The Unholy Trinity, and the New World Order

The Unholy Trinity

And the New World Order

 

Robert J. Siscoe

“The claim to withdraw the public life of States and Nations from the subjection to God and His Law is the dominant error and the capital crime of this [19^th] Century”. (Cardinal Pie)

Last month (1) we examined the errors of “the Unholy Trinity” - Naturalism, Rationalism and Liberalism.  We saw that Naturalism is “the system that seeks systematically to eliminate God and His supreme sovereignty over the order of things in the world called ‘nature’.” (2)  This is accomplished either by denying the very existence of the supernatural order, or at least denying that man can know anything about this higher order, even by Divine Revelation.   Rationalism is the application of Naturalism to human reason.  Rejecting Divine Revelation, Rationalism maintains that human reason is the sole principle and source of truth, and the exclusive judge of what is true and false, good and evil.  Liberalism is the application of Naturalism to the human will, both individual and collective, by denying that man is subject to God and morally bound to obey His Law.  The seeds of these errors are clearly found in the teaching of the early Protestants, and were further developed in the dark workshops of the Masonic Lodges, with the aid of the occult forces that brought about the so-called Enlightenment.  

“Liberalism is a recent name for the old heresies of Protestantism, Naturalism and Rationalism (…) The ‘Societies of Thought’, the Masonic Lodges, were the factories where the formulas for the Naturalistic and Rationalistic cult were produced”. (3)

In the encyclical Humanum Genus, Pope Leo XIII instructed the Bishops of the world to “tear away the mask of Freemasonry, and let it be seen as it really is”, explaining that the ultimate aim of the Masonic sect is “the utter overthrow of that whole religious and political order of the world which the Christian teaching has produced, and the substitution of a new state of things in accordance with their ideas, of which the foundations and laws shall be drawn from mere Naturalism”.

In this article we will contrast the Divine Plan for Order, which is founded upon the Rights of God and ordered to man’s eternal salvation, with the Masonic plan of disorder, which is founded upon the doctrines of the Unholy Trinity – doctrines that serve as a positive obstacle for man in obtaining the end for which he was created, namely, supernatural life in this world, and the beatific vision in the world to come.

Christendom

In the Divine Plan for order, the Rights of God and the Social Kingship of Christ are acknowledged by both the temporal and spiritual rulers, and there is an ordered harmony between the two powers, civil and ecclesiastical.  Although the Kingdom of Christ is not of this world – that is, it does not originate from this world – nevertheless, due to the Incarnation, the heavenly Kingdom of Our Lord extends to this world. 

“The Kingdom of God on earth” wrote Fr. Fahey, “consists… essentially and principally in the supernatural society of the Catholic Church, secondarily and as a consequence of the influence of the Catholic Church, in an organization of the social life of States, political and economic, in accordance with the Divine Plan for order.  God in Three Divine Persons is Subsistence Love of order.  Accordingly, as there is no opposition and separation between invisible grace and visible organization… the social organization of men, called upon to share in the Inner Life of God through membership of Christ, will reflect the Divine Love of order (…) Christian civilization is the overflow of the Kingdom of heaven.  It is the impress of the Mystical body of Christ on man’s social organization.” (4)

In Christendom, the State publicly embraces and professes the true religion and protects it from the attacks of heretics and other unbelievers; civil law is subordinate to the Revealed Law of Christ, and the authority of the Church is acknowledged in all matters relating in any way to conscience. (5)  This subordination of the temporal order to spiritual order and the Law of Christ, results in the teachings and Life of Christ permeating society, informing politics, morality, the economy, and social institutions. 

Since the Magisterium is the divinely established teacher and interpreter of Revealed truth, the Church possesses supreme authority on matters of faith and morals, and indirect authority over temporal matters when the salvation of souls is at stake.  Although the temporal and spiritual orders are distinct in their own sphere, there must be an ordered subordination of the one to the other, in such a way that the temporal order does not in any way hinder man in the attainment of his supernatural end, but instead serve as an aid for its attainment.  Since there is no proportion between the temporal and supernatural end of man, the subordination is only indirect, as Fr. Fahey explains:

 “As there is order in all God’s work, there must be a subordination of the lower to the higher.  Now, the very excellence of the spiritual end of man over the temporal end precludes the possibility of direct subordination of the temporal to the spiritual.  Direct subordination is required where the inferior is a means to the superior; that is, where it is proportionate to the superior or higher end, for whatever is a means must be proportionate to the end.  Bodily well-being, food, worldly possessions have no proportionate relation to Eternal Life in union with God in Three Divine Persons, so they cannot be direct means thereto.  But they must be indirectly subordinate to the future life; the temporal end of man, earthly felicity, must be sought in such a way as to be not only not a hindrance to the spiritual end of, but, on the contrary, a help to its attainment.” (6)

Although the temporal end is only indirectly subordinate to the spiritual end for which man was created, nevertheless, both the temporal and spiritual orders are directly subordinate to Christ the King, the Redeemer of mankind and “the lawgiver to whom obedience is due” (Pope Pius XI, Quas Primas).  Temporal rulers have a duty to acknowledge the Kingship of Christ no less than spiritual rulers, since both are equally subject to Christ and participate in His Kingship.  The Pope and Bishops participate in the Spiritual Kingship of Christ, while the civil rulers participate in His Temporal Kingship.  Therefore all rulers, whether spiritual or temporal, must acknowledge Christ the King, from Whom their authority is derived, and must govern in accord with His law, always remembering that “a greater punishment is ready for the more mighty.” (Wisdom 6:9)  

Men must render to God the things that are God’s, and to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s; but Caesar himself is a man. Therefore, as Fr. Fahey notes, “Caesar, too, that is, organized States and rulers of nations as such, must give to God the things that are God’s.  Cesar is bound to worship God in the supernatural way in which He has declared that He wants to be worshiped.” (7) The State, no less than individuals, has a duty to acknowledge its Creator and publicly profess the religion He established, “for men living together in society are under the power of God no less than individuals are” wrote Pope Leo XIII, “and society, no less than individuals, owes gratitude to God who gave it being and maintains it, and whose ever-bounteous goodness enriches it with countless blessings. Since … the chief duty of all men is to cling to religion in both its teaching and practice … it is a public crime to act as though there were no God. So, too, is it a sin for the State not to have concern for religion as a something beyond its scope, or as of no practical benefit; or out of many forms of religion to adopt that one which chimes in with the fancy; for we are bound absolutely to worship God in that way which He has shown to be His will.” (Immortale Dei)

In the encyclical Libertas, the same holy Pontiff teaches that the union of Church and State is analogous to the union of soul and body, “the separation of which brings irremediable harm to the body, since it extinguishes its very life”.  If the State is not for Christ, it will turn against Christ (Mt. 12:30), and persecute the members of His Mystical Body.  Having rejecting the Source of all life, the State will produce fruits of death, eventually bringing forth a culture of death.  

