ST. JOHN THE APOSTLE (No. 1)
October 1974
"to be of the truth" ... St. John the Apostle
Why a letter? Mainly because the letter form is flexible, in that more than one subject can be covered at each writing. Also because letters are ordinarily written occasionally. I haven't the energy for a scheduled publication or regular subscription list, so will do as in the past, write what I think needs saying, as well as I can, and send out the result to those who have shown interest. I shall put a price on each publication to cover the costs, and will be grateful for such returns as I may receive, either for single copies or as an occasional donation.
Is there any one thing especially that I have learned since I began writing papers on doctrinal subjects, against the subversive movement which has as its aim the destruction of the Catholic Church and of every vestige of Christianity? Yes, it is this: that "they will not endure sound doctrine." This Scriptural prediction of a time of universal rejection of the Truth I have seen confirmed these past three years. But I am not discouraged. Judging by the increasing number of requests and inquiries lately received, there has been an awakening of concern among many who formerly put all their trust in Paul VI and the recent Council. Information on Pope, Council and true papal authority is contained in my previous writings, a list of which is available on the back page of this issue.
LEX ORANDI, LEX CREDENDI -- We pray as we believe. False reformers always start reforming the Mass, of course. For, among other reasons, the Mass is a deposit of doctrine. The reformed liturgy becomes the primary school of the New Religion. They don't tear down altars and throw out all the old things without a doctrinal purpose. Writing in the Jan. 1968 Issue of TRIUMPH magazine, Ronald Lambert speaks of WORSHIP, "the journal of the official American liturgists" and its Protestant doctrine of Transignification. "And let there be no mistake about it," Lambert says of WORSHIP, "the new theology of the Mass and the Eucharist which we have outlined is the common, received theology of America's liturgical bureaucrats. The statements quoted from WORSHIP -- which, let us remember, is their acknowledged house organ -- were not found after long search through pages brimming with orthodoxy. The new theology is the only theology that the magazine prints." End of quote. The writer adds that the secretary of the Bishops' Committee on the Liturgy recommends to the American Bishops WORSHIP articles on the Eucharist. The whole show comes into the open with Pope Paul's Novus Ordo and the post-Vatican II remodeling of churches. Incidentally, it is worth mentioning here that it was not the critics of the Novus Ordo Missae (New Order of the Mass) who first called it that -- a New Order. It was those who put together this rite which Protestants can perform as Protestants, and which cleverly evades any definite affirmation of the Catholic doctrine of the Mass. It was they who called it a New Order; and Paul VI who signed his name to it. "Absolutely no," says Paul, "there's nothing to this talk about change. The Mass remains the same as always." Why then did he call it a New Ordo? And isn't this New Order of the Liturgy in conformity with the whole Vatican II new order of Religion, Pope Paul's "new economy of the gospel?" Does the Pope think we have all become as insane as the twisted minds who prepared his new liturgy and religion? After ten years of Vatican II, no doubt some of us are a bit crazy. But few are so far gone as to insist that nothing has been changed.
I have quoted TRIUMPH in defense of the Mass. That was in Jan. 1968. It is well known how, since then, the editors have gone over to the New Order. It was the same magazine which proclaimed "Liberal church smothered by Bishops' 20,000 word pastoral," and which assured us in a two-part article that parish priests would come to our rescue. If what we are experiencing is rescue, please put me back on my raft.
INVITED TO THE ASSEMBLY -- A friend, mother of four high school children, suggested to my wife that if she would only attend the New Mass, just once, she would be sure to like it -- that the local parish "has something new every weekend." This well-meaning person, born and raised a Catholic, apparently has lost all notion that doctrine has anything to do with the Mass. But it does, even with the new Ding-Dong Liturgy. I recall that way back (so it seems) in the V-2 changes a woman wrote to the DENVER REGISTER to say that she couldn't understand opposition to the changes -- because the new liturgy made her "feel good." The lady didn't know it, but in those few words is contained the doctrine of the New Liturgy, Pope Paul's New Ordo. It is that simple. Man is the measure of all things. But what about those who detest amateur guitar twangers and other V-2 gimmicks? Forget it. We are all supposed to like the New Things.
Something new every weekend. I believe it. But not really new. The Protestant sects have tried them all. The hand-shaking minister and his wife pumped arms on the steps of nearby churches in my youth. Our New Clergy have taken it up indoors. The hill billy "gospel singer" is the forerunner of the new liturgical performer in our Conciliarist churches. Something new every weekend. This follows the Montini doctrine of the "church evolving." In other words Progressivism. If you are a good Progressive pastor, you wouldn't want to be two years behind, would you? No, not even two months. The good Progressive pastor will be "up to the minute," to use the idiotic phrase of the commercial progress pusher of many years ago.
