith, let him
be anathema.”
The Catholic
Church is accused of abusing its authority by assuming for itself the right to
prevent any individual who, in conscience, wishes to freely and openly reveal
the “religious impulses,” or their “religious feelings” in public. These
religious feelings, in the mind of the Modernist, are what constitute the
“evolution of Dogma,” and are therefore necessary for the survival of their
model of the Church. Therefore, to suppress these “religious impulses” in any
individual without due process would be an abuse of power in the Catholic
Magisterium which Protestants claim attacks the supremacy of the “individual
conscience.” But Protestants forget to mention the “obligations of conscience”
in relation to our obligation to objective truth in all things religious, and
the inherent Natural Law which is the parameter of the conscience. This
is where Relativism goes on the attack against a proper understanding of the
Natural Conscience because there is an attempt to relativise the conscience.
And, in
effect, they go even further in telling us that in the “evolution of doctrine”
an “external source” (God) is not allowed because they know this crushes the
notion that doctrine and dogma evolves. They will tell us that a proper
understanding of the “evolution of doctrine” rests in an ever increasing perfusion
of “religious feelings” experienced in the “conscience of the body of believers.”
Not only are Modernists wrong about how they understand the “evolution of Dogma,”
they are wrong in saying that “Dogma evolves.”
Neither doctrine nor dogma evolves. What was in the Church from
the beginning is the same as it is now. We have the benefit of deeper
insights about dogma and doctrine which come from the Church, but the insights
rest on what has always been.
Protestants
end up believing they are “refined” in their intellectual and moral being by
this evolution of doctrine which is Relativism applied to doctrine. And
by means of this “refining,” man comes to see in a clearer and a more full way
what is truly divine in the “form of ideas.” And as a result, “Religious
Feelings” in man will become more acute, meaning they will be heightened so he
can “feel more religious.”
And since
Modernists deny the divinity of Christ, they tell us that the evolution of
Doctrine and Dogma began after Jesus initially perceived a “Religious Feeling”
within Himself. And through the course of history, believers slowly and
gradually projected and added their own “religious feelings and ideas” onto
“His religious experience” until finally the body of believers created a belief
that Jesus is in fact God.
And
furthermore, they use the praises they give to each other to offset and
compensate for their “hurt feelings” when they are reprimanded by the
Church. They think nothing of the insults they hurl at God and the
Church. And to the one who is a real Catholic and faithful to the Church
that Jesus Christ established, the prizes and the words of praise that these
Modernists have for each other only provokes disgust.
Sola Scriptura
advocates a path to agnosticism which would shut down every intellectual path
to God, as though man can be barred from what is most natural to him, namely,
objective truth and his need for God who is truth in his very essence.
Tragically, in their hope to shut down every intellectual path to God in the
self-contradicting proposition of Sola Scriptura, the agnostics serve up as
though it were food on a menu a “better way” to understand God. They claim it
is through what man finds in himself according to his “religious feelings” and
in his “religious sense.” For after all, they tell us, what is “Religious
feeling” but the reaction of the soul to the action of intelligence and the
senses. But, if you take away the intelligence in man who is already
inclined to follow his senses he becomes their slave.
And the “religious
feeling” they have is liable to deception when the intelligence of man is
removed from the equation and is no longer allowed to guide man in his
“feelings.” They would have a man believe that he is on the right path
according to the intensity of the “religious feelings” he can produce. The more
intense the religious feeling the more sentimental it is to him, and the more
certain he is convinced that he is on the right path. This is a system
that locks him in his error.
This gives
birth to “Vital Phenomenon” which is the Modernists notion that any “religious
experience,” regardless of what religion we consider, falls into the category
of “religious immanence” which we just spoke of. And they conclude this
because “all men are alive.” Therefore, in the mind of the Modernist, every
“religious experience,” every “religious feeling” in any religion becomes a
“valid religious experience” simply because man is alive. And he
concludes, therefore, that all “religious experiences and feelings” are valid
“living religions” in spite of the fact that living men reject God and the
Catholic Church. This forms the basis for a false understanding of
“ecumenism” which is now to be understood as meaning all religions are of equal
value.
To be clear,
the Modernist defines religion as “nothing more than what makes a man feel
religious.” That is the bottom line criteria. This is what the
Modernists claim gives rise to religion.
They go within
themselves after taking with them what they have seen in the world with their
senses, and then they shut their eyes to outside reality. And they let
the “forms, shapes, and colors” of what they have seen mingle with what comes
from their “subconscious.” And from this mingling comes their “religious
feelings” which they now call a “religious experience.”
At this very
point the Modernist will “subjectively interpret” what they have seen
“according to what they feel,” and whatever they interpret this “religious
experience” to mean they will now regard it to be a “religious revelation.”
And this “revelation” becomes their subjective object of faith which is to
reject faith in what is objective. It is by this means that the
Modernist system regards man to be the “author of faith,” and therefore “the
object of his own faith” as determined by whatever religious “experience” he
can produce, as we shall see in more detail.
But let us
consider something else. Since “religious truths” are “internal” and
therefore “subjective” in the Modernist, and are not allowed to be present in
the “conscious intellect” in any objective intellectual manner, the Modernist
completely removes himself from Natural Theology and Religious Theology.
Since for him there can be nothing “objective” in the religious experience
which resides in the “conscious intellect,” it means that “religious truths”
are forever tied to the “subconscious” for the Modernist/Protestant. And
this is the dilemma within the Modernist that forces him to conclude that
“religious truths” can only be “symbolic” because if he reaches out to hold it
as something solid and objective in “religious truth” it eludes him as it sinks
into his subconscious. Therefore, the religious experience for him can
only be measured by what he feels his “religious experience means.” And this is
what gives birth to the Modernists’ view of “symbolic faith.” And due to
the fact that feelings are always changing, the Modernist will conclude that
“faith” is always changing and therefore, forever evolving, as we shall
see. And this is why modernism must be cut off at the root before it
reaps much damage.
The primary
work of the Apostles, and their successors, was to give personal testimony for
the Gospel. The Church was, and is, an oral teaching Church with
authority, just exactly as Christ commissioned it to be. In Luke 10:16
Jesus said,
“He that hears
you hears Me; and he that despises you despises Me; and he that despises Me
despises him that sent Me.”
To reject the
Catholic Church is to reject Christ and Scripture. Sola Scriptura is none
other than a blueprint for anarchy. Without the Church the Bible would
not even exist. And along comes
Protestantism creating an ocean of religious relativism.
Christ
promised us He would never leave us orphans.
The Catholic Church which He personally established is the only
infallible interpreter of Scripture, and the only authoritative teacher and
guide given to us by God Himself.
†
The True Rule of Faith
In His eternal
wisdom Christ gifted the world with the Catholic Church, the companion of sound
reason. Our God given reason tells us
that true faith must be true for all people at all times and place or it cannot
be a true rule of faith. Religious Relativism is the denial there is one
true rule of faith that is valid for all of mankind.
Those opposed
to Catholicism do not want to hear that Jesus Christ established the Catholic
Church as His Kingdom on earth as it is in Heaven. How, then, are we to
discern the Catholic Church, with the Papacy at its head, as the true rule of
faith and then follow it? How are we to see religious relativism present
in false religions so that it may be ferreted out?
Words have
meaning, and according to the Webster Dictionary the word “Magisterium” means,
“To teach with authority, especially of the Roman Catholic Church.” So the
question is, “Does Scripture tell us Jesus established such a Magisterium in
His Church”? Yes, in fact, it does.
In Matthew
10:40 Jesus said, “He who receives you receives me, and He who receives me
receives him who sent Me.”
Jesus is
clearly saying if you follow the Apostles, who were the first Bishops of His
Church, you follow Him, and if you reject them you reject Him, and He who sent
Him. So, where is your Bishop that has
Apostolic Succession in communion with the Pope?
In Luke
22:29-30 Jesus said,
“And I bestow
upon you a Kingdom, just as My Father bestowed one upon Me. That you may eat
and drink at my table in my kingdom, and sit on thrones judging the twelve
tribes of Israel."
In Matthew
19:28 Jesus said to them,
“Truly, I say
to you, in the new world, when the Son of man shall sit on his glorious throne,
you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve
tribes of Israel.”
So, it is clear and indisputable that
Jesus Christ established His Kingdom on earth, and that He conferred on His
Apostles, and their successors, a Royal Kingdom with
the authority to judge. And He did so by establishing one specific church
that can be identified as His Kingdom on earth. It is therefore folly to
disobey the Judges in His Kingdom.
In Luke 10:16
Jesus said,
“He who hears
you, hears Me, and he who rejects you rejects Me, and he who rejects Me rejects
him who sent Me.”
And in Matthew
16:18 we see that Jesus clearly stated He established “A” Church, not tens of
thousands of churches,
“And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this
rock I will build my church (singular), and the powers of death shall not
prevail against it.”