The contrary results from the Divine Plan for order, in which the teaching and supernatural Life of Christ permeates all aspects of society, thereby producing a truly Christian culture.  It is this order that all Catholics should desire and seek to bring about.

The New World Order

In the Masonic plan of disorder, the Rights of God and the Kingship of Christ are ignored, the Godless State is separated from the Church, the spiritual order is subordinated to the temporal order, and the true religion is placed on the same plane as false religions and heretical sects.  In this Naturalistic world order, Divine Revelation is denied, religion is considered a private matter, and civil law is based on sand – that is, on the easily manipulated and ever-changing “will of the people”.  The seeds of this Masonic world order are found in the Protestant errors of Martin Luther.

The idea that the State owes no public worship to God stems from Luther’s heretical ecclesiology, which denies that Christ founded a visible Church to “teach all nations” (Mt 28:19), and instead maintained that the Church of Christ was an invisible community of scattered believers known to God alone.  This is the “invisible Church” of Luther’s imagination, in which each man’s beliefs are based on his private interpretation of the Bible.  The division caused by this error resulted in religious belief becoming subjective, a personal opinion, which eventually developed into an unnatural dualism within the same subject being (man) - a dualism between the internal man and the external man; between the private man and the public man.  According to Luther, there should be a profound separation, and even opposition, between a Christian ruler and the way in which he rules.   This dualism expressed in the following quote:

“You are a prince or judge” wrote Luther, “you have people under you and you wish to know what to do.  It is not Christ you are to question concerning this matter but the law of your country… Between the Christian and the ruler, a profound separation must be made … Assuredly, a prince can be a Christian, but it is not as a Christian that he ought to govern.  The man is Christian, but his function does not concern religion… Though they are founded in the same man, the two states or functions are perfectly marked off, one from another, and really opposed.” (8)

For Luther, a Christian governor should not allow his Christian beliefs to affect the way in which he governs.  Is this not what we see in our own day with those misguided politicians who “personally oppose” this or that moral evil, yet “do not want to force their beliefs on others”, thereby ignoring God’s Law and relegating an objective evil to the category of a subjective opinion?

The clear-cut separation between the Christian and the citizen is not at odds with Luther’s false idea of justification, since for him sinful acts were not a hindrance to salvation.  Luther taught that as long as a person had what he called “faith” (by which he meant trust in the merits of Christ), God would no longer look upon his sins (past, present or future), but only on the merits of Christ, which covered his sins “like a dung hill covered with snow”.

“God only obliges you to believe and to confess (the faith)” wrote Luther. “In all other things He leaves you free, Lord and master to do whatever you will without any danger to your conscience; on the contrary, it is certain that, as far as He is concerned, it makes no difference whether you leave your wife, flee from your lord, or are unfaithful to every obligation. What is it to Him if you do or do not do such things? (Werke XXI p. 131) "During this life we have to sin. It is sufficient that, by the mercy of God, we know the Lamb who takes away the sins of the world. Sin will not separate us from Him, even though we were to commit a thousand murders and a thousand adulteries per day." (Franca, 9.439) (9)

Luther’s heretical idea of justification and salvation reinforced the dualism within the one subject being by allowing a person to profess to be a follower of Christ, yet live as an Atheist. 

The separation between the Christian and the citizen led to the separation between the Church and the State, which resulted in the supremacy of the State, with the Church relegated to a department within the State, and consequently subject to the State.

This unnatural dualism eventually developed into Liberalism, which attempts to separate the creature from its Creator by “liberating” man from the obedience he owes to God. 

“Lutheranism initiated that dualism” wrote Fr. Fahey, “which separates life into two halves so independent that they have only accidental relations with each other, and thus prepared the way for Liberalism.  This is the application of Naturalism to morality, politics and economics.”  (10)

Naturalism denies the existence of divinely revealed truth.  Liberalism applies this speculative error to the practical level by maintaining that the individual reason (man), and the social reason (civil society), owe no obedience to God’s Law, and instead are absolutely sovereign in their own sphere.  Just as each individual is to be guided in solely by his own reason and will, without reference to God and His revealed Law, so too the collective reason of the multitude is the exclusive guide of the community, and the source of all public law.  Consequently, God’s Revealed Law and even Natural Law are replaced by human law, which is derived from “the will of the people”.  The end result is that human will usurps the Divine Will, thereby putting man– at least man collectively – in the place of God.  In his magnificent encyclical Libertas, Pope Leo XIII explains this Liberal error as follows:

 “What Naturalists or Rationalists aim at in philosophy, that the supporters of Liberalism… are attempting in the domain of morality and politics. The fundamental doctrine of Rationalism is the supremacy of the human reason, which, refusing due submission to the divine and Eternal Reason, proclaims its own independence, and constitutes itself the supreme principle and source and judge of truth. Hence, these followers of Liberalism deny the existence of any divine authority to which obedience is due, and proclaim that every man is the law to himself; from which arises that ethical system which they style independent morality, and which, under the guise of liberty, exonerates man from any obedience to the commands of God, and substitutes a boundless license. (…) just as every man's individual reason is his only rule of life, so the collective reason of the community should be the supreme guide in the management of all public affairs. Hence the doctrine of the supremacy of the greater number, and that all right and all duty reside in the majority.”

Today the principles of Liberalism are applied, not only to politics and morality, but also to the economy.  Those who maintain that it should be left to “the market” to decide this or that, without considering whether this or that is at variance with God’s Law, are simply applying the false notion of “the will of the people” to the economic sphere; for what is the “the market” if not the collective will of man – the buyers and sellers?  Man is a moral agent, and all moral actions, including those dealing with economics, must be governed by God’s Law.  “By what things a man sinneth” said the Holy Ghost, “by the same also he is tormented.” (Wisdom 11:17)  There’s no doubt that the economic problems we are experiencing today are a punishment from God for man’s refusal to acknowledge His sovereignty, by subordinating economic matters to the teachings of the Gospel – which includes the prohibition of usury.  Continuing with the encyclical Libertas, Pope Leo XIII wrote:

“A doctrine of such character is most hurtful both to individuals and to the State. For, once ascribe to human reason the only authority to decide what is true and what is good, the real distinction between good and evil is destroyed; honor and dishonor differ not in their nature, but in the opinion and judgment of each one; pleasure is the measure of what is lawful; and, given a code of morality which can have little or no power to restrain or quiet the unruly propensities of man, a way is naturally opened to universal corruption.” 

