PART THREE: THE OPERATION OF ERROR (No. 80)
The Mass. . . The Traditionalists. . . The Antichrist. . . Fatima. . . The Conversion of the Jews. . . Popie Jopie
To my parts One and Two of The Operation of Error I have thought to add this third part, touching on a few items which it seems to me useful to clarify or emphasize.
THE MASS. When around 1971 I started distributing my papers (later called "Letters") against Vatican II and its works, priests stopped by to visit us, and said Mass on the altar we had set up in an otherwise bare basement room. We had all the requirements, including altar stone. But I never felt easy in conscience about what we were doing. My feelings became more disturbed after a little group began to form, to attend these Masses. It seemed that what we were doing was in accord with the mind of the Church. But was it? Unlike the others, I knew something of the possibilities of schism, and even of simony; and I became aware of the much greater possibility of sacrilege in the circumstances. More compelling, I think, was my consciousness of the part played by authority in all of Catholic practice. I later became aware of the decree of the Council of Trent, "Concerning the Things to be Observed, and to be Avoided, in the Celebration of the Mass", and the struct manner in which this decree is interpreted in Canon Law. I had already seen enough of the so-called Traditionalist Movement, so that I wanted no part of it; nor did I care for the prospect of becoming a member of one of the little Traditionalist sects, followers of Father X or Y or Q. I knew something of Jansenism, of its spiritual pride of a puritan elite, and I did not like that. The thought of breaking off from the majority of baptized Catholics disturbed me.
True, many of those Catholics who positively welcomed the changes were new Protestants of a bad sort. But many others were, however much at fault, mainly deceived. I was mindful of the Scriptural "Strike the shepherd, and the flock shall be dispersed". Fr. Joseph Deharbe, S.J. in his catechism, July 1882, expresses this truth as follows: "Were it possible that the Teaching Church might err, the Hearing Church would likewise fall into error, as she is to be instructed and guided by the former". The Church has not erred by teaching error formally, as defined by the First Vatican Council, a true council. But by a combination of madness and treason on the part of the modern clergy, instigated by our old enemies, the Devil has brought on all the evils foreseen by St. Paul for the Latter Days. Despite these evils, Christ has promised to remain with His church until the end. This being so, I wanted no part of a "Remnant Church", or any association with pretenders of this sort. Since I had ventured to write at all on these matters, I felt compelled to speak of the Traditionalist bad elements, as well as the total falsehood of the Vatican II reform.
The bad elements, there's the rub. Who is to say for sure who are the good? As Catholics we must act on doctrinally sound principles. I knew about Canon Law and how parts of it, such as the first part of Canon 209, and the "mind of the Church" arguments, were being used to open a wide door by every kind of self-proclaimed Traditionalist. It was obvious that the average Catholic would be inviting spiritual and possibly financial disaster in attempts to find that "good" Traditionalist priest they so desired, especially for their children. I could fill a book with an account of the really bad actors; and of some not so bad, ready to provide a substitute for the old parish. There could be no answer to the question, except the Law, which exists for the common good -- the Divine law by which Christ decreed that all authority in the Church must come from Peter and his successors.
"But" it is objected, "these are extraordinary times. The papal chair is in control of our enemies". So much the more reason for holding close to the law. The notion that these truly extraordinary times make it permissible to disregard the law, is one of the ways in which the modern satanic revolution turns things completely around.
A strict law, applicable at all times, is the only way, in certain essential matters, of protecting an institution and of assuring the common good. The law of God regarding matrimony is such a law. A man may plead that his wife has been committed to an insane asylum, that his two young children need a mother, and that a good young woman is willing to take on the responsibility of marriage to this man. A king may insist that he needs an heir, which his present wife can't give him. These arguments are impressive, humanly speaking. But we all know where human weakness and lack of wisdom can lead where the law regarding matrimony is put aside. It is the same with regard to the Divine Law which subjects the priest to higher authority. The good priest strictly obeying the law is possibly hurt more than we others by Vatican II. But while his priesthood is forever (in itself a great gift of God), there may come a time when he, too, like we others, must become resigned to those evils which God at least permits.
In the name of piety and love for the Mass, a French archbishop introduces open revolt as a principle of action among the Traditionalists. He carries the traditionalist disregard of the law a step further, and that in the name of St. Pius X.
These remarks on the Mass are prompted by a reading of The Mystery of Faith, Book II, The Sacrifice of the Church, by Fr. de la Taille; S.J. I was aware from the first of what theologians teach explicitly, that to offer a valid Mass is not necessarily to obtain the fruits of that Mass, that those in schism may be condemned for doing so.