The Kingdom of God on
earth, as it is in Heaven, is the household of God that Christ himself built
upon the Apostles in union with St. Peter, not the Bible. And all those
who dwell in the House of the Lord are dwelling in His Church which is built
upon Peter the “Rock.”
In Matthew
7:25 we read,
25: “and the
rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat upon that house,
but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock.” Relativism
cannot conquer his Church.
In Ephesians
2:19-20 read,
19: “So then
you are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with
the saints and members of the household of God.”
20: “built
upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being
the cornerstone.”
All those who
reject His Church have built their house on sand and do not enter into His
house.
In Matthew
27:26 we read,
26: “And
every one who hears these words of Mine and does not do them will be like a
foolish man who built his house upon the sand.”
So then, why would Christ bring the Apostles
to Caesarea Philippi, a place wrought with an incredibly pagan history to
establish His Church?
Caesarea
Philippi is a beautiful area of Israel with a mountain overlooking a fertile
valley nearly 1200 feet above sea level. This location served well as a
place to worship pagan gods because of its elevation. On one side of the
mountain there is a cliff about 100 feet high and 500 feet long, and at the
base is a cave from which flowed water that was one of the sources of the Jordan
River.
The terrain in
the area reminded Greek travelers of their homeland, so they named it “Panias”
in honor of their pagan god, Pan, around 300 B.C. “Pan” was the
equivalent of Baal, the Canaanite pagan god whose image was much like the
golden calf that was condemned by Moses. A cleft had been cut into the
rock which held a statue of Pan who was depicted as a man with horns, ears, and
the legs of a goat. Pan was as a “god” who liked to frighten unsuspecting
travelers, and this is where the word “panic” came from.
In front of
his statue was an open air platform to accommodate the numbers of devotees who
came to worship, many of whom were shepherds who lived in the area. They
would gather and pray that their flocks would be fertile. If the flocks
were not fertile, they would flog the statue of Pan in an attempt to make him bless
their flocks with fertility.
The pagan
priests and priestesses of Pan would perform orgies in front of thousands who
came to worship, and in turn, they would indulge and the place turned into a
massive orgy with every vile manner of sexuality including homosexuality, and
bestiality with their goats.
On the face of
the cliff there are five niches cut into the rock that held statues of the
Greek gods which became known as the “Rock of the Gods.” Two of these pagan gods were “Echo” and
“Hermes.” According to Greek mythology, Pan tore the wood nymph
“Echo” into pieces because she refused his sexual advances.
The only thing
left of “Echo” was her voice which could be heard in the cave, and this is
where we get the word “echo.” Pan’s father, Hermes, was believed to carry
the “word of the gods.” But Hermes had another task which was to escort
souls into Hades, and this is why the cave was referred to as the “Gate of
Hades.”
Archaeologists
have also found 14 temples in this area that were used by the Ancient Syrians
to worship Baal. During the time of Israel’s judges, God punished the Jews
because they refused to destroy the altars used in the pagan worship of Baal.
The Romans had
an impact on this place as well. Herod the Great built a massive
temple out of white marble in honor of the “Divine Caesar.” Herod’s
son, Philip, rebuilt the city that was located here, and named it “Caesarea” in
honor of Augustus. Philip’s name was added to this city in order to
distinguish it from the great city of Caesarea on
the Mediterranean coast, and that is how this place became known as Caesarea
Philippi.
In the grand
scheme of things, Caesarea Philippi had become so evil that the Jews would not
go anywhere near the place. So we have to ask ourselves, “Why on
earth Jesus would take His apostles to this place, of all places, to establish
His Church?” Why would it be here that Peter would tell us that Jesus is the
Christ, the Son of the Living God?
We can only
conjecture, but it was at this mountain of rock in Caesarea Philippi that men
thought they could find divinity by cutting false gods out of “rock.”
What is most
interesting is that God Himself had established precedence for what Jesus was
about to do at Caesarea Philippi.
Isaiah 51:1-2
tell us,
“Hearken to
me, you who pursue deliverance, you who seek the lord; look to the
rock from which you were hewn, and to the quarry from which you were
digged. Look to Abraham your father and to Sarah who bore you; for when he was
but one I called him, and I blessed him and made him many.”
God Himself
calls abraham
“the
rock,” yet Protestants mock Catholics for saying if you want to find
the Lord you must find him through the “papacy rock.” This was a remedy for
Relativism even in the day of Abraham, but it was God Himself who presented Abraham
as the Rock for those who seek the lord
as the way to find Him. It was God who set the precedent, the typology,
the prophetic foreshadowing of the Papacy in what we just read from
Isaiah. Certainly, the “Abraham Rock” is not the Lord anymore than the
“Peter Rock” is the Lord, but in each case it is the only Rock by which the
people could find the Lord. And there is also a relationship between the
“Abraham Rock” and this quarry which is a massive place of rock; otherwise God
would not have told us where the “Abraham Rock” came from. So why do we
now find ourselves at another place of massive rock in Caesarea Philippi? God
Himself, the stone cutter, is standing there with His Apostles, and He is about
to hewn a stone from a massive place of rock and tell us if we hope to find
Him, if we objectively hope to find the Lord in matters of faith and morals,
look to the “Papacy Rock.”
Remember, in
the days of the Patriarchs God would change someone’s name to designate an
office, or a function, in view of their destiny in His plan. God changed
Abram’s name to Abraham in Genesis 17:5, and in Isaiah we have just seen that
Abraham is called the “Rock” by God Himself.
So here we are
at Caesarea Philippi and we see God Himself in the world now, walking among
men, bringing the prophetic typology He established with Abraham to completion
in the person of Peter. It is here that Jesus will give Peter the Keys to
the Kingdom of Heaven.
It is here Peter was to lead men away from the world of sin and error so
indicative of Caesarea Philippi. Man would be led to worship God with
certainty in matters reason, morals, and faith by means of the Keys that Christ
would give to Peter.
Unlike the
pagan gods in the wall of the cliff, standing in front of false divinities
rooted in paganism and relativism where people were led astray, Jesus, true
Divinity in this world as God and man, will is about to cut a Rock from this
place and call it the “Peter Rock.” And He will then tell us “Upon this
Rock” He will build His Church. It is
here that Jesus will take us through three possible views of faith. Two of these views will be ruled out because
they did not come from Him. They would be rooted in Relativism and would
terminate in Religious Relativism. Jesus will then go on to show us that only
one rule of faith is commissioned directly from his own hand.
The
First view – “Scripture Alone”
With His first
question to the Apostles we will see Our Lord bring into focus the issue of
religious relativism that comes from private interpretation of the people about
who He is.
Keep in mind
that Jesus IS the literal Word of God now walking among men, and there were
many who followed Him. They heard Him speak, they saw Him perform miracles;
they even saw him raise people from the dead. They thought they knew who
He was; they thought they could subjectively interpret the word of God in the
same vein of Sola Scriptura. They privately interpreted the Word of God
Himself. And Jesus specifically referred to these people.
In Matthew
16:13-14 we read,
“Now when
Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, He asked his disciples, who
do men say that the Son of man is? And they said, some say John the
Baptist; others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”
The apostles
tell him of the conflicting views among the people who, for any reason, thought
they know who Jesus was, but none of them knew. Some thought He was John
the Baptist, some thought He was Elijah, and still others, Jeremiah or one of
the prophets. Lacking a single objective authority to determine who is right we
find the components of reductionist religious relativism. Their answers
were from flesh and blood, they were not commissioned to speak for Christ, they
had no authority to do so, and they were consigned to a never ending world of
guessing and opinion lacking any certainty as is the case with Sola
Scriptura. Once Christ establishes a Papacy there is no longer any
excuse. Those who do not yield and subjectively interpret Scripture apart
from and against the Church create what St. Paul condemned as the vain precepts
of men taught as doctrine.
The
Second View - The second view is the Orthodox Church
The Orthodox
hold the view that authority in the Church is seen when all the Bishops come
together in a Council. They reject the supremacy of the Papacy and a number of
other doctrines taught by the Catholic Church. They regard the Papacy to
be a spokesman for all the Bishops at best, with the honorary title of “first
among equals” stripped of his authority over them.
But Jesus would
have none of this arrogance in His Bishops.
He takes the focus off of the many voices of “the people” now, and put
the question directly to the men who will be His Bishops, the Apostles. This brings into focus the question of “Collegial
infallibility.”
Matthew 16:15
tells us,
“He said to
them, “But who do you say that I am?”
Here is the
simple fact. As a group, the Apostles had nothing to say in response to
Christ’s question as to who He was. Divine revelation from the Father was
not given to them, and this is why they could not identify Jesus. There would
have been differing answers from the Apostles just as there had been differing
answers from the many voices of the people. Nor were there any tongues of
flames that came down to rest over their heads when Christ asked them who He
is. It must have been a very difficult moment for them, but there was
silence from the eleven. Any response
from them would have been flesh and blood.