The devil knows well placing truth and error, good and evil, on the same level will result in confusion.  The end result, as the Pope warned, is that pleasure – the gratification of human desires – will be the measure of what is lawful.   The issue of “gay marriage”, which is rapidly becoming the law of the land, is another fruit of this error (see the encyclical Arcanum by Leo XIII), for when God and His Laws are excluded, and the will of man is declared supreme, there is nothing to stop marriage itself from violating the laws of nature and being brought into accord with man’s vicious inclinations.  The intellectual confusion and moral degradation produced by Liberalism eventually leads to tyranny.  Continuing with Libertas:

“With reference also to public affairs: authority is severed from the true and natural principle whence it derives all its efficacy for the common good; and the law determining what it is right to do and avoid doing is at the mercy of a majority. Now, this is simply a road leading straight to tyranny.”

When man rejects the Divine Plan for order and instead seek to organize society as if God and His Law did not exist, the result will be a two-fold tyranny: first the internal tyranny of vice and moral corruption, which will soon be followed by the external tyranny of the vicious rulers.  Today, even the most sanguine of the New Springtime crowd is forced to acknowledge the corruption of society and the tyranny that is rapidly descending upon us, both of which are natural fruits of Liberalism. 

Following in the footsteps of Lucifer who said to God non-Serviam – “I will not serve” – and the unbelieving Jews who said “we will not have this man to reign over us… give unto us Barabbas…we have no King but Caesar”, modern man is now suffering from what Cardinal Pie called the “absolute theocracy of Caesar, head and arbiter of religion, supreme oracle of doctrine and law.”  Having rejected the sweet yoke of Christ, the universal the King of all creation, and instead chosen the murder and thief Barabbas (who signifies the Godless United Nations, which Pope Paul VI called “man’s last hope for concord and peace” (11)), man is now facing the monstrous tyranny of a global Caesar–Barabbas.  With an estimated 262 million (12) innocent people murdered by Atheistic governments during the previous century fresh in mind, many fear what is coming; but when man rejects the Social Reign of Christ the King, he should not be surprised when he is justly punished for his crime by a tyrannical Caesar.  “God will reign” wrote Cardinal Pie, “and if he does not reign by the benefits inseparable from his presence, he will reign by calamities inseparable from his absence.” 

The unbelieving Jews – the “natural branches” (Romans 11:17-20) – have paid for their crime of rejecting Christ the King for the past 2000 years. God only know what is in store for the unbelieving Gentiles – the “wild olive branches” – who have repeated their crime.  “Never to have known Jesus Christ is the greatest of misfortunes… But, after having known Him, to reject or forget Him, is a crime so foul and so insane that it seems impossible for any man to be guilty of it.” (Tematsi)

In Luke, Chapter 19, Our Lord speaks of Himself in the parable of the nobleman who “went into a far country, to receive for himself a kingdom.”  Then, referring to the unbelieving Jews, He said: “but His citizens hated Him: and they sent an embassage after Him, saying: we will not have this man to reign over us.” (vs. 14)  Later in the parable, in words that apply to both the unbelieving Jews and the Liberals of today, Our Lord said: “But as for those My enemies, who would not have me reign over them, bring them hither, and kill them before me.” (vs. 27)  It is not enough to accept Christ as our Savior who frees us from our sins; we must also accept him as King and Lawgiver to Whom obedience is due.  “If we do not love Christ's social reign” said Bishop Tissier de Mallerais, “we will fall under the social reign of the devil.”  

Seeing the tyranny of an antichristian government descending upon them, many mistakenly believe the solution is more “liberty”.  What they don’t realize is that the false notion of “liberty” (freedom from God’s Law and from submission to the Christ the King) is what has brought us to our present misfortune. To borrow a modern phrase: 1776 is not the answer to 1984; it is the cause.  Over 100 years ago, Pope St. Pius X warned:

“Abandonment of God and apostasy is the disease which is eating into the vitals of Society much more than in past time, and is daily growing worse … the cry of the enemies of God: ‘Depart from us’ (Job. xxi.14) has become almost universal … with appalling rashness, man has usurped the place of God, raising himself above all that is called God, showing forth the characteristics which is the distinguishing mark of Antichrist.” (E-Supreme)

The real answer to 1984 is, as Pope St. Pius X never tired of saying, to “restore all things in Christ” (Eph. 1:10), which means to lead man back to submission to God.  “To restore all things in Christ”, wrote Pius X, “and to lead men back to submission to God is one and the same aim.” (E-Supreme) 

There is no baptizing the Masonic errors which have brought society to the brink of destruction, and simply trying to be a leaven in a Masonic Society is not enough.  Unless Christ reigns over nations, all efforts to convert the world and build a Christian civilization will be sterile for the end proposed.

"So long as Christ does not reign over nations”, wrote Cardinal Pie, “His influence over individuals remains superficial and precarious. …If the environment is non-Catholic, it prevents him from embracing the faith or, if he has the faith, it tends to root out of his heart every vestige of belief. … try to convert individuals without Catholicizing the social institutions and your work is without stability. The structure you erect in the morning will be torn down by others in the evening.”

Fatima is the Answer

Admittedly, at the present time the conversion of nations to the Social Reign of Christ the King looks, humanly speaking, hopeless, while the tyrannical suppression of Christianity by an Atheistic and Antichrist global Caesar-Barabbas looks quite promising.  But God foresaw the seemingly hopeless situation we are now in and provided a remedy – a remedy that does not require the cooperation of the forces of Antichrist who now run the world.  The remedy is completely at odds with the errors of the Unholy Trinity, and its religious offspring, Modernism, which has invaded the Church and infected the vast majority of the members of the hierarch.  The solution is not of this world, and will not be brought about by pan-religious ecumenical “prayer meetings” in which members of false religions are invited by the Vicar of Christ to invoke their false gods for peace.  Such actions will only bring further destruction as God punishes the Church for placing the true religion on the same plane as false religions and heretical sects.  The solution to our modern ills was provided by heaven, and consists in a simple act of obedience in faith to the requests of Our Lady of Fatima, who has promised that an era of peace will be granted to the world when the Pope, together with the Bishops, performs the collegial Consecration of Russia to her Immaculate Heart. 