Fr. de la Taille explains that the mass is always acceptable by God, because it is the Church's own sacrifice, however unworthy the minister. According to this teaching, which Fr. de la Taille says all Catholic theologians now hold, the Church as the essential font or terminus a quo of sacrificial offering is not lacking, even in the case of those offering Mass separate from the Church. But what happens when a pope decrees a new, an "ecumenical" Church and liturgy, a "new revelation", as Paul VI did? Christ had promised to bind or loose in heaven what the Church on earth in its head might bind or loose on earth. Considering this Divine promise, and the necessary requirement of the Church as the "essential font", can there be a valid Mass anywhere today?
A negative answer -- no valid Masses now remaining -- would accord with the prophecy of Daniel, which closely links the coming of Antichrist, the latter days and "the continual sacrifice taken away". The times given in this prophecy, like all Scriptural times, are certainly figurative; they in no way "add up".
For years I have thought Paul VI's and the Council's announcement of an "ecumenical" church and new liturgy meant an end to the official Church, in accordance with Christ's promise to bind or loose. But I had only this partly doctrinal intuition regarding the Mass apart from the Church; and I wondered if it were a truth which might only uselessly disturb good people. But after studying the great work of Fr. de la Taille on the Mass this past year, it has seemed to me permissible and good to add this last piece to my proof of the completeness of the Operation of Error and Great Apostasy.
What is the use in my attempting to prove the Great Apostasy and that the continual sacrifice has been taken away? I do this first as an individual Catholic who wants to understand, so far as this is possible and good for us, the Divine Will, so that I may more closely conform to that Will. I do it to show that Christ has not failed His Church; but that, on the contrary, He has nearly completed what He promised to do; and so give encouragement to the supernatural hope and light-heartedness of those who value, above all, that kind of hope. Perhaps more on this later.
THE TRADITIONALISTS. I call Traditionalists all who, taking their main concern, join at least in spirit with the elements of a dubious underworld of bad or mixed motives. "It is the Mass that matters. It is the Mass that matters" was the message I heard repeated like an incantation by a Traditionalist priest years ago. That nothing much else matters is the evil doctrine implied by such an attitude. Of this spirit are the Traditionalists.
A person cannot simply write to expose the falsity of Vatican II and its works. As I wrote in one of my early papers, "There will appear seven grinning devils, saying "Give 'em hell, we are with you in this." This is the false traditionalism, a great clamor of quarrels and scandals, of raised and then dashed hopes, which adds to the Vatican II confusion.
Whereas the fundamental means to salvation -- faith and trust in God, careful attention to the ordinary duties of our state in life, prayer and good works -- are sufficient, the Traditionalist would place a heavy burden of anxiety on good people, by urging the 'necessity' of somehow getting the Mass.
It is necessary for those of us who write against the Vatican II corrupters of doctrine and practice, to avoid even the appearance of revolt against the papacy, and of general lawlessness on our part. I, for one, refuse to be led into this false position.
THE ANTICHRIST. Our friend Mr. Hutton Gibson writes in his quarterly paper, published in Australia, that "It matters little whether Paul VI is the Antichrist ...we have enough on our plates with the Johns and Pauls -- the main event". With this I can agree to a certain extent. It has been my argument that we need only to keep the Faith, stay away from the Paul VI corrupted liturgy, and so on; but that we are in no position to effectively oppose the Johns and Pauls and those who are behind them.
The Antichrist comes into these Letters in my attempt to provide a Catholic doctrinal explanation for a pope who leads the main body of Catholics astray. In other words, a pope who does the opposite of what, according to Christ's promise, a pope would be divinely protected from doing. How a pope could lead almost the whole Catholic body astray has to be answered in Scriptural-doctrinal terms. That Christ's promise cannot fail, can only mean that we have come to the end of the long line of true Successors of Peter, a fact which, as the years go by, becomes more apparent as we observe the antics of John Paul II.
Carrying on this doctrinal argument: If we have come to the end of the line of true popes, marked by a total false reform by pope and council, then we are in the time of the Great Apostasy. The question then arises: What of the Antichrist? Where is he? I answer: Just where he could most effectively oppose Christ, in the papal chair, opposing Christ as no other than a pope could possibly do. In signing the articles of Vatican II, Paul VI opposed his will and that of the Council to the Church Christ founded. So my reason for bringing in The Antichrist, is that he fits. Pope St. Pius X who forecast the modern "universal apostasy", analyzing it in detail, did not think the matter of the Antichrist to be irrelevant, but suggested that "the Son of Perdition may have already been born". That was in 1903, when Paul VI was six years old.