So, if you are
Orthodox, here is a question for you to consider. What do you think the Lord would have done if
the other Apostles turned on Peter when they saw Christ give him the Keys to
the Kingdom? Do you really think Christ
would suffer them if they said, “No way, Jesus. He does not have authority over
me as a Bishop. You better not say Peter trumps us as a group of Bishops over
the entire earth.” What do you think you
would have seen in the eyes of the Lord if you were one of the Apostles and
tried to pull that one off?
You would have
to be unreasonable to say the supremacy of the Papacy was not present in the
beginning of the Church.
The very
question to the Apostles, and their lack of response, means they did not know
for sure who or what Jesus was. Our Lord could have come right out and told
them who He was, so why didn’t He just do that? What was He getting
at? He has divine purpose, and if He had told them, one individual would
not have been commissioned at the head of his church to guide it for Him in His
absence. He would have given us a Church divided against itself.
There would be endless disputes not only among the people, but among the Bishops
as well, and we see this division in the Orthodox Church even to this day. The Orthodox are divided in theology and
morality, and they are revisionists of history just as we see with Protestant
Revisionism.
Before the
great split between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church took place the
Patriarch of Constantinople explains and defends the Supremacy of Papal
authority in all matters. He explicitly says they “obey” the Pope. In 536 AD Patriarch St. Menas
of Constantinople said,
"Indeed
Agapetus of holy memory, Pope of Old Rome, giving him time for repentance until
he should receive whatever the holy fathers defined, did not allow him to be
called either a priest or a Catholic ... we follow and obey
the Apostolic Throne; we are in communion with those with whom it is
in communion, and we condemn those whom it condemns."
Many of the
Orthodox in our day are unaware of what Patriarch St. Menas said, and that is
but one example of revisionism in the Orthodox Church of today. Christ would have none of it. When it
comes to the question of authority He would not leave His church to the
capricious whims of relativists like Miriam, or Bishops, or Councils not in
Communion with Peter and his successors. There would be problems without one
man commissioned with authority that comes from God to speak in His behalf.
Without an authoritative, final decision, and definition in matters of faith
and morals in His absence He would have condemned His own Church to the
quagmire of Religious Relativism.
This is why
the 2nd Vatican Council states:
“The college
or body of Bishops has for all that no authority unless it is united to the
Roman Pontiff, Peter’s successor, as its head, whose primatial authority, let
it be added, over all, whether pastors or faithful, remains in its integrity.
For the Roman Pontiff by reason of his office as the Vicar of Christ, namely,
and as pastor of the entire church, has full, supreme and universal power over
the whole church, a power he can always exercise unhindered.” The Pope is
the Vicar of Christ, not the Vicar of Peter. He is the successor of St.
Peter.
The Orthodox
view of Christianity is a high level form of relativistic Protestantism, but
with valid Sacraments and Bishops. But it also is a false rule of faith
that cannot save. As St. Augustine said,
“You can have everything outside of the Catholic Church, including valid
Sacraments, but you cannot have Salvation if you reject the Catholic Church.”
The
Third View – The True Rule of faith
The answer to
Christ’s question about who He is came from one man only, St. Peter. And
it is here, in Scripture, that we are going to see the evidence of Papal
Infallibility spoken by a sinful man which proves the capacity of infallibility
does not depend on his impeccability.
St. Matthew is
telling us what St. Peter and the other Apostles would have understood when
Christ spoke to Peter alone, and that what he (Matthew) was writing and telling
us about would be handed down to us by the Apostolic Church as
part of the deposit of faith.
Jesus was
about to distinguish Peter from the rest of the Apostles, so we need to
understand that in hermeneutics, the science of translating and interpreting
Scripture, the literal meaning of the text is the principle of first priority,
meaning it comes first. When we consider the distinction between Peter
and the other Apostles we have to consider the literal meaning of what Matthew
was conveying. He was telling us about what Christ was conveying to Peter
alone after Peter’s response.
In order for a
Pope to speak infallibly three conditions must be met, and we are about to see
their origin as the true rule of faith in Scripture.
The
First Requirement
The 1st
requirement for Papal Infallibility is that a Pope must be speaking about
something that is a matter of faith and is essential for us to believe. The
question that Christ posed to the Apostles has to do specifically with faith,
namely, what are we to believe about Christ. This means the things we are to
believe in matters of faith must come from a source that is commissioned and
authoritative if we are to trust the objects of faith presented to us as
infallible with absolute certainty. Christ says to His Apostles, “Who do you
say that I Am?”
Peter steps
forward not as one among equals prodded by the other Bishops to speak, but as
one who is given something the others did not receive.
Our Lord knew
He is the Christ; He was not in need of Peter to tell him who He was, and
Christ does nothing without purpose.
Christ’s
question opens the door for the action of the Most Holy Trinity to establish
the Papacy, vividly demonstrating for us the evidence for the capacity of
infallibility in action in the response and person of St. Peter. The
Father sends the Holy Spirit into Peter to give him a “Direct Revelation” about
Christ, and Peter gushes forth,
“You are the
Christ, the Son of the Living God.”
Do we fully
realize the implication of what this means?
Once Peter
responds, Jesus Christ, the Son of God not only ratifies Peter’s response, but as
god
himself, he declares to people all over the “Earth” that
peter’s response was a direct revelation from god the father. And He goes on to explain to the world the
nature of Peter’s response, that is was not from flesh and blood. Consider the
importance of what is happening here! The Eternal Father speaks through the very
mouth of a sinner, St. Peter, who gushes forward with commissioned, infallible,
religious, objective truth,
“You are the
Christ, the Son of the Living God.”
The breath of
Christ will now sear a man of mud and clay into a Rock.
In Matthew
16:17 Christ says this,
“For flesh and
blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in Heaven.”
Understand,
Peter’s response had nothing whatsoever to do with guess, reason, human
insight, chance, or anything other than a direct revelation God the Father.
We are
witnessing the capacity of infallibility at work in St. Peter who was about to
receive an exclusive commission for his Bishopric, and for those who succeed
him in his office. We are witnessing the fact that all definitive Church
teaching must be in union with this event because it is the measure of what
determines whether or not a person is of good faith.
What is
happening between Christ and Peter is a first hand account from St. Matthew of
“Oral Infallibility in the Papacy” for the entire world to see, and Christ
Himself ratified the fact of the infallibility in Peter’s
response for everyone on earth to see. So, in this moment we are cemented
in the words of Christ when He said, “He who hears you, hears me.”
The fact that
Christ reveals
to us that Peter’s response was a Divine Revelation given directly
to Peter by God the Father is evidence there is absolutely zero possibility for
any error in Peter’s response. His answer is black and white, and the
nature of Peter’s answer crushes Religious Relativism on the spot as we shall
see in more detail.
When Christ
ratifies infallibility in Peter’s response we see that He was providing the first
component in the framework for infallibility in His Church. Immediately
after Peter’s infallible response, in the name of the Trinity, Christ crowns
his own work by commissioning the Bishopric of St. Peter with not only the
capacity of infallibility, but also with authority so that He can guide His
Church through Peter and his successors.
The
Second Requirement
The 2nd
requirement for Papal infallibility is the Pope must appeal to his Petrine
office in some manner.
In Matthew
16:19 Christ said,
"I will
give you
the keys of the kingdom of Heaven, and whatever you bind on earth
shall be bound in Heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed
in Heaven.”
Jesus did not
give the Keys to Himself, He gave them to St. Peter when He commissioned the
office of Peter’s Bishopric. And in so doing Christ shows us where the
“Second Condition” required for Papal infallibility originates. Jesus
unites Peter’s capacity of infallibility to authority in the Bishopric of his
office by giving him the Keys to the Kingdom of His Church. This is how
God Himself speaks to us through His Church which is His Kingdom on earth. We
just saw first hand evidence of this very fact when God the Father gave a
direct Revelation to Peter for everyone in the world to see.
Peter and his
successors can appeal to their Petrine office to meet the 2nd
condition required for Papal infallibility by saying, “In virtue of my office
as the Successor to St. Peter, or as … The Vicar of Christ, or as … called to
confirm his Brethren in the faith, etc.”
Jesus Christ,
the Son of God, while He was personally present here on earth, lays down the
gauntlet against relativism in His Church, regardless of what form it would
take, by what He just conferred on Peter. Without reservation “Christ
declared” that whatever “Peter declared” would be “bound on earth is bound in Heaven.”
Peter was authoritatively commissioned to speak infallibly for God about what
we are to believe.
Let us look
again at Matthew 16:19 to be clear about something. Jesus said,
“I will give you
the keys of the kingdom of Heaven, and whatever you bind on earth
shall be bound in Heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed
in Heaven.”
As you read
the words of Jesus Christ Himself, do you realize there is nothing in Heaven
with defect? Everything in Heaven is perfect and absolutely true.
When Jesus declared to Peter “Whatever you declare bound on earth
is bound in Heaven” Jesus declared it to be the
same reality on earth as it is in Heaven. When a Pope meets the capacity of
infallibility, whatever Peter and his successors bind and loose on earth is the
same reality in Heaven as it is on earth.