It is interesting to note that four centuries ago this promise of Fatima was revealed, in part, to Ven. Mary of Agreda.  The following is taken from The Mystical City of God:

“I have been informed of a great mystery, which affords us consolation in this conflict of the holy Church against her wicked enemies.  Namely, that on account of this triumph of most holy Mary [discusses previously in the chapter] and on account of another, which She gained over the demons after the Ascension of our Lord (Part III, 528), the Almighty, in reward of her battles, decreed, that through her intercession and virtue all heresies and sects of the world against holy Church were to be destroyed and extinguished.  The time appointed for this blessing was not made known to me; probably, the fulfillment of this decree is dependent upon some tacit and unknown condition.” (Vol. 2, pg 290)

We now know what that condition is: the collegial Consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. 

Unfortunately, even though the last eight Popes have acknowledged the authenticity of the message of Fatima, which now enjoys a Feast Day on the universal calendar, none have performed the requested act.   In 1942, Pope Pius XII consecrated the world to the Immaculate Heart in union with the other Bishops; in 1984, John Paul II also consecrated the world, but without the other Bishops.  In 1952, Pope Pius XII personally consecrated Russia by name to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, as did Paul VI in 1964, but neither of these performed the consecration with the other Bishops, as requested.  To date, all of the Papal consecrations have fallen short of the simple request of Fatima.

Today the world stands on the brink of disaster, and almost everyone, believer and unbeliever alike, can sense it.  Will our new Pope at last fulfill the simple requested by Heaven, or will he continue down the path of his predecessors, which will end in “the annihilated of many nations”?  Time will tell.  For our part let us perform our daily duties, make the First Saturdays as requested at Fatima, and continue to publicly proclaim the Kingship of Christ, for, as Our Lord told St. Margaret Mary Alacoque: “I will reign in spite of My enemies.”

We will end with the words of Bishop Tissier De Mallarias:

“We should all be resolved as much as lies in us, to fight this satanic plan, which God may deign to dissipate with the breath of His mouth. Sons of the Catholic Church, adhering to the indefectible voice of the Spouse of Christ, we proclaim the absolute Kingship of Our Lord Jesus Christ over the human affairs, over societies and over nations.”

Footnotes

1)       See The Unholy Trinity of Modern Errors, June 2013 issue of CFN

2)       Liberalism and Catholicism, pg.13

3)       Ibid, pgs 21,17

4)       Mystical Body of Christ in the Modern World, pg. 245 

5)       Liberalism and Catholicism, pg. 21, 17

6)       Pius X, Fermo Proposito 

7)       Secret Societies and the Kingship of Christ, pg. 12

8)       The Kingship of Christ, pg. 98, 139

9)       Citations taken from The Facts About Luther, TAN books

10)    Secret Societies and the Kingship of Christ, pg. 17

11)    Speech to the U.N on 10/4/1965

12)    Estimates by Dr. Rummel, Professor at the University of Hawaii

Is Heaven a Place?

by Robert J. Siscoe

(This article was published in the May 2012 issue of Christian Order - http://www.christianorder.com/features/features_2012/features_may12.html )



“In my Father's house there are many mansions. … I go to prepare a place for you. And if I shall go, and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and will take you to myself; that where I am, you also may be” (John 14:2-3).

Ever since John Paul II’s Wednesday Audience of July 21, 1999, during which he taught that heaven is not “a physical place in the clouds, but a living personal relationship with the Trinity” (1), many Catholics have begun to question, and even doubt, the existence of a literal heaven. One concerned Catholic wrote the following question to Catholic Answers:

“Recently, in our parish Bible study class, the leader stated that heaven is not a place but is in our minds, and he quoted sections 2794–2796 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church as a source for this opinion. I am deeply troubled by this concept. If heaven is not a place, then why did Jesus ascend into heaven as he left his apostles? Why would he say that he was going to prepare a "place" for them, if one did not exist? Why does the Catechism say heaven is "a way of being"?

Like many others, this Catholic has become confused by what Pope St. Pius X called the “novelty of words” which has become the common mode of speech in the post-Conciliar era.

The confusion over the question of heaven increased with the publication of Benedict XVI’s recent book, Jesus of Nazareth II, in which he wrote the following about the Ascension of our Lord into heaven:

“The New Testament, from the Acts of the Apostles to the Letter to the Hebrews, describes the “place” to which the cloud took Jesus, using the language of Psalm 110:1, sitting (or standing) at God’s right hand. What does this mean? It does not refer to some distant cosmic space, where God has, as it were, set up his throne and given Jesus a place beside the throne. God is not in one space alongside other spaces. God is God – he is the premise and the ground of all space there is, but he himself is not part of it. God stands in relation to space as Lord and Creator. His presence is not spatial, but divine. ‘Sitting at God’s right hand’ means participating in this divine dominion over space. … The departing Jesus does not make his way to some distant star. He enters into communion of power and life with the living God...”. (2)

While it is true that the Blessed Trinity is pure Spirit “whose presence is not spatial, but divine”, the Divine Person of Jesus possesses a physical body, and it is this physical body – united to the Word of God - that ascended into heaven. Therefore, our Lord must have ascended into a place capable of receiving a physical body.

When considering the question of a physical heaven, we must recall that heaven is not simply where the Blessed Trinity dwelled for all eternity, but is something that has been created by God. Commenting on the First Article of the Creed, the Catechism of Pius X says:

“The First Article of the Creed teaches us that there is one God, and only one; that He is omnipotent and has created heaven and earth and all things contained in them...”.

The created heavens are not limited to the atmosphere above - the aerial heaven (the first heaven); or the realm containing the sun, moon, and stars - the firmament (the second heaven); but also include the empyrean heaven - the third heaven spoken of by St. Paul (2 Cor. 12:2) - where the angels and Saints will dwell for all eternity, and where the glory of God is manifest to them as their ultimate reward.

The Blessed Trinity, who is eternal and uncreated, pre-existed the created heavens and as such cannot be contained by them: “God… the heavens, even the highest heaven, cannot contain you” (1 King 8:30). The Trinity cannot be contained exclusively within any created place; therefore, when considering heaven we must make a distinction between what St. Thomas called “the Heaven of the Blessed Trinity” (3), which is the eternal abode of the Blessed Trinity before creation, and the created empyrean heaven, or “the third heaven”, where God “has prepared His throne” (Psalms 102: 19), and where he now dwells, or “subsists”, with the angels and Saints, and where the glorified bodies of our Lord and our Lady – the King and Queen of Heaven – now physically reside.