CRADLE CATHOLICS -- "Gradualism" is the name of the Vatican II game. After ten years of playing this game most Catholics do not want to hear the truths they once held as Catholics. And so the cradle Catholic will be a graveside Protestant, however gradually he gets there. This suggest a nice theological question: Will the gradual apostate go gradually to Hell? Or will he be whisked down below without benefit of the Modernist Dialogue and Consensus on which he staked his soul?
Assuming, of course, that there is a Hell. Paul VI leaves it out of his CREDO. But the Apostles' Creed has it. Christ himself mentioned Hell ever so often. He thought it relevant. This being so I would suggest caution to the "I'm following the Pope" crowd, as though this were the sum and substance of Catholicism. Consider whether you are willing to follow a pope to Hell. And why after all these centuries the Church should suddenly replace the solemn Requiem Mass with a so-called Mass of the Resurrection? Ask yourself whether Paul VI and his Liturgists can update Death and the Judgment.
ATHANASIUS AND THE CHURCH IN OUR TIME -- This booklet by Dr. Rudolph Graber, Bishop of Regensburg, Germany, contains much background information on the Modernist corruption leading to Vatican II. My first reading of it raised in me some hope that here, at last, was a bishop speaking out against the Modernist corrupters. But on a second and third reading I saw it differently, and made the following notes: Bishop Graber should study the works of Paul VI in the original as he has those of Athanasius. To imply, as he does, that Paul VI is on the side of Athanasius rather than Arius is to tell the Big Lie, whether or not intended. Paul VI helped instigate and has carried out the "reforming mania" denounced by Pope Pius X whose encyclical, "Pascendi", against the Errors of the Modernists, Bishop Graber quotes at length. Is it possible that the Bishop does not know about the words and works of Paul VI which have permitted and encouraged the Vatican II program of Modernist "change and updating"? Of course he does.
On page 34 the Bishop speaks against that critic as harmful who doesn't "get his criticism hears in competent quarters." What competent quarters? In what chancery or Vatican office will orthodox criticism get a hearing? Ask the Abbe de Nantes. Bishop Graber devotes much space to the presumably orthodox wisdom of Fr. Karl Rahner. Why Rahner, of all the phonies? Can it be because Rahner has a useful device, "cryptogamous heresy" which we are supposed to believe, no pope can dispel by words or deeds? This notion supports Pope Paul's hand-wringing, weeping "I will wait for Christ to calm the storm" posture. The most significant truth about Rahner's crypto heresy or immanent apostasy is that it receives its greatest impetus from attendance at the Novus Ordo, the "New Mass" which in no way has K. Rahner or Paul VI condemned. On the contrary, Paul VI imposed it.
On page 34 the Bishop writes of the Abbe Roca, an apostate priest and kabbalist who, nearly a century ago, predicted a pope converted to scientific Christianity. The Bishop assumes as unquestionable that such a pope has not yet appeared. I suggest that he read Pope Paul's "Honor to Man, Honor to his thought, honor to his technical skill. . ." as it appears on page 12 of the Abbe de Nantes' Libellum. On page 38 Bishop Graber quotes top Mason Marsaudon's high praise for Pope John. But although in the original sentence, as it is quoted in WORLD TRENDS Jan. 1974, Paul VI is closely linked in that expression of Masonic approval of Popes John and Paul, the Bishop leaves Paul out. Why? What significance is there in Marsaudon's approval of John that doesn't apply to Paul VI? Page 69: "The Pope is right: the devil has invaded the Church". What does this mean? When has the devil ever neglected the Church's members? -- which is the only way he can invade the Church. It means that the Bishop is following up on the tactic which depicts Pope Paul as helpless against the present apostasy. "Don't expect direct interventions from me," says Paul VI. Too bad, this Modernism, but what can one do about it? The obvious thing that needs doing is for some bishops, including Graber, to publicly speak out against the heresies of Paul VI and his New Order. The hint that Paul VI might in some way be linked with St. Athanasius is just too farcical. What we have here is one more of those publications designed to divert attention from Paul's responsibility for the rapid worldwide corruption of Catholic faith, discipline and morals since the Second Vatican Council. I hold in suspicion all ostensibly orthodox publishers and movements which divert attention from this self-evident fact. There are millions who complain about the Novus Ordo, the "New Mass", while upholding the Pope who imposed it. Such is the current insanity.