It is without defect in Heaven and therefore it is without defect on
earth because it is the same reality, just as we saw with Peter’s response,
“You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.”
Jesus is the
Son of God in Heaven and on earth, and the Most Holy Trinity chose Peter to
infallibly proclaim that fact to the world. This evidence for Papal
infallibility strikes a crushing blow to Religious Relativism like someone took
100 lb sledge hammer to a walnut sitting on a cold, thick, hard steel surface,
and with one forceful blow shattered the nut to pieces.
The power of
binding and loosing that is given to Peter must be free from error because it
is immutably tied to what is bound in Heaven in all matters of faith, and by
extension religious morals.
This leads us
to the “third and final condition” necessary for Papal infallibility.
The
Third Requirement
The 3rd
requirement for Papal Infallibility is when Jesus said,
“…whatever you
bind on earth
shall be bound in Heaven.”
The Pope must
bind his teaching on the entire Church all over the earth.
Jesus did not
say to Peter,
“Whatever you
bind in East
Oshkosh is
bound there and nowhere else.”
Nor did He say
the Apostle James gets to decide anything in Jerusalem with
his own infallibility about what people are to believe, or to any other
Apostle. Christ’s words to Peter show us the authority of the Papacy trumps
James, the Orthodox Church, Sola Scriptura, and any Bishop or group of
Bishops.
Jesus said to
Peter, “Whatever you declare bound on earth.”
The Greek roots of the term “catholic” means “according to
(kata-) the whole (holos),” or more colloquially, “universal.” Note the use of the word “earth” by Jesus. Christ’s selection of the word “earth”
designates “universal authority.”
By selecting the word “Earth” Christ designates
the
office of peter’s bishopric as having “universal authority.” And since the word “Catholic” means
“Universal,” the authority Christ just gave to Peter is Catholic authority over
the entire church. And since His Church is Universal, the Church Christ
just established is the Catholic Church (Singular). The Catholic Church is the only
Church established by Jesus Christ.
By giving Peter
the Keys to the Kingdom of His Church, Christ Himself vested Catholic (Universal)
authority in the Bishopric of Peter and his successors. This, in itself, identifies the only Church
established by Jesus Christ Himself is the Catholic Church which is One, Holy,
and Apostolic.
You have just
seen the “Three Conditions” necessary for Papal infallibility, and whenever
they come together in any order when a Pope teaches, Papal infallibility has
taken place in exactly the same manner as when Peter said to Christ, “You are
the Son of the Living God.”
Remember, Christ
Himself spoke about the “Chair of Moses” which came with authority, and that
Chair with authority continued into the New Covenant from the hand of Christ
Himself. This is the reason why the
Catholic Church refers to the “Chair of Peter.”
Just as Moses and his successors held the position of Prime Minister in
the Mosaic Covenant in the Old Testament, anyone who sits in the Chair of Peter
becomes the Prime Minister of Christ in the New Testament. They become “The Vicar of Christ” with all
the authority that goes with it.
Now we need to
look closer at who Jesus was referring to when He used the word “Rock.”
St. Matthew tells us the literal core meaning of “Rock” refers to Peter on
which Christ would build His Church.
Matthew tells
us that what Christ made clear had to be intelligible, and that it was meant
for everyone to understand down through the centuries until the return of
Christ. It would have been fundamental and necessary in the early Church
when people had a more simple approach and view of their faith.
What Christ
said to Peter did not need interpretation from Sola Scriptura. It did not
need more demanding and extensive hermeneutics to satisfy the demands of the
rebellious Protestants who want to live by Sola Scriptura. It had to be
clear to them that there was a final authority in all matters of faith and
morals, and that the definitive answers would be found in Peter and his
successors alone.
†
The Bible or the Papacy
Protestants
are fond of claiming that Jesus referred to Himself as the “Rock” because they
want to deny the authority He gave Peter when He gave him the Keys to the
Kingdom. That is their big fight with the Church. They just cannot stand
the fact that Jesus would do such a thing, and that is the bottom line.
The Protestant
assertion that Christ was referring to himself when He used the word “Rock” is
an attempt to shift the focus away from the fact that Jesus gave the Keys to
the Bishopric of Peter, that He endowed it with the Capacity of infallibility,
and then commissioned it with authority.
So, we are
going to translate Matthew 16:18 into the Greek without first considering the
“gender” of Peter,
“You are Petra and
upon this Petra I
will build My Church.”
We know the
Greek word for “Rock” is “Petra” and we also know that the Aramaic word “Kepha”
can only mean “Rock.”
Now let us
look at the words that Jesus said to Peter,
“You are Kepha
and upon this Kepha I will build My Church”
There is a
reason you cannot translate Peter to Petra, and that is because you must
respect the gender of Peter in the Greek and translate his name to “Petros.”
If you leave Peter’s name as “Petra” you would be referring to him in the
feminine gender which is the equivalent of calling him a female rock. So,
the Greek referred to Peter as “Petros.”
Since “Kepha”
in the Aramaic only means “Rock” the literal translation from the Aramaic to
the Greek would have to be “You are Petra, and upon this Petra I
will build My Church.”
The burden is
now on the Protestant to provide evidence that Jesus referred to Peter in the
Aramaic as a “stone” by which the Greek translators knew they should make the
distinction between Jesus being the “rock” and Peter being the “stone.” Like
it or not, Jesus did not choose a word in the Aramaic that would tell the
translators to make any such distinction.
If Christ had
wanted to refer to Peter as a “stone” and himself as the “rock” in the Aramaic,
He would have used the word “evna” which means “little pebble” or “little stone.”
And the translators who went from the
Aramaic to the Greek would have been able to point to the word “evna” to render
Peter as “little stone.” But Jesus did not use the word “evna,” He used the
word “Kepha” which is rendered only as “Rock.” And since Petros also
respects the gender of Peter, we see the wisdom of Christ in naming Peter as
the “Rock.”
The Protestant
assertion that Christ referred to himself as the Rock is impossible because the
two instances of the word “Rock” are linked by the Greek words “te taute/tautee
tee” which means “this very same,”
in this case “this very same rock”
when speaking to Peter. This is a demonstrable construction in the Greek
which points to Peter alone, and he, the person of Peter, is the subject of the
sentence (not his confession of faith in Christ) as the very rock on which Jesus builds His Church. And the
demonstrative “tautee” refers to the closest antecedent which is “Petros” and
this connects the 2 times Christ used the word “Rock” to Peter alone.
Christ can only
be saying you (Peter/Petros) are
Rock, and on this very same rock I will build my Church.
Furthermore,
if the translators wanted us to believe that Jesus referred to Himself as “the
Rock” the Greek would have used the word “lithos” to designate Peter as the
“little pebble” or “small stone.” But they did not do that.
We can also
look to the Lexicon and the interlinear format in the Peshitta Syriac New
Testament at the Greek word for “Petra.” “Petra” is translated by the Aramaic
word “SHU`A'” as found in Matthew 7:24-25. It means a “massive rock or a
boulder.”
We also see
that whenever the Apostle Paul refers to Peter it is always “Kepha.” Paul
learned of “Kepha” in reference to Peter from the other Apostles and from Peter
himself. Above all, he knew it was the name that Christ gave to Peter.
Anyone who
wants to argue (without actually saying it) that Paul suggested Jesus was
saying to Peter “you are kepha” and then of Himself “and on this shu`a I will build my Church” is adding
to Scripture. And the same would apply when respecting the gender of Peter’s
name as it flows into the Greek. This is why “petros” and “petra” were
both used in the Greek instead of “Petros” 2 times or “Petra” 2 times.
You are still required to respect the gender.
In the Greek
New Testament we find “Petra” is used 16 times, and of these times it is
translated as:
• “SHU`A',” 9
times in the Peshitta Syriac
• 6 times by
the word “Kepha”
• And 1 time
by the Hebrew root word “Abena”
Of the ten
times “Petra” is used in the Gospels it is translated:
• 7 times by
the word “SHU`A”
• 3 times by
the word “Kepha”
Since Jesus
did not use the word “evna” in the Aramaic, and the Greek does not use the word
“lithos” to designate Peter as the “little pebble” or “little stone,” it is
impossible that the translators who translated from the original Aramaic to the
Greek meant anything other that what we see in the text. It is impossible
they were confused about who Jesus referred to as “the Rock.” Jesus said
in Aramaic,
“I tell you
that YOU are rock (kepha) and on this rock (kepha) I will build My Church.”
Furthermore,
the Aramaic word for “Rock,” transliterated into the English can be written as
“Cephas.” This also supports the Catholic position of Christ’s usage of
the word “rock” for Peter. He is “Kepha” and only “Kepha” in Scripture
regardless of whether we refer to the Codex mostly in Greek or the Peshitta
which is rooted in Aramaic, and the Aramaic itself.
And the fact
is this: “Petra” was never applied to Jesus as a proper name nor as the
result of a name change for Jesus. And this is different than saying that
proper nouns do not have to match gender nouns.