In the Mystical City of God, Ven. Mary of Agreda is shown the eternal abode of God before the creation of the empyrean heavens:

“I saw the Lord as He was before He had created anything and with great astonishment I looked to see where was the throne of the Most High, for the empyrean heavens were not, nor the lower ones, nor did the sun exist, nor the moon, nor the other stars, nor the elements, only the Creator was, without any of His creatures. All was void, without presence of angels, or men or animals. … I understood, that the Most High was in the quiescent state of his own being, when the three Persons (according to our way of understanding things), decreed to communicate his perfections as a free gift.” (4)

In the next chapter she discusses the works of God ad extra, and distinguishes six instances of creation. It was during the fifth instant that God decreed the creation of the empyrean heaven:

“In this fifth decree the creation of the angelic nature which is more excellent and more like unto the spiritual being of the Divinity, was determined upon, and at the same time the division or arrangement of the angelic hosts into nine choirs and three hierarchies, was provided and decreed… In the same instant was also decreed the creation of the empyrean heaven, for the manifestation of His glory and the reward of the good; also the earth and other heavenly bodies for the other creatures; moreover also in the center or depth of the earth, hell, for the punishment of the bad angels”. (5)

Some of the recent statements from high churchmen fail to distinguish between the eternal abode of God before creation – “The heaven of the Blessed Trinity”, as St. Thomas calls it - which is not a physical place, and the empyrean heaven which was created as the place where the blessed will dwell for eternity, and where our Lord, the King of all Creation, sits upon his throne.

After failing to distinguish between the two, it is then implied that, since the Trinity cannot be contained within a place, heaven itself must not be a physical place, but merely a personal relationship with God. This leaves the thinking person in a state of confusion wondering where the resurrected bodies of the blessed will dwell. The distinction between the uncreated abode of the Blessed Trinity, and the created empyrean heaven where the blessed will dwell for eternity, clears up the confusion.

Canon Ripley describes the created heaven as “a special place with definite limits, outside and beyond the limits of earth”. (6) Blessed Francisco Palau explains that “the throne of Jesus Christ” has been established “in a specially chosen place within the empyrean heaven”. (7)

Heaven was created to be the eternal abode of both angels and men. While an angel is a spiritual substance, man is a body/soul composite, possessing a material body that takes up space. At death, the soul is separated from the body but, at the resurrection, the body and soul will again be reunited to form one unified whole. And contrary to what some modern theologians would have us believe, the resurrection of the body is not simply a “resurrection of the person”, or an “evolutionary leap”, but a resurrection of the physical body – the exact same body that was united to the soul in this life.

The Fourth Lateran Council teaches that men “will rise again with their bodies which they now bear”. (8) In the book of Job, we read: "[I]n the last day I shall rise out of the earth. And I shall be clothed again with my skin, and in my flesh I shall see God” (Job 19:25-26). The Catechism of Trent explains the necessity of holding firmly to this doctrine: “[I]t is of vital importance to be fully convinced that the identical body, which belongs to each one of us during this life, shall, though corrupted and dissolved into its original dust, be raised up again to life…”. (9)

The glorified bodies of the risen Saints will be distinguished by four transcendent endowments, or qualities. The Catechism of Pope St. Pius X describes these qualities as follows: “The endowments that shall adorn the bodies of the elect are: 1) Impassability, by which they can never again be subject to evil, nor to any kind of pain, nor to need of food, of rest or the like; 2) Brightness, by which they shall shine as the sun and as so many stars; 3) Agility, by which they shall be able to pass in a moment and without fatigue from one place to another and from earth to heaven; 4) Subtlety, by which without hindrance they shall be able to penetrate any body, as did Jesus Christ when risen from the dead”.

Yet in spite of these transcendent qualities, the glorified bodies will remain physical bodies. As Dr. Ott explains, although subtlety will spiritualize our nature, this “is not to be conceived as a transformation of the body into a spiritual essence or as a refinement of the matter into an ethereal body”. (10) After the resurrection, the glorified bodies of the just will remain physical bodies with flesh and bones. We see this with the risen body of our Lord, who not only allowed the apostles to touch Him, but also ate with them. “See my hands and feet, that it is I myself; handle, and see: for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as you see me to have. And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and feet… And they offered him a piece of a broiled fish, and a honeycomb. And when He had eaten before them, taking the remains, he gave to them” (Luke 24:39-40, 42-43).

In The Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, we read the following about the resurrected body. The “body will rise again in complete integrity, free from distortions, malformations and defects. St. Thomas teaches: ‘Man will rise again in the greatest possible natural perfection,’ therefore in the state of mature age (Suppl. 81). The integrity of the body after its resurrection also demands the organs of vegetative and sensitive life, including the differences between the sexes (against the view of Origen; Denz. 207). However, the vegetative functions will no longer take place. Mt 22:30: ‘They shall be as the angels of God in Heaven’.” (11)

Now since heaven was created to receive the resurrected bodies of men, which are physical bodies, heaven must be a physical or corporeal place. This is the teaching of St. Thomas who taught that the empyrean heaven is the highest of corporeal places; the place where the angels were created, and where the just are to be transferred for their final beatitude:

“The empyrean heaven is the highest of corporeal places, and is outside the region of change … the abode of beatitude was suited to the very nature of the angel; therefore he was created there”, while man “was not placed from the beginning in the empyrean heaven, but was destined to be transferred thither in the state of his final beatitude”. (12)

This citation of St. Thomas is interesting because it brings out a further distinction. He teaches that the angels were created in the empyrean heaven, even though, as we know, they did not initially possess the beatific vision (since the vision of God was the reward only of those who passed the angelic test). This shows that the empyrean heaven and the beatific vision are distinct, even though now (after the fall of the angels) both constitute the simultaneous reward of the blessed. Canon Ripley confirms this when he teaches that heaven is “both the happiness and the abode of the just in the next life”. (13) Dr. Ott teaches the same: “Heaven is a place and condition of perfect supernatural bliss, which consist in the immediate vision of God and in perfect love of God associated with it”. (14) This distinction is important because it shows that heaven is both a state of being and a place. It should be further noted that the blessed continue to possess the beatific vision even if they travel outside the place of the empyrean heaven, which is possible (15). For example, when the Blessed Mother appeared to the Children of Fatima, she continued to possess the beatific vision.

The distinction between the place of heaven and the “state of heaven” (the beatific vision) is also taught in Bishop Morrow’s catechism, My Catholic Faith:

Question 83: What do we mean by ‘life everlasting’? “By ‘life everlasting’ we mean that there will be another existence after this present life, and in it the just will be happy for all eternity. In that place the just will dwell in heaven with God, in perfect and everlasting happiness. Heaven is both a place and a state: Our Lord Jesus Christ came down from heaven, and ascended into it. Heaven is a state: even when the Blessed Virgin Mary, for example, appears to men, she does not leave heaven [the state of beatitude], which she carries with her, in the state of her soul. This is why the good and holy have a foretaste of heaven even here on earth, in the peace and joy they possess in their hearts”. (16)

So, while it is true to say that those in heaven are in a state – the state of beatitude, this should not be understood as implying that heaven is not also a created place – a corporeal place capable of receiving physical bodies.