THE SIX AGAIN -- A letter from one of the old religious houses in England informs me that the six Protestants who were photographed with Paul VI after being thanked by him for their part in putting together the Ecumenical Order of the Mass -- the Novus Ordeal -- were on the job only briefly. I am prepared to believe this. I have suspected for the past year or so that these nice-appearing Protestants were simply being used, and that the whole scheme for substituting a fake Mass had been worked out many years before the Council. Indeed, all the elements of the Novus Ordo appear in the reforms publicly promoted by Archbishop Montini of Milan, the present Paul VI, which he gave out in a pastoral letter in 1958. The purpose in assembling the six ministers on the scene was to signal the various ecumenist world brotherhoods that Paul VI is with them, as he certainly is. Other signals are given out for the gullible faithful who will readily close their eyes to the possibility of subversion from the Papal Chair, as though the Catholic Faith demands this kind of mind-bending insanity. It doesn't, and they will lose the Faith who fall for this lie.
MYSTERY OF INIQUITY -- The Vatican II counterchurch muffles St. John the Evangelist while taking up with strange theologians. It was St. John who was first to oppose the early Judaizers of the Church and it is quite certain that the Fourth Gospel was written partly with that necessity in view; that is, to place in the strongest light Christ's Divinity in opposition to the Jewish heresy. But this heresy was not then destroyed, for we read about Jewish sectarianism during the second and third centuries, culminating in the Arian heresy in the fourth. Well known is Cardinal Newman's "The whole world groaned to find itself Arian"; that is, denying or questioning Christ's Divinity.
Did Arianism and Jewish intrigue end with the Fourth Century? Certainly not. Jew instigated heresies and sects, while they were generally suppressed, remained a fact, even in Italy itself, seat of the Papacy. According to the Jewish-Spanish encyclopedia, "The sects of the Passagi, of the Jewish Sabbatarians or Circumcised, arose in Lombardi, where Jew friendly beliefs had always found a favorable ground. Approximately between the years 884 and 1058 there ruled over the Milan neighborhood a theocracy founded by Angelberto de Pusteria and Jose de Ivres, which held faithfully to the Old Testament. . . The Jewish influence in Lombardy was so great, that in many cities Christians honored the Sabbath (Saturday) instead of Sunday." End of quotation. (This Saturday observance of Sunday worship has been revived since Vatican II.) Early in the 13th century, so active was the Jewish subversive influence that the Church set up that much maligned and misunderstood institution, the Inquisition, against the Jewish undermining of Church and Society. With the break-up of Christendom in the 16th century the restrictions on Jew money lending were greatly relaxed, and the Jews became financially powerful in a world gradually drifting into Jewish materialism. It was the Jew Karl Marx who said that "the Jew emancipated himself in Jewish fashion by making himself master of the moneymarket;" and that "the practical Jewish spirit had been adopted by the Christian peoples" That is, Christians became materialistic.
To return to St. John's gospel: In the 18th century we find its authenticity being denied by all the Biblical scholars outside the Catholic Church; and that plans for the elimination of the "Last Gospel" were made before the beginning of the Second Vatican Council, which was promptly done. It is well known what influence modern Jews, including the bitter anti-Christian Jules Isaac, had on the recent Council through Pope John; how Cardinal Bea journeyed to New York to confer with organized Jewry there.
St. John is also known as the Apostle of Love, and it is partly the presumed contrast between his Fourth Gospel and those preceding it, that has been used by the Church's opponents as a basis for denying the authenticity of the Fourth Gospel. The enemies of Christ would have it that Christian practice of charity must exclude opposition to their false doctrines and rapacious intent to destroy the Church and Christian society. (How solicitous they are for our virtue!) We see their subversive doctrines today in the new catechisms, sermons, books, etc., according to which a goopy sentimental love is all that matters -- a love not opposed to Error but intent on compromising with it. According to the hypocritical practice of those who have cooked up this Big Lie, they give it a high-sounding name, Ecumenism.
Under "John, Gospel of Saint" the writer in the 1910 Catholic Encyclopedia sums up neatly the work of St. John: "At the end of the first century there was no need for the Evangelist to repeat the lessons concerning the Kingdom of Heaven, already amply treated by his predecessors. His was the especial task to emphasize, in opposition to the heretics, the fundamental truth of the Divinity of the Founder of this Kingdom, and by chronicling those words and works of the Redeemer in which He Himself had revealed of the majesty of His Glory, to lead the faithful to a more profound knowledge of this truth."
Much has been written, and rightly so, in praise of the works of St. Athanasius against the Arian heretics. But the Apostle John was first and greatest in the line of defenders against those who played down or denied the divinity of Christ. He was the first among the Apostles in the Master's affection; it was John only of the Apostles who stood at the Cross with our Blessed Mother; and he saw down the corridors of time the troubles of the Church today. Let us then pray especially to St. John for help in our need and for an increase in faith. I know of no heavenly intercessor more likely to respond in the present crisis; no greater need than an increase of faith.