Now consider
what you are calling Jesus when you refer to Him as “Petra” in the Greek.
Jesus is male, and you must also respect his gender in the Greek, just as you
must with Peter. In their blindness, Protestants are referring to Jesus
in the “feminine” which is the same as calling Jesus a female rock. That
is not a good plan. And this shows that when Christ used the word “Rock”
the association can flow only to Peter because a rock (Petra) is gender
neutral. Jesus is neither a thing nor a woman.
Protestant
scholars are also finally conceding to the fact that Jesus referred to Peter as
the “Rock” and not Himself. And you do not find many serious Protestants
who are not up to speed on this issue.
The following
is from various Protestant scholars who agree that Jesus referred to Peter as
the “Rock.”
The first is
from J. Knox Chamblin. He’s Presbyterian and a New Testament Professor at
the “Reformed Theological Seminary.” He writes,
“By the words
“this rock” Jesus means not himself, nor his teaching, nor God the Father, nor
Peters confession, but Peter himself. The phrase is immediately preceded by a
direct and emphatic reference to Peter. As Jesus identifies himself as the
Builder, the rock on which He builds is most naturally understood as someone
(or something) other than Jesus himself. The demonstrative this, whether
denoting what is physically close to Jesus or what is literally close in
Matthew, more naturally refers to Peter (v. 18) than to the more remote
confession (v. 16). The link between the clauses of verse 18 is made yet
stronger by the play on words, “You are Peter (Gk. Petros), and on this rock
(Gk. Petra)
I will build my church.” As an apostle, Peter utters the confession of verse
16; as a confessor he receives the designation this rock from Jesus.
(“Matthew,” Evangelical Commentary on the Bible, (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker,
1989), 742.)
The next is
from Donald A. Carson III. He is a Baptist and Professor of the New Testament
at Trinity Evangelical Seminary. He writes,
“The Peshitta (written in Syriac, a language
cognate with Aramaic) makes no distinction between the words in the two
clauses. The Greek makes the distinction between petros and petra simply
because it is trying to preserve the pun, and in Greek the feminine Petra could
not very well serve as a masculine name.” (The Expositor”s Bible Commentary:
Volume 8 (Matthew, Mark, Luke), (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1984), 368.)
“The word
Peter petros, meaning “rock” (Gk 4377), is masculine, and in Jesus” follow-up
statement he uses the feminine word petra (Gk 4376). On the basis of this change,
many have attempted to avoid identifying Peter as the rock on which Jesus
builds his church. Yet if it were not for Protestant reactions against extremes
of Roman Catholic interpretations, it is doubtful whether many would have taken
“rock” to be anything or anyone other than Peter.” (Zondervan NIV Bible
Commentary – New Testament, vol. 2, (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1994), 78.)
And the next
is from John A. Broadus. He’s a Baptist author and writes,
“Many insist
on the distinction between the two Greek words, thou art Petros and on this
petra, holding that if the rock had meant Peter, either petros or petra would
have been used both times, and that petros signifies a separate stone or
fragment broken off, while petra is the massive rock. But this distinction is
almost entirely confined to poetry, the common prose word, instead of petros
being lithos; nor is the distinction uniformly observed.
“But the main
answer here is that our Lord undoubtedly spoke Aramaic, which has no known
means of making such a distinction [between feminine petra and
masculine petros in Greek]. The Peshitta (Western Aramaic) renders, “Thou are
kipho, and on this kipho.” The Eastern Aramaic, spoken in Palestine in
the time of Christ, must necessarily have said in like manner, “Thou are kepha,
and on this kepha.” . . . Beza called attention to the fact that it is so
likewise in French: “Thou art Pierre, and on this pierre”;
and Nicholson suggests that we could say, “Thou art Piers (old English for
Peter), and on this pier.” (Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, (Valley Forge,
PA: Judson Press, 1886), 355-356.)
John Peter
Lange. He is a German Protestant scholar. Lange’s Commentary on the
Holy Scriptures: The Gospel According to Matthew, vol. 8, (Grand Rapids, MI:
Zondervan, 1976), 293.)
Craig L.
Blomberg, is a Baptist and Professor of New Testament, Denver Seminary. The New
American Commentary: Matthew, vol. 22, (Nashville: Broadman, 1992), 251-252.)
David Hill is
a Presbyterian minister and Senior Lecturer in the Department of Biblical
Studies, University
of Sheffield, England “The
Gospel of Matthew,” The New Century Bible Commentary, (London: Marshall, Morgan
& Scott, 1972, 261.)
Suzanne de
Dietrich is a Presbyterian theologian. (The Layman’s Bible Commentary:
Matthew, vol. 16, (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1961), 93.)
Donald A.
Hagner is at Fuller Theological Seminary (“Matthew 14-28,” Word Biblical
Commentary, vol. 33b, (Dallas: Word Books, 1995), 470.)
Gerhard Maier
is an Evangelical Lutheran. “The Church in the Gospel of Matthew:
Hermeneutical Analysis of the Current Debate,” Biblical Interpretation and
Church Text and Context, (Flemington Markets, NSW: Paternoster Press, 1984),
58.)
William
Hendriksen is at the Reformed Christian Church, and Professor of New Testament
Literature at Calvin Seminary. (New Testament Commentary: Exposition of
the Gospel According to Matthew (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1973), 647.)
We see the
Keys that Christ gave to Peter and the successors in his office signify his
power and authority to govern the entire Church, to declare and define dogma
and doctrine, to legislate, to dispense, to enact or loose laws, and all
matters pertaining to the governance of His Church. Christ gave to the office
of Peter and his successors uncontested universal authority in His Church.
And let us not
forget that the writers of the New Testament made it clear Christ that when
Christ gave the Keys to Peter He did it right in front of the eyes of the other
Apostles so they understood that the power and scope of these unique Keys was
vested in the office of Peter alone. This defined the relationship of all
Bishops and their successors to the office of Peter and his successors.
This leads us
to the question of “apostolic succession.” Is there evidence of apostolic
succession in Scripture? Yes, there is!
After Judas
had been lost the Apostles numbered only 11. But they clearly understood
their Office was an Office of Succession that must be passed down to those who
came after them. We know this because they are the ones who said they had
to select another to fill the Office of Bishopric left vacant by the suicide of
Judas.
In Acts Of
Apostles 20:28 we see,
“Take heed to
yourselves, and to the whole flock, wherein the Holy Ghost has placed you
Bishops, to rule the Church of God,
which He has purchased with His own blood.”
We have just
seen that the Holy Spirit rules and guides His Church through the Bishops.
And in John
14:16-18 we read,
16: “And I
will pray to the Father, and He will give you another Counselor, to be with you
forever”
17: “even the
Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor
knows him; you know him, for He dwells with you, and will be in you”
18: “I will
not leave you desolate; I will come to you.”
Jesus is
telling the apostles that the Counselor will be given to them that they may
have the Spirit of Truth. If everything that Christ gave to the apostles
died with them, then the truth of Jesus Christ and what He promised died with
them as well, and we know such assertions come from Satan. The Great
Commission to teach the Gospel to all nations through the ages in itself
requires Apostolic Succession.
Furthermore,
we have Scriptural evidence that succession of their Bishoprics had been
prophesized in the Old Testament, and that the office of Judas would be left
vacant.
We read in
Acts 1:20,
20: “For it is
written in the book of Psalms: Let their habitation become desolate, and let
there be none to dwell therein. And his bishopric let another take.”
The apostles
themselves actually quoted from Psalms 109:8 about the succession of Office in
the Bishopric which reads,
8: “May his
days be few: and his Bishopric let another take.”
We also see
how the Apostles selected the successor to the Office of Judas.
In Acts 1:26
we read,
26: “And they
gave them lots, and the lot fell upon Matthias, and he was numbered with the
eleven apostles.”
Furthermore,
Paul speaks about the office of Bishop when he defines the qualities that
should be in those who would seek to be Bishop.
1st Timothy
3:1 reads,
1: “The saying
is sure: If any one aspires to the office of bishop, he desires a noble task.”
In Ephesians
3:10 Paul said,
10: “that
through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the
principalities and powers in the Heavenly places.”
Paul is
declaring it is only through the Catholic Church that we find the Truth and Wisdom
of God.
We see this in
1st Timothy 3:14 -15,
14: “I hope to
come to you soon, but I am writing these instructions to you so that if I am
delayed, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is
the church of the living God, the pillar and bulwark of the truth.”
The Church is
the Pillar and Foundation of Truth, not the Bible. The Church is a
bulwark, a defensive wall like structure to keep the errors out. And the
Bishops are supposed to give protection and support to the Church, and that is
precisely why Jesus built the Church upon Peter and the Bishops in communion
with him.
What has come
down to us through the ages must be regarded as the “deposit of truth” which is
the same as the “deposit of faith” found in the Catholic Church alone. And that
comes to us through the Apostolic Magisterium. This is the “bulwark” that
protects the faithful from doctrinal error. And we can see this at work
in the life of the Catholic Church for over two thousand years.