In The Four Last Things, Fr. Cochem, O.S.F.C. warns against those who imagine heaven to be merely a spiritual realm:

“We must not, as some do, picture to ourselves heaven as purely a spiritual realm. For heaven is a definite place, where not only God is, and the angels now are, but where Christ is also in His sacred humanity, and Our Lady with her human body. There, too, all the blessed will dwell with their glorified bodies after the Last Judgment. If heaven is a definite locality, it must accordingly be a visible, not a spiritual kingdom; for a place must in its nature be to some extent conformable to those who abide in it”. (17)

Blessed Francisco Palau explains that the mansions of the blessed – the Church Triumphant - are located in a particular place within the empyrean, which is called the Celestial heaven.

“There is no doubt that the Church materially occupies a place in the empyrean: all of us believe as such. This place is called the Celestial heaven. The Celestial heaven has to be considered as a true body and the pavement of our mansion has to be solid, capable of sustaining our body, apart from its gift of agility, because there we must have the capacity to walk slowly as to soar to that purest region. Since during this mortal life we had been pilgrims and did not have any fixed point because our miseries had overtaken us, it is right then that we will have a fixed point there, a stable place … as the Apostle said, a permanent city in the immense space of the empyrean. And this is what mansion signifies “in my father’s house there are many mansions” [Jn 14,2] and that is what the Apostle said: ‘For here we do not have lasting city; we are seeking one which is to come’ [Heb 13,14]... [T]he Holy Church occupies a place in the Celestial heaven... In addition, this place being the eternal mansion and rest of the blessed, a figure must be given to the matter to indicate this very stability: and there is none better than the city, which denotes the whole Church, and every one of her members a district, neighborhood, street, palace, and mansion. … We have to take the triumphant Church as a city in the material sense.” (18)

Commenting further on the Celestial realm, Fr. Cochem writes:

“If we venture to comment further upon the interior of the Celestial realm, we may assume that the vast, immeasurable space of heaven does not only contain these heavenly cities, but much more besides, all of which enhance the delights of that blissful land. For as kings and princes on earth have gardens and pleasure grounds laid out beside their palaces, where they amuse themselves in the summer season, so, many theologians assert, there are heavenly paradises, that afford increased delight to the blessed.... St. Augustine, St. Anselm, and many other Saints do not hesitate to maintain that there are in heaven real trees, real fruits, real flowers, indescribably attractive and delightful to the sight, taste, smell, and touch, different from anything we can imagine. In the revelation of Saints, mention is made of flowers that blossom there; and we know it is recorded in the legend of St. Dorothea, that she sent Theophilus by the hand of an angel a basket of flowers culled in the garden of the Celestial paradise, of such surpassing beauty that the sight of them led him to become a Christian, and lay down his life for the faith of Christ”. (19)

Ann Catherine Emmerick was granted numerous visions of Heaven, which she described as “a beautiful and well-regulated city”. She explains that “the different degrees of glory, to which the elect are raised, are demonstrated by the magnificence of their palaces, or the wonderful fruit and flowers with which the gardens are embellished. ... In the Heavenly Jerusalem all is peace and eternal harmony… the city is filled with splendid buildings, decorated in such a manner as to charm every eye and enrapture every sense; the inhabitants of this delightful abode are overflowing with rapture and exultation, the gardens gay with lovely flowers, and the trees covered with delicious fruits…”.

Here we see Heaven described as a literal place where the blessed currently dwell. But can spiritual souls, while separated from their body, dwell within a “place”? According to St. Thomas the answer is yes. He writes:

“The empyrean heaven is a corporeal place, and yet as soon as it was made it was filled with the holy angels, as Bede says. Since then, angels, even as separated souls, are incorporeal, it would seem that some place should also be assigned to receive separated souls. Further, this appears from Gregory's statement (Dial. iv) that souls after death are conveyed to various corporeal places. ... Therefore after death souls have certain places for their reception. … And though after death souls have no bodies assigned to them … nevertheless certain corporeal places are appointed to them…”. (20)

It is worth noting that in reply to an objection raised in the same article as to how an angel or separated soul can be in a place, St. Thomas wrote: “Incorporeal things are not in place after a manner known and familiar to us, in which way we say that bodies are properly in place; but they are in place after a manner befitting spiritual substances, a manner that cannot be fully manifest to us”. (21)

In the book Raised from the Dead, Fr. Hebert, S.M., includes a chapter containing stories of souls who have been taken to heaven. “Those whose souls have been allowed to visit Heaven often describe it in terms of figures and scenes familiar to earthly sense faculties. The privileged persons see paradise gardens, hear glorious choirs of Saints,... smell celestial fragrances. They especially see Jesus (in His humanity) and the blessed Virgin Mary in great beauty and splendour”. (22) He then recounts the story of St. Lydwine of Schiedam, whose “visits to the other world were remarkable even among the Saints. She often saw Heaven as a great festal hall in a palace, with crystal and gold goblets. ... [she saw] a beautiful garden of Eden with marvellous trees and flowers. Along the lovely paths the Saints would sing the glories of God as on a beautiful eternal spring morning”. (23)

This confirms that the empyrean Heaven – the third heaven - is a place, one that has been visited by privileged souls who had not yet attained the beatific vision, such as St. Paul, thereby confirming, once again, that the place of heaven is distinct from the ultimate reward of the blessed – the vision of Almighty God.

Conclusion: While it is true that the empyrean heaven is not “in the clouds” (the first heaven), or on “some distant star” (the second heaven), it does not follow that our Lord did not ascend into the empyrean heaven (the third heaven) - the place where He now dwells bodily with His Mother and the angels and Saints. Heaven is more than a “personal relationship with the Trinity”, which is merely, as Bishop Morrow said, “a foretaste of heaven” - something those in the state of grace can possess even in this valley of tears. The created heaven is distinct from the uncreated abode where the Blessed Trinity dwelled before creation. The empyrean heaven, where God has “prepared His throne”, is a created corporeal place where the mansions of the blessed are located, where resurrected bodies of the Saints will dwell for eternity, and where the blessed, having their intellect perfected by the lumen gloriae (24), will see God face to face and thereby be raised and transformed into a state of perfect beatitude.