These Letters, as regular readers of them will surely have noticed, while touching on many more or less related subjects, carry on a basic theme of confidence in God, in the Divine Providence. It is one of firm belief in the divine promise made to Peter and his successors, that the Church will not teach error. This doctrine precludes all attempts to reconcile error and falsehood, as the Catholic 'moderates' attempt to do. And it is a most pernicious error to try to explain, or rather explain away, the great deception by the Vatican II popes in terms of invalid papal elections, as some Traditionalists try to do. To speak thus is to argue that despite His well-meaning Promise, Christ somehow slipped up, He not having foreseen that the ancient Enemy might put his agents on the papal chair. Of course our Lord did no such thing. On the contrary, He foretold a time near the End when there would arise false christs, a time of very little faith remaining on earth. He did not promise positive proof of the approaching End, but directed that we use our common sense, and observe the signs of the time -- "When the leaves on the fig tree turn green, you know that summer is nigh ...when the wind is in the southwest, you say it will rain", and so on. It is this kind of discernment, guided by the Catholic faculty of seeing things whole, which we need to apply to the doctrine of the latter days and the coming of Antichrist, not that of the modern skeptic, or of the sectarian preachers of Antichrist as a fantasy figure or world political ruler and tyrant.
FATIMA. The "miracle of Fatima" is within the power of the devil to produce signs and wonders. St. Thomas demonstrates this by citing the disasters visited upon Job and his family, as from the devil. Christ refused to produce such signs, which the Pharisees wanted as a sign of the arrival of the Messiah. But whether the original "miracle", apparitions and messages were from heaven, the Fatima message of rescue as we get it today from Fatima devotees, Traditionalist and New Order, contradicts the doctrine of St. Paul, that there can be no reversal of the Apostasy. As to the conversion of Russia, to what can Russia be converted in our time of an "ecumenical" Church? What is being preached by leading Fatima promoters, such as the Abbe de Nantes, TFP, Bayside and others, is the false Millennium.
THE CONVERSION OF THE JEWS. Again, as asked above, about Russia, to what will the Jews be converted? In the strongest terms St. John the Baptist condemned the Jew doctrine of salvation of the Jews as a race. As to the present Jew world population, it is very much mixed, most of it not Semitic, not "sons of Abraham", racially or religiously. Was St. Paul wrong in his prophecy concerning the Jews' conversion? Like others of his time, including the Twelve, St. Paul did not anticipate the long life the Church has had. Timing is always the most uncertain part of prophecy. St. John the Evangelist, writing on the Island of Patmos in advanced age, and who had certainly read the epistles of St. Paul, wrote the final word on this subject: "He came unto His own, and His own received Him not".
Of the Jews in Christ's time Fr. Fernand Prat, S.J., in his Jesus Christ, Vol. II, writes as follows:
Jesus, in pleading their cause before His Father, does not ask for their pardon absolutely and unconditionally. He implores for them the grace to repent and a time of delay for their repentance. And His prayer is not in vain. God will wait forty years before making His hand heavy upon this unbelieving people; and in the interval, the members of the Levitical priesthood and the Pharisees will flock into the Church in such great numbers that they will threaten to falsify its spirit and to disturb its peace.
We are now in that period of time, 1962 when the Vatican II Council was assembled, to the year 2000, the anti-type of that forty years from the Crucifixion until the destruction of the Temple, the forty years God allowed to the Jews for repentance. On this and Paul VI's repudiation of the true Church, I refer our readers to page 2 of Letter 69, to page 4 of No. 70, and to page 2 of No. 77.
From TIME magazine, May 13, 1985, The Pope's Rancorous Trip.
My name is Popie Jopie.
I happily travel 'round', And always when I arrive
I spontaneously kiss the ground ...
So runs last week's fifth-most popular song on Holland's hit parade. The mild piece of satire contains a punster's slap at Pope John Paul II; popie jopie is a Dutch expression meaning obnoxious. The song is but one indication of the hostility that will greet the Pontiff when he arrives in the Netherlands on Saturday for a four-day visit. More disturbing are the threats of violence. Dutch authorities have mobilized 12,000 police for what will be the country's biggest and most costly security operation. In Amsterdam, police have already arrested two young men for displaying posters offering a $4,200 reward for John Paul's assassination.