We read in
“Lumen Gentium” that the Church “Subsists” in the Catholic Church. The
Church needs no other Church to be complete. Elements of sanctification
can be found outside the visible confines of the Church, but the fullness of
truth subsists in the Catholic Church alone as we read in Lumen Gentium.
Lumen
Gentium
Vatican II,
Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, 21 November, 1964. Sections 5-8
CHAPTER I: THE MYSTERY OF THE CHURCH
“This Church,
constituted and organized as a society in the present world, subsists in the
Catholic Church, (emphasis added) which is governed by the successor of Peter
and by the bishops in communion with him. Nevertheless, many elements of
sanctification and of truth are found outside its visible confines. Since these
are gifts belonging to the Church of Christ,
they are forces impelling towards Catholic unity.”
So then, the
purpose of the gifts outside the visible confines is to draw people into the
Catholic Church.
In 2nd Peter
3:16 we read,
16: “There are
some things in them hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist
to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures.”
We also read
in 2nd Peter 1:20-21,
20: “First of
all you must understand this, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of
one’s own interpretation.”
21: “because
no prophecy ever came by the impulse of man, but men moved by the Holy Spirit
spoke from God.”
We have seen
evidence that no one can claim they are moved by the Holy Spirit and speak
apart from the Church.
Here is what
Protestantism offers to us if we will only come their way. Take your pick
among thousands of denominations that reject the Catholic Church with one
voice.
Protestantism
individually, or in the aggregate, is a “body of rejection,” or a “collection”
that breathes against the Church, but they fail to explain why they are divided
amongst themselves. Their understanding of the word “catholic” produces
universal chaos. All the Protestant denominations in the aggregate cannot
represent Christianity because you cannot determine which one of them has
objective religious truth and authority that is true for all people. None
of them has universal (catholic) authority that was commissioned by Christ, so
they usurp the title of “Catholic.”
We can go back
in time and see the Church was referred to as the “Catholic Church” only 10
years after the death of the Apostle John who died in Ephesus around
the year 100 A.D.
In a letter
from Ignatius of Antioch to the Smyrnaeans we see the words “Catholic” and
“Church” which is evidence that the Christians already referred to the Church
founded by Jesus Christ as the Catholic Church.
His letter
reads,
“Wheresoever the
bishop shall appear, there let the people be, even as where Jesus may be, there
is the Catholic Church.”
It
had been held there was only a 10 year gap between the death of the Apostle
John and this letter, but scholars now believe the Church was referred to as
Catholic even before the death of John the Apostle. In either case, the
Catholic Church had to be understood as the Church that Jesus Christ founded,
or what Ignatius said would have made no sense to the early Church. And
this Church, the Catholic Church, has remained the same Church to the present
day.
Furthermore,
there had to be a time when the successors to the Apostles referred to the
Church as “Catholic” for instructional purposes.
This
identifies the Church that Jesus Christ founded as the one, holy, catholic, and
apostolic church. It is one, visible communion of the faithful
founded upon the Apostles and distinct from all those who would break away from
it.
And
from Ignatius again we have his Epistle which was also written in the year 110
A.D.
It
is entitled,
“Beware
of false doctrines” Chapter 17,
17:
“For this end did the Lord allow the ointment to be poured upon His head, that
He might breathe immortality into His Church. Be not anointed with the bad
odour of the doctrine of the prince of this world; let him not lead you away
captive from the life which is set before you. And why are we not all prudent,
since we have received the knowledge of God, which is Jesus Christ? Why do we
foolishly perish, not recognizing the gift which the Lord has of a truth sent
to us.”
And
again from Ignatius in his Epistle to the Smyrneans, 8:2 (c. A.D. 110) we read,
"See
that ye all follow the bishop, even as Christ Jesus does the Father, and the
presbytery as ye would the apostles. Do ye also reverence the deacons, as those
that carry out the appointment of God. Let no man do anything connected with
the Church without the bishop. Let that be deemed a proper Eucharist, which is
[administered] either by the bishop, or by one to whom he has entrusted it. Wherever
the bishop shall appear, there let the multitude also be; by the bishop, or by
one to whom he has entrusted it. Wherever the bishop shall appear, there let
the multitude also be; even as, wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic
Church."
There
is a plethora of writings from the Church Fathers that confirm the supremacy of
Peter and his successors. Suffice it to say that private interpretation
of the Bible is anti-Christ in its nature because it is set against the Church
that was established by Jesus. And if you are against His Church you are
against Jesus Christ Himself.
Satan
is the enemy who blinds Protestants; he wishes to keep them separated from the
Catholic Church. He is the divider, and he uses the concept of “Scripture
alone” as a device to do just that.
And
we must never think that Christ called His Church to sit idly by on the
defensive in the battle between Truth and Relativism. Quite the opposite
is true.
There
is no doubt the Church has been assaulted from its earliest days in numerous
ways that have caused much suffering, beginning with the blood of the
martyrs. And those who strive to maintain their faith in a very
relativistic world also suffer a kind of white martyrdom where they die for the
faith without shedding blood. But it is important that we do not look at
all the suffering in the history of the Church and end up thinking the Lord
said his Church is on the defensive when He said,
“The
gates of Hell shall not prevail against it.”
If
we end up with an image of Satan and the powers of Hell smashing against the
Church we have not understood what Christ actually said. We would have
changed his words and the meaning of his words.
It
is a fact the Our Lord said nothing whatsoever about the “powers of Hell.” Nor
did He say anything at all about “the gates of the Church.” When Our Lord used
the word “gates” He was in fact speaking only about the “gates of Hell.”
Consider
this question. When was the last time you saw a set of gates, perhaps at
the end of your own driveway, go off and wage a war against anyone? It is
ludicrous to even suggest such a thing, yes? Gates are stationary
objects. It follows, then, that the
“gates” that are being rammed are the “gates of Hell.” Those are the
gates Christ spoke about.
Our Lord also
used the word “prevail” when speaking about the “gates of Hell” which means
they do not have the power to withstand the blows leveled against them. So
there is a battle going on here, and this can only mean there is something with
active power that is in fact on the offensive. And this means the active thing
going out to wage war is the Catholic Church as it does battle against all
forms of Relativism and evil. And there will be one final, thundering, smashing
assault that will flatten out the “gates of Hell” like a bulldozer in
demolition mode going through balsa wood.
†
No Salvation Outside of the Catholic Church
We
know there have been many declarations by the Church that there is no salvation
outside of the Catholic Church, but the Church also teaches that salvation is
open to all. Is there a solution to these two seemingly different
positions that will not compromise the fact that the Catholic Church is
necessary for salvation? Yes, there is.
We
must first must go back to the fall of man and then follow the generations that
came down through the ages to our day. We will discover several things
that apply to every individual who has ever lived.
First,
if we try to understand man’s nature in relation to the fall of man, rather
than his creation, we tend to think his nature became intrinsically evil when
he fell. To think of anyone as being evil in their nature as a result of
the fall would be a failure to understand man. It would also be to say
that man lost his created state when he fell. Man did not fall out of
existence and then recreate himself intrinsically evil because man does not
have the power to create himself. That would be to say man is God because
only God can create from nothing.
Second,
sin does not have the power to create. To say otherwise would be to say
that sin is equal to God with the power to create from nothing.
Third,
Satan does not have the power to return man to nothingness from which he came
and then recreate man evil because of his sin. Satan is not equal to God,
so he does not have the power to create anything. Nor is Satan the
opposite of God. There is nothing
opposite to God.
Only
God can create, and God did not take man out of existence and then recreate him
evil in his nature because God does not create anything with an intrinsically
evil nature. Man continued to be intrinsically good in his nature, but after
the Fall, he now had evil tendencies. The sin is not his nature any more than
an infection is the nature of the body. And the Natural Law remained
inherent in the nature of man even though he sinned. His human nature
remained intrinsically good, but the preternatural gifts were lost, and now
there is a conflict between body and soul over who is going to be the boss.
The
promise of salvation fell on the real ears of our first parents, long before
the Scriptures were written. Some read the account of the fall of man as
though our first parents were not there when it happened and treat this matter
as though the promise of salvation did not begin until it was written down many
centuries later. And the failure to recognize this affects our
understanding of who can be saved, and why.
From
the very beginning of salvation history we see the establishment of sacrificial
offerings after man fell, evidenced by the fact that our first parents knew
salvation would be accomplished through suffering.
In
Hebrews 11:4 we read,
4:
“By faith Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain, through
which he received approval as righteous, God bearing witness by accepting his
gifts; he died, but through his faith he is still speaking.”
This
simple fact of sacrificial offering accounts for the reason that all
civilizations have an understanding that sin must be atoned for by some kind of
ritual sacrifice. And this points to “Oral Tradition” that came down to
us from the ancient days since Abel offered that first sacrifice. This
also refutes Protestant opposition to Oral Tradition, even in the Old
Testament.