The doctrines of the Faith are interlinked in such a way that the denial of one will inevitably lead to the denial of others. After one denies the existence of a physical heaven, it won’t be long before they will deny a physical hell (25), a physical purgatory (26), the descent of our Lord’s soul into limbo (27), and even limbo itself. (28) After these are denied, the next to go will be the resurrection of the physical body, and, consequently, our Lord’s bodily Ascension and our Lady’s bodily Assumption. The doctrines of the Faith can be compared to the threads of a tapestry; once one is denied, the whole begins to unravel.

Footnotes
1. “In the context of Revelation, we know that the "heaven" or "happiness" in which we will find ourselves is neither an abstraction nor a physical place in the clouds, but a living, personal relationship with the Holy Trinity.” (L'Osservatore Romano, July 21, 1999)
2. Jesus of Nazareth - Holy Week: From the Entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection Pg 282-283
3. Summa, Pt 1, Q61, A4, reply 3
4. Mystical City of God, Vol.1, pg 49-50
5. Ibid, pg 59
6. This is the Faith, pg 390
7. Francisco Palau Writings, The Church of God, Pg 724
8. Denzingers 429
9. Catechism of the Council of Trent, pg. 125
10. Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, Pg.492
11. Ibid., Pg.491
12. Summa, Pt 1, Q102, A,2, reply 1
13. This is the Faith, pg 389
14. The Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, pg.476. The Pocket Catholic Dictionary of Fr. Hardon, S.J. provides the same definition for Heaven: A place and condition of perfect supernatural happiness.
15. See the Summa, Suppl. Q69, A3
16. My Catholic Faith, pg 166
17. The Four Last Things pg. 174
18. Francisco Palau Writings, The Church of God, Pg 733-734. A portion of the citation was retranslated from the original Spanish by Fr. Rickert, FSSP.
19. The Four Last Things pg. 188
20. Summa, Suppl., Q69, A1
21. For more on this point, see the Summa, Pt. 1 Q52, A 1
22. Raised from the Dead, pg. 237
23. ibid, pg. 239
24. “Scholasticism stressed the absolute supernatural nature of the vision of God, which demands an altogether supernatural elevation of the intellect, the so-called lumen gloria (cf. Ps 35:10; Apoc. 22:5), which makes glorified man capable of the act of the Vision of God”. (Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, Pg. 477-478)
25. John Paul II: “Rather than a place, hell indicates the state of those who freely and definitively separate themselves from God, the source of all life and joy." (General Audience given on August 4, 1999)
26. John Paul II: “Purification must be complete, and indeed this is precisely what is meant by the Church's teaching on purgatory. The term does not indicate a place, but a condition of existence”. (General Audience given on July 28, 1999)
27. John Paul II: “During the three (incomplete) days between the moment when he ‘expired’ (cf. Mk 15:37) and the resurrection, Jesus experienced the state of death, that is, the ‘separation of body and soul’, as in the case of all people. This is the primary meaning of the words ‘he descended into hell’; they are linked to what Jesus himself had foretold when, in reference to the story of Jonah. He had said: ‘For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the whale, so will the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth’ (Mt 12:40). This is precisely what the words about the descent into hell meant: ‘the heart or the womb of the earth.’ … If death implies the separation of the soul from the body, it follows that in Christ's case also there was, on the one hand, the body in the state of a corpse, and on the other, the heavenly glorification of his soul from the very moment of his death”. (General Audience given on January 11, 1989)
28. In his book God and the World, Cardinal Ratzinger referred to the doctrine of Limbo as “rather unenlightened” (pg 402). In The Ratzinger Report, he wrote: “Staying with eschatology for a moment: ‘limbo’ has actually disappeared, that intermediate place where the unbaptized children, i.e. those with only the ‘stain’ of original sin, were supposed to go. For example, we find no trace of it in the official catechism of the Italian episcopate. … Personally – and here I am speaking more as a theologian and not as Prefect of the Congregation – I would abandon it…”. (pg 147)

The Unholy Trinity of Modern Errors

Naturalism, Rationalism and Liberalism

By Robert J. Siscoe


(This article was published in the June 2013 issue of Catholic Family News - cfnews.org)

“[T]he obstinate passion of Naturalism is the dethronement of Our Lord Jesus Christ and to drive him from the world. This will be the task of Antichrist and it is Satan’s supreme ambition. … Naturalism strives with all its might to exclude our Lord Jesus Christ, our One Master and Savior, from the minds of men as well as from the daily lives and habits of peoples, in order to set up the reign of reason or of nature. Now, wherever the breath of Naturalism has passed, the very source of Christian life is dried up. Naturalism means complete sterility in regard to salvation and eternal life”.

So wrote Cardinal Pie, the Bishop of Poitiers and great defender of the Social Kingship of Christ, against the error of Naturalism – the root error of our times – which has caused the destruction of Christendom and launched the world into the present Age of Apostasy.

In this article we will examine the errors of Naturalism and its two offspring: Rationalism and Liberalism. We will see that Rationalism is simply the application of Naturalism to human reason, while Liberalism is the application thereof to the human will. Together these errors form an unholy Trinity, within which Naturalism is the father, Rationalism is the prideful son proceeding from the father, and Liberalism is the rebellious daughter who proceeds from both the father and the son.

Naturalism

Naturalism consists in the negation of the supernatural order in one of two ways: either the very existence of the supernatural order is denied, or if it is admitted, it denies “the possibility, or at least the fact, of any transitory intervention of God in nature”. (1) Consequently, it denies the possibility of man’s nature being elevated to the supernatural level by the infusion of sanctifying grace, of his reason being enlightened by supernatural Faith, and his will being perfected by supernatural charity.

Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange said Naturalism is a development of Protestantism, and indeed the seeds of Naturalism can be seen in the Protestant view of justification, which denies that the justified soul is elevated to the supernatural level by grace. Luther denied that the justified soul has his sins forgiven through an infusion of supernatural life, and instead claimed that the sin laden soul is merely “covered over with the merits of Christ”, while remaining metaphysically unchanged. According to Luther man is not truly made just, but only declared just.

This error eventually developed to the point where all intervention of the supernatural in the natural order is rejected, including Divine Revelation. According to Naturalism:

“Having no supernatural destiny, man needs no supernatural means — neither sanctifying grace as a permanent principle to give his actions a supernatural value nor actual grace to enlighten his mind and strengthen his will. The Fall of Man, the mysteries of the Incarnation and the Redemption, with their implications and consequences, can find no place in a Naturalistic creed”. (2)

Masonic Naturalism adds a “positive” element by maintaining that man is essentially divine, and can perfect himself without the aid of supernatural grace – a doctrine sufficiently refuted by a Saturday afternoon trip to Walmart.

