Introduction

One oughtn’t be surprised.

Powers that be in the Vatican have had no qualms with the indefinite suspension of the public celebration of that worship which alone is pleasing to God – why, then, should a Vatican Message of Good Wishes to Muslims in Ramadan cause any shock? After all, Popes have been praying with Muslims and/or kissing the Koran for decades.

Now, the Pontifical Council declares that Ramadan is a “time for spiritual healing and growth” (never mind murderous attacks in the name of Allah), and that Sacred Scripture extols religious pluralism. “[T]he place of worship of any religion therefore is ‘a house of prayer’ (Isa 56:7)“, and indeed these ought be cherished along with “the fundamental freedom to profess one’s own beliefs.”

Catch that? According to the Vatican apparatus, the sacred Isaiah text (ever interpreted as prophesying Christ’s establishment of the Catholic Church, with the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass as its perennial fountainhead of grace) actually teaches that cathedrals, synagogues, mosques, satanic temples, and pagan ziggurats must be equally regarded as the Lord’s own house of prayer. The inspired Word of God is cited in support of the false worship of all religions. This is blasphemy.

It is also, of course, another brick in the building of the One-World Church: a reality that the Successors of Peter warned about quite strenuously, as seen below. That is, back before they were among the chief bricklayers:

 

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“The sheep follow him, because they know his voice.
But a stranger they follow not, but fly from him,
because they know not the voice of strangers.” (Jn 10:4-5)

This little series is for the faithful who don’t so much seek pastors with the smell of the sheep, but who pray rather for pastors who have the sound of the Shepherd.

All who miss that tenor of apostolic zeal in certain pastors at present are invited to be encouraged by the ministry of those shepherds who have gone before us in history. Their words come across now as a fresh draught of clear doctrine in the midst of a salt waste of heterodoxy; an orienting breeze from some holy mountain in the midst of a tepid swamp of self-gratifying psychobabble and modernist nonsense.

They strengthen us because they are the words of those not content with this life, witness to a truly Apostolic courage in the preservation and extension of that Faith which alone can satisfy and save. We greatly need their prayers and inspiration.

“His disciples remembered that it was written,
The zeal of Thy house consumes me.” (Jn 2:17)

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SETTING: You were raised a Catholic, but found yourself a bit adrift over the years, in a popular advocacy movement that attracted many. Political and financial organizations of various stripes have been coupling with religious leaders of many different backgrounds and “faith communities,” in order to work toward a common vision of social freedom, tolerance, solidarity, fraternity, and peace. The efforts have grown significantly.

It sounded wonderful at first, though lately you’ve been having some doubts – particularly when it came to those prayer gatherings. Naturally, everyone wanted to be able to share in meaningful reflection experiences… but under whose creed? Under no creed? Under a new creed? The solutions have left you a bit uneasy.

You’ve also been hearing that the movement’s leaders may have certain deeper and wider connections behind the scenes, and that these (at least in part) explain the strangely rapid growth that your movement has enjoyed – a movement which is increasingly pressing for international social cooperation, toward some kind of unified religious vision for the future. Many Catholic priests are involved.

And now, it seems that the reigning Pope has taken notice. His words about the whole thing are rather striking, so you highlight a few sections:

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From Notre Charge Apostolique (Pius X, 1910)

Our Apostolic Mandate

These declarations and this new organization… call for very serious remarks.

Here we have, founded by Catholics, an inter-denominational association that is to work for the reform of civilization, an undertaking which is above all religious in character; for there is no true civilization without a moral civilization, and no true moral civilization without the true religion: it is a proven truth, a historical fact.

…When we consider the forces, knowledge, and supernatural virtues which are necessary to establish the Christian City, and the sufferings of millions of martyrs, and the light given by the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, and the self-sacrifice of all the heroes of charity, and a powerful hierarchy ordained in heaven, and the streams of Divine Grace – the whole having been built up, bound together, and impregnated by the life and spirit of Jesus Christ, the Wisdom of God, the Word made man – when we think, I say, of all this, it is frightening to behold new apostles eagerly attempting to do better by a common interchange of vague idealism and civic virtues.

What are they going to produce? What is to come of this collaboration? A mere verbal and chimerical construction in which we shall see, glowing in a jumble, and in seductive confusion, the words Liberty, Justice, Fraternity, Love, Equality, and human exultation, all resting upon an ill-understood human dignity. It will be a tumultuous agitation, sterile for the end proposed, but which will benefit the less Utopian exploiters of the people.

… We fear that worse is to come: the end result of this developing promiscuousness, the beneficiary of this cosmopolitan social action, can only be a Democracy which will be neither Catholic, nor Protestant, nor Jewish. It will be a religion… more universal than the Catholic Church, uniting all men become brothers and comrades at last in the “Kingdom of God”. – “We do not work for the Church, we work for mankind.”

…[Thus] the great movement of apostasy being organized in every country for the establishment of a One-World Church which shall have neither dogmas, nor hierarchy, neither discipline for the mind, nor curb for the passions, and which, under the pretext of freedom and human dignity, would bring back to the world (if such a Church could overcome) the reign of legalized cunning and force, and the oppression of the weak, and of all those who toil and suffer.

We know only too well the dark workshops in which are elaborated these mischievous doctrines which ought not to seduce clear-thinking minds.

…As soon as the social question is being approached, it is the fashion in some quarters to first put aside the divinity of Jesus Christ, and then to mention only His unlimited clemency, His compassion for all human miseries, and His pressing exhortations to the love of our neighbor and to the brotherhood of men. True, Jesus has loved us with an immense, infinite love, and He came on earth to suffer and die so that, gathered around Him in justice and love, motivated by the same sentiments of mutual charity, all men might live in peace and happiness. But for the realization of this temporal and eternal happiness, He has laid down with supreme authority the condition that we must belong to His Flock, that we must accept His doctrine, that we must practice virtue, and that we must accept the teaching and guidance of Peter and his successors. … [T]hese are eminently social teachings, and they show in Our Lord Jesus Christ something quite different from an inconsistent and impotent humanitarianism.

…[L]et not these priests be misled, in the maze of current opinions, by the miracles of a false Democracy. Let them not borrow from the Rhetoric of the worst enemies of the Church and of the people, the high-flown phrases, full of promises; which are as high-sounding as unattainable. Let them be convinced that the social question and social science did not arise only yesterday; that the Church and the State, at all times and in happy concert, have raised up fruitful organizations to this end; that the Church, which has never betrayed the happiness of the people by consenting to dubious alliances, does not have to free herself from the past; that all that is needed is to take up again, with the help of the true workers for a social restoration, the organisms which the Revolution shattered, and to adapt them, in the same Christian spirit that inspired them, to the new environment arising from the material development of today’s society.

Indeed, the true friends of the people are neither revolutionaries, nor innovators: they are traditionalists.

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Full text in English here: https://www.papalencyclicals.net/pius10/p10notre.htm

Text in French and English here: http://www.sillon.net/notre-charge-apostolique