Even
though our first parents fell from grace they remained solicitous to pass on to
their children the promise of salvation. But this knowledge of salvation
became more and more diluted over time as people dispersed over the planet and
nations began to form. The further away people moved from the direct and
more explicit line of salvation the more difficult it became to identify what
remained of authentic revelation in the oral transmission of the promise of
salvation. Nevertheless, all of mankind came form Adam, without exception,
which means there is some degree of authentic revelation which they received in
their lives, and this is where we have to look.
We
often hear people say no one will be damned simply because they never heard of
the Church. We are told these people can still be saved if they live a
good and decent life. It is true that no one will be damned for something
that is not their fault, but it is not true a person will be saved by living
according to the Natural Law if they knowingly reject whatever degree of
Revealed Truth is present in their lives. There has been a failure to
understand, a failure to communicate the fact that every person ever born must
live according to the degree of Revealed Truth present in their lives which
they received through Oral Tradition.
Even
though some people are not in the “visible confines” of the Catholic Church,
they are not totally cut off from Revealed Truth which comes to them through
Oral Tradition. And this Revealed Truth which they possess by means of
Oral Tradition is, for them, the object of faith by which they must live to the
best of their ability. But the degree of Revealed Truth which they have
is not
the same thing as the Natural Law.
At
the same time it is also true these people may be properly predisposed to
embrace Revealed Truth more readily when it is presented to them if they have
lived by the Natural Law to the best of their ability. However, the
necessity of the Church for salvation is not removed. These people must
live according to the degree of Revealed Truth present in their lives.
Only then will grace flow from the Church to meet these people in their desire
to live faithfully according to the degree of Revealed Truth they possess.
So
then, what does it mean when the Church speaks of “Invincible ignorance?” The
term “invincible ignorance” simply means it is not a person’s fault if they
never heard of the Church or the Gospel. But something needs to be made
clear. There are three types of ignorance possible in relation to
Revealed Truth, but only one is not sinful.
They
are,
1)
Invincible ignorance – is when a person is simply not aware of an explicit
religious truth that has been revealed due to no fault of their own.
2)
Antecedent ignorance – is when truth presents itself to the intellect saying
there is a deeper truth which will be shown if the first truth is not
rejected. At this point reason and the conscience kick in. Truth
appeals to the intellect and beckons the individual to take the next step along
the path of truth. If a person refuses to embrace where that truth is trying to
lead them, there is an unwillingness to die to self and they end up rejecting
truth. Such people have sinned and are now guilty of rejecting the deeper
truth that would have been made known to them had they not rejected the first
truth which beckoned them. This also is where intellectual relativism
enters leading to love of sin.
3)
Consequent ignorance – is when you ask questions and do not listen for the
answers because you refused first principles of truth, and then you try to form
subjective truth (relativism) because you do not want the real answer. As
a consequence you have chosen to be willfully blind which hardens the heart.
And in the end an attitude of hostility towards objective truth is embraced which
results in deeper blindness. This gets closer and closer to the original
blindness that came from the fall of man.
Looking
closer, Invincible Ignorance would not apply to a Protestant the way it would
to someone who never heard of the Gospel and the Catholic Church. Reason
alone tells Protestants there is something wrong with the fact that there are
tens of thousands of Christian denominations bickering over the correct
interpretation of Scripture. They are not invincibly ignorant of this problem
and what it means. They know this division is the fruit of “Sola Scriptura,”
yet, they still refuse the Catholic Church, so there is no excuse for
that. There are circumstances such as childhood abuse, or prejudice
instilled during youth that factor into the motives behind many Protestants for
the decisions they make. But everyone will be responsible for the
rejection of truth if they did not respond to the degree of truth which
presented itself to them. They will be
judged according to the way they lived with the Revealed Truth known to them.
We
cannot see what is in the heart and mind of a person. Only God can see
that, but this is why the Church must state the unchanging truth about the
necessity of the Catholic Church to be saved. If the Church ceased to
exist, so too would all the grace that flows to those who never heard of the
Church. Grace would simply not be there to meet them in their desire to
live according to the degree of authentic revelation they received from Oral
Tradition.
Those
who speak about the necessity of being within the visible confines of the
Church to be saved must “see” what is before them. And those who reject
the necessity of the Church to be saved must also “see” what is before
them. It is only through Oral Tradition that we are connected in
faith to those who never heard of the Church, so let us take a closer look at
this.
Can
we say the Jewish people, the direct line of salvation, had the same first
parents as Catholics, and those who never heard of the Gospel? The answer to
that would have to be a definitive Yes! And it is important to understand that
the Jewish people did not have the fullness of Revealed Truth that Catholics
now have until Christ came into this world.
Are
the Jewish people at fault because they did not have the fullness of
revelation? No!
Are
the Jewish people of the same identifiable faith held by the Catholic
Church? Yes, salvation history came through them.
Do we say that the Jews had no connection to
the visible confines of the Catholic Church? There would have to be a
connection.
Is
that connection invalid because they possessed a lesser degree of Revealed
Truth due to no fault of their own? No. That is impossible.
The connection would have to remain valid and sufficient for salvation.
Do
we say they could not be saved because they possessed a lesser degree of
Revealed Truth? Clearly they could be saved. They had hope and
faith in the same Lord. And we had best be able to say they are of the same
faith because at Mass we hear the Priest say “Abraham … our Father in faith.”
If we were to say the Jews were not of the same faith we would be condemning
everyone in the Old Testament, including the prophets who did not have the
fullness of Revelation.
An
important distinction must be made between a “lesser degree of Revelation” and
“the gray area” of relativism. They are not the same. Are
there gray areas in Revelation? No! There is nothing “gray” in the nature
of Revealed Truth. There are only different degrees of black and white
Revealed truth. There is never a point that relativism and a lesser
degree of Revealed Truth merge into one reality to become a “gray area.”
If
there is a gray area in the lives of those who never heard of the Gospel, it
comes from the rejection of right reason, the Natural Law, and the degree of
Revealed Truth they received through Oral Tradition known to them. They
are responsible for that rejection.
So
then, we are not speaking about those who possess a lesser degree of Revealed
Truth when we read,
“Do
not give to the dogs what is Holy; neither cast your pearls before swine.”
That
Scriptural verse refers to those who reject any degree of Revealed Truth that
is knocking on their door. And when that happens there is no faith,
and faith is necessary for salvation. The degree of Revealed Truth present in
anyone’s life is the pearl of great price.
The
degree of Revealed Truth in every life establishes a connection to Adam through
“Oral Tradition.” The varying degrees of
Revealed Truth operating in the lives of people all over the world would be the
elements of sanctification that are at work outside the visible confines of the
Church which Lumen Gentium speaks about.
This
is no less true about those of who may have been born in the sub-Saharan lands,
or any other place on the planet. Everything said that is valid for the
more direct line of salvation through Judaism that came down to us through the
centuries is also true for those we never think of who were born in some far
away land. The degree of Revelation which they possess, however large of
small it may be, links them, according to that degree, to the fullness of the
gospel and the church which makes the degree of Revealed Truth they possess
identifiably Catholic.
The mere fact
that every culture known to man makes some offering of sacrifice for sins
committed in their culture shows a direct connection to the firstling offered
up by the just man Abel in atonement for sin according to the degree of
Revealed Truth they possess. The degree of Revealed Truth they possess
connects them to Authentic Revelation and the promise of Salvation which our
first parents heard with their own ears.
To be clear,
the degree of Revelation they possess is not a Gray Area, it is only a lesser
degree of Revealed Truth. The difference between lesser and fuller
degrees of Revealed Truth never makes the lesser degree Gray. Nothing of
revelation is ever Gray.
If any
understanding of Revealed truth turns Gray you can be certain that Relativism
has done its dirty work. There is no value in differences that are rooted
in sin.
The Holy
Spirit does not work at all through religious relativism, but He supplies what
is lacking to those who desire to live in accordance with the degree of Revelation
they possess in their lives, along with their right reason, and with the
Natural Law. Their desire for repentance is satisfied in accordance to
what is known to them because the effect of Grace that comes from the
Sacraments flows to meet them where they are in their desire to repent. A
Catholic could be stranded on an island in need of confession before he
dies. A person who never heard of the Church could be stranded on the
same island and die wanting to repent according to what they know of Revealed
Truth. The effects of the grace from the Sacrament of confession would
flow to them both and meet them in their need before they died.
Lacking a
sacramental structure the desire of anyone in any culture who has never heard
of the Church is satisfied only through the Church. So, even though
salvation is open to all people, there is no Salvation without the grace of the
Catholic Church, or another way of saying it, there is no salvation outside of
the Catholic Church.
From the
Documents of Vatican II we read,
“Hence, they
could not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as
necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it, or to remain
in it.”
Anyone who
knowingly rejects the Catholic Church as necessary; yet professes the name of
Christ in an attempt to get other people to enter their denomination, are like
the Scribes and Pharisees that Jesus confronted. He said of them,
“Woe to you
scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, all! Because you traverse the sea and
land to make one convert; and when he has become one, you make him twofold more
a son of Hell than yourselves.”