The purpose of the Pope's visit is to defend orthodox church teachings before Holland's more than 5.6 million Catholics, whose free-thinking clergy have been heavily influence since Vatican II by Calvinist individualism and Protestant independence.
To papal advisers, the animosity with which the Pontiff will be received only underscores the need for the journey. John Paul, says one, "Sincerely believes he can help promote reconciliation within the church."
End of quotation from TIME.
Years ago it would have been impossible to imagine such a crazy 'papal' performance. Consider the commotion and fabulous expense of this one visit by JP2 to a small country. And the notion that a pope might by these public spectacles charm away the heresies of a free-thinking clergy -- a clergy who had produced the notoriously heretical "Dutch Catechism" before the time of Vatican II. And what is this "reconciliation within the church" the papal advisers think JP2 can promote? Surely the Masonic reconciliation of truth and error, of light and darkness.
In this Dutch protest against John Paul's visit to Holland, we see a display of the greatest "turn around" ever -- as JP2 is vilified for being too orthodox!
In Letter No. Two I quoted what Cardinal Henry Edward Manning wrote one-hundred years ago. "For three hundred years", wrote the English Cardinal in his book on the First Vatican Council,
... the Church dispersed throughout the world has been in contact with the corrupt civilization of old Catholic countries, and with the anti-Catholic civilization in open schism (Protestant). The intellectual traditions of nearly all nations have been departing steadily from the unity of the Faith and of the Church. In most countries, public opinion has become formally hostile to the Catholic religion. The minds of Catholics have been much affected by the atmosphere in which they live ... While this impiety spreads on every side, it miserably comes to pass, that many even of the sons of the Catholic Church have wandered from the way of piety, and white truth in them has wasted away, the Catholic instinct has become feeble.
The hostility Cardinal Manning wrote about has abated, as the Catholic instinct continues to weaken, rapidly so since Catholics have become ecumenists.
Thirty-six years after Cardinal Manning, Pope St. Pius X warned in great detail of the pernicious presence of those he called the Modernists (liberals, Gnostics, ecumenists or syncretists) in Catholic universities, publishing houses and seminaries. These people then went underground, or, as we say, "cooled it", for a time, only to emerge in full force at Vatican II; at and for which Council phenomenologist Wojtyla was a Leading Spokesman. Wojtyla is apparently disgusting now to even the rabid New Age Catholics of Holland. They do not want JP2's pretense to speak for the right while acting for the left. They don't want creeping revolution and double-speak, but direct revolutionary action now.
The Dutch radical heretics don't know or don't approve of the broad program the employers of John Paul have set up, a few signs of which I have touched on in these Letters -- the loosing of Solzhenitsyn from Russia, who showed up at Harvard where phenomenologist Wojtyla came also in due time. Gulag and hammer and sickle Communism is to give way to university and computer Communism, a Swedish kind of world welfare state, even as the biggest gulag is lorded over by slave-master Castro in Cuba. Abp. Lefebvre had already put in appearance with his "peaceful coexistence of pre-conciliar and of post-conciliar rites" and "total Christianity". (See page 15 of my Popes of the Revolution). Two more signs are Jopie's public display of his favor toward certain powerful Jewish organizations, and to the shadowy Spain-based "professional man's" Opus Dei. Now comes word from Mexico that the institutional ruling party, the PRI, is at last going to be openly opposed by a National Action Party, or PAN, which is said to resemble the U.S. Republican party. A late news report at hand reads as follows "PAN'S admiration for supply side economics and Pope John Paul II constrasts sharply with the statism and anti-clericalism of the PRI." This move in the program of World Revolution will at least cause confusion and weakening resolve among those Mexicans who have known from childhood the PRI for what it is.
This move by the dark powers, approaching Mexico under the banner of the Vatican, follows closely the Soviet Invasion of Central America. I hesitate to express my fears of what will result.
The deceits and ramifications of the Operation of Error are endless. At present the Operators see it as expedient to pretend a step backward. These days, orthodoxy, tradition, conservatism are "in" -- or so they would have us believe. Thus the greatest fraud of all time proceeds as John Paul, riding like a conquering hero, waves his arms at the gaping crowd.
A broad, insane and ambitious program, this Vatican II ecumenism. It would reconcile Catholicism with Paganism and Protestantism, Christ with Lucifer; make Humanity God.
So much for sample moves toward a religious! political synthesis; with which brief notes I end this three-part summary on the Operation of Error.