He also said,
“This people
honors me with their lips, but their hear is far from me; and in vain do they
worship me, teaching as doctrine the precepts of men.”
While it is
true to say man can do nothing to save himself, it is also true to say that if
man does not cooperate with the Grace that flows from Calvary,
he will not benefit from the Grace and he will be lost.
Nor does any
of this mean that all religions are of equal value! Christ established only one church,
so all value in any religion must flow from this fact. A
false religion is a false religion, and all the false elements in that religion
are simply false. There is no value in what is false.
As an example
of what is false and corrupts authentic Revelation we can look at what happens
in pagan rituals.
When a pagan
ritual goes beyond what came from Adam through Oral Tradition, that very ritual
becomes pagan and those involved are guilty of rejecting the degree of Revealed
Truth that was present to them. When an animal sacrifice turns into worshipping
the animal, the sacrificial ritual becomes entirely pagan and demonic.
Satan got hold of what they had as a remnant of Revealed Truth from Adam and
twisted it to their own destruction.
It would mean
that the pagans had rejected the right use of their own reason.
In Romans
1:20-26 we read,
20: “Ever
since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power
and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made. So
they are without excuse.”
21: “for
although they knew God they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but
they became futile in their thinking and their senseless minds were darkened.”
22: “Claiming
to be wise, they became fools,”
23: “and exchanged
the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man or birds or
animals or reptiles.”
24: “Therefore
God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring
of their bodies among themselves.”
25: “because
they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the
creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed for ever! Amen.”
26: “For this
reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions”
The Holy
Spirit does not sanctify through what is pagan, and He does not save through
the Natural Law. He saves only through His Church.
In closing,
true spirituality cannot be separated from the nature of true worship. True
spirituality cannot be reduced to a code of ethics by which we live. We cannot
reject the obligation to worship God according to what He has revealed and
established. To live only according to a code of ethics rather than what
God has revealed is to elevate the Natural Law above God Himself. Truth has a
source which leads us to the author of truth, and with the acknowledgment of
truth we come to meet the reality of authority. God not only gives us
truth, but He is truth in his very essence, therefore He gives us Himself. And
He does communicate truth to us through Revelation as to how we are to live our
lives. We must confront Relativism in all of its forms because Relativism
is to truth as abortion is to a baby.
†
The Boston Globe
The week after
the article below appeared in the Boston Globe a Protestant Pastor was quoted
in a follow up article in which he called for the “elimination of men like
LeBlanc from this world.” We must be prepared to expect such hostility in a
world that has turned away from God.
The Boston Globe
CATHOLIC AUTHOR WARNS OF THE DANGERS OF RELIGIOUS
RELATIVISM.
By: Diego Ribadeneira, Globe
Staff
August 8, 1998 Edition: Third
Section: Metro
Page: B2
Thirty years ago Pope Paul VI's encyclical condemning artificial birth
control sent shock waves through the Roman Catholic world.
Humanae Vitae dashed the hopes of many Catholics who believed church
fathers might be willing to amend religious teachings on certain thorny
contemporary issues. Instead, the pope stood firm. The repercussions of Paul's
encyclical still reverberate. Fundamentally, Humanae Vitae made the question of
authority the root of all tensions in Roman Catholicism today.
In a new book, local author Roger LeBlanc argues that the spread of
dissent throughout the church on issues ranging from the role of women to human
sexuality is eroding papal authority and endangering the church's future.
LeBlanc, who holds a Pontifical Certificate to teach Catholic catechism,
believes the single biggest threat to the papacy is the rise of religious
relativism -- the rejection that there is one true set of beliefs that emanate
from the Holy See, whose authority can be traced directly to Jesus.
"Religious relativism is a denial that there is one true faith that
is valid, the same for all people at all times and places," LeBlanc writes
in "Relativism As Religion: Tracing its Historical Roots to the Modern Day
Crisis (First published by Simon & Schuster)."
"It is in fact the very cause of religious division in the
world," he writes. "In His eternal wisdom, Christ left something
among us by which we can say: `This is indeed the true faith.' He left us a
guide, a true rule of faith. It is the papacy, the companion of sound
reason."
LeBlanc's book is sure to raise the hackles of non-Roman Catholic
Christians who bristle at any suggestion that the Vatican possesses the sole
copyright on how to be a proper Christian. After all, it was fierce
disagreements over the role of the pope that led to the many schisms in
Christianity over the centuries. And it is questions over the papacy that
presents some of the biggest stumbling blocks to Christian unity.
Sitting under a statue of the Virgin Mary ... LeBlanc said he doesn't
want to antagonize other Christians.
"This book is not a call to arms," he said. "I'm not
raising the swords. I would simply ask people to look at the question of what
gave birth to thousands of Christian denominations. And look at the reason for
the Catholic Church's claim to absolute truth and the pope's claim to absolute
authority. These are things that need to be discussed."
LeBlanc said a main motivation behind the book is to lay down a
challenge to all Catholics to examine what it is that makes them Catholics.
Despite various polls suggesting that most American Catholics oppose the
Vatican on numerous controversial topics ranging from homosexuality to a
married clergy, LeBlanc said there is a growing cadre of younger Catholics
whose views are more in line with Rome.
"If you choose not to be Catholic, you've made your decision, but
you if you are going to call yourself Catholic then at least accept what that
means," LeBlanc says. "If you look at the story of Adam and Eve, you
realize that religious relativism is what caused man to lose grace with God to
begin with. How do people expect to embrace religious relativism and find their
way to God? Christ gave back to man what he lost in Eden by giving him the
Papacy."
LeBlanc's book comes at a crucial moment for the church. Vatican
officials say Pope John Paul II is expected to release a major encyclical
attacking relativism in the fall. Angered by what he sees as unjustified
assaults on church teaching and authority, John Paul has issued edicts that
attempt
Recent pronouncements have been aimed at curbing theologians who
challenge church dogma, and limiting the role of lay people in local churches.
"It's not like the pope is afraid of losing his authority,"
LeBlanc says. "He's trying to defend the faith. If you don't have ultimate
authority rest in the papacy, you reduce religion to something of man's own
invention -- and then there is no more reason to discuss matters of faith
because it's all purely subjective."
(LeBlanc holds Pontifical Certification from the Holy See in Rome)
(Author's note - Diego Ribadeneira, from the Globe Staff states LeBlanc
said, "You don't have to be a Catholic, but you if you are going to call
yourself Catholic then at least accept what that means. "
What LeBlanc indicated that one cannot be forced to enter the church,
but he did not imply there s no obligation to enter the church.
Religion Notes
Caption: Author Roger LeBlanc believes that the "denial that there
is one true faith that is valid for all" is the biggest threat to the
papacy. / GLOBE STAFF PHOTO/BILL GREENE Memo: THE SPIRITUAL LIFE Copyright 1998
Globe Newspaper Company Record Number: 9808111231to dampen dissent and increase
the power of the clergy.
Endorsements of the book are as follows:
Patrick Madrid
"The root problem here is relativism. It’s a rejection of the concept of objective, unchanging truth in favor of multiple “truths.” It breeds the all too familiar “That may be true for you, but it’s not true for me” mentality. This thinking, of course, enables people to commit all manner of crimes and annoyances because it sedates the consciences and whispers reassurances that their “truth” is being safeguarded, even though they know deep down that what they’re doing is contrary to objective truth. Relativism is also, commonly, a denial that there is One True Church. This type of Relativism seeks to impose the notion that the Catholic Church is merely one option among many. And for many, perhaps most, Catholics, relativism in either form – moral or religious – can be a temptation as well as a vexing obstacle when dealing with others who deny absolute truths.”
"Now there is a helpful tool to clear away the relativist’s clutter that besets us everywhere. “Relativism as Religion” is a straightforward examination of how we and those around us can become enmeshed in fuzzy thinking about morality, religion, and even our own families. The book sets forth a clear diagnosis of the problem and offers practical insights for combating it. I particularly appreciated the author’s attention to grounding his arguments in the wisdom of the Church and his reminders that we must recognize the authority of the Pope. Relativism as Religion will take its rightful place among those excellent books that help us to see reality the way it really is."
Fr. George Rutler (Frequently seen of ETWN)
"This is a helpful analysis of the deep sickness in "attempts" to think in our day. The author gives straightforward advice on how the sickness can be cured by Christ, the good physician, and His one, true Church."
Bishop John Elya (Eparch, Melkite Catholic)
"Commendable work. May the light of Christ enlighten us all. Thank you very much, Roger Leblanc, for a job very well done."
Fr. Michael Scanlon (President of Stubenville)
"Timely and important. This book links the pervasive manifestation of relativism throughout Church life today and compares them with the historic role of the Catholic Church as Teach of Truth."
Fr. Robert Fox (Fatima Family Apostolate)
Published an article on this book in "The Fatima Family Apostolate."