Rationalism

The object of man’s intellect is truth. Since Naturalism denies the existence of any divinely revealed truth, Rationalism maintains that human reason alone is the source of truth, and therefore the exclusive judge of what is true and false, good and evil. Pope Leo XIII said: “The fundamental doctrine of Rationalism is the supremacy of the human reason, which, refusing due submission to the divine and eternal reason, proclaims its own independence, and constitutes itself the supreme principle and source and judge of truth”. (Libertas)

In his magnificent book, The Mystical Body of Christ in the Modern World, Fr. Fahey describes the relationship between Naturalism and Rationalism.

“[T]he formal constitutive element of Rationalism is the principle of the absolute autonomy of reason. The proximate foundation of Rationalism is Naturalism; the remote foundation is Pantheism and Atheism. … [Naturalism] involves the negation of either the existence of the supernatural order of truth and life, or at least the possibility of getting to know that order, even by Revelation. …. Naturalism is often used to signify the same thing as Rationalism, yet, in a strict sense, it rather designates the foundation of Rationalism. Naturalism is, properly speaking, the negation of the possibility of the elevation of our nature to the supernatural order, and Rationalism is the application of that doctrine to human reason, as Liberalism is the application thereof to liberty…”. (Pg. 44)

If the existence of a transcendent First Cause is acknowledged, the intervention of God in the natural order is denied. This is the error of the Deist, for whom “God is only Creator, not Providence; He cannot, or may not, interfere with the natural course of events, or He never did so”. (3) Deism acknowledges the laws of nature, but denies prophecy, miracles, and “the possibility of a Divine revelation imposing any laws other than those which natural religion enjoins on man”.

What all forms of Rationalism have in common is a belief in the supremacy of reason, and a rejection of Divine Revelation.

What is Revelation?

Divine Revelation is a Divine action, essentially supernatural, whereby God speaks to man through means which are beyond the ordinary course of nature, for the purpose of guiding the human race to its supernatural end. Public Revelation came to man first through the prophets in the Old Testament, and lastly through Christ as man. “God, who, at sundry times and in divers manners, spoke in times past to the fathers by the prophets, last of all, in these days hath spoken to us by his Son…”. (Heb 1:1-2)

The truths God has revealed include not only supernatural mysteries that exceed the power of reason to comprehend, such as the Trinity, but also natural truths that can be known by the power of unaided reason. Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange explained that the revelation of natural truths was not absolutely necessary, since these truths do not exceed the power of reason to discover; but it was morally necessary “so that all the truths may be known quickly, with firm certitude, and with no admixture of error by all”. (4) He further explained that Revelation is considered supernatural substantially if the truth revealed exceeds power of created intelligence to comprehend (e.g. the Trinity); it is supernatural modally if the manner of revelation is supernatural, even though the truth revealed does not exceed the power of the human mind to discover, such as the goodness of God or the immortality of the soul. (5)

Man’s intellect was made for truth, but due to its imperfection and the darkening resulting from the Fall, man often errs in his judgment of truth. There are two principles of truth: human reason, which is prone to error, and Divine Revelation which is inerrant. When man assents by Faith to revealed truths, it “frees and guards human reason from many errors, and furnishes it with manifold knowledge”. (First Vatican Council)
Denying Revelation itself, as does Rationalism, is not only contrary to Faith, but also incompatible with salvation, since “without faith no one has ever attained justification; nor will anyone obtain eternal life, unless he shall have persevered in faith unto the end”. (First Vatican Council)

What is Faith?

When we speak of Faith as an object, as the Faith, it refers to the teachings of Revelation; but faith is also a theological virtue and an action. The virtue of faith is necessary to make a supernatural act of faith, and the act of faith is dependent upon the object to be believed. By denying the object itself, the Faith is attacked at its foundation.

The formal object is God revealing; the material object is the truth revealed. The virtue of faith is a supernatural virtue that is infused by God into the human intellect where it habitually abides, the purpose of which is to enlighten the mind and enable the created intellect to believe the supernatural truths God has revealed – “for the intellect of the believer must be proportioned to this object [believed] by a power essentially supernatural”. (6)

The act of faith consists of an intellectual assent to the truths revealed by God, “not on account of the intrinsic truth perceived by the natural light of reason, but because of the authority of God Himself, the Revealer”. (Satis Cognitum, Leo XIII) If a single truth revealed by God and sufficiently proposed by the Church is rejected, the supernatural virtue of faith is lost entirely. Just as all sanctifying grace is lost through a single mortal sin, so too is all faith lost through disbelief in a single dogma; for “he who dissents even in one point from divinely revealed truth absolutely rejects all faith, since he thereby refuses to honor God as the supreme truth and the formal motive of faith”. (Ibid.)

As we have seen, Naturalism undermines all Faith by denying Revelation itself. For this reason, Cardinal Pie said:

“Naturalism is more than a heresy; it is pure undiluted anti-Christianism. Heresy denies one or more dogmas; Naturalism denies that there are any dogmas or that there can be any. Naturalism denies the very existence of Revelation. (…) the greatest obstacle to the salvation of men, as the [First] Vatican Council points out in the first Constitution on Doctrine, what hurls more people into hell nowadays than at any other epoch, is Rationalism or Naturalism…”.

The rapid rise of Naturalism over the past three centuries has been equaled only by the loss of Faith that has followed in its wake.

Fr. Tanquerey explains that Rationalism is rooted in intellectual pride:

“The first form of pride is to regard oneself, explicitly or implicitly, as one’s own first principle. … This is … the sin of Lucifer, who, desiring to be a rule unto himself, refused to submit to God; … the sin of Rationalists, who in their pride of intellect refuse to submit their reason to Faith. This is also the sin of certain intellectuals, who, too proud to accept the traditional interpretation of dogmas, attenuate and deform them to make them conformable to their own views”. (7)

The last category described by Fr. Tanquerey fits the Modernists, who reject the perennial teaching of the Church, and instead attempt to re-interpret the articles of Faith in a new way, according to their own lights.

Modernism

Modernism is a form of Rationalism, insofar as it makes human reason the sole principle and judge of truth. Like Rationalism, it denies the existence of public external Revelation, and instead claims that revelation springs forth from within man – from a divine seminal principle that is part of man’s rational nature.
Modernism blurs the distinction between the natural and supernatural by the doctrine of vital immanence, which essentially “divinizes” human reason, making it the principle and source of revelation. Modernists claim that divine revelation originates within each man, and is “revealed” to him through his consciousness, thereby “making consciousness and revelation synonymous”, as Pius X said in Pascendi. In reality, Modernism reduces “revelation” to the whims and fancies of man and, like Rationalism, undermines the foundation of Faith by denying the object of Faith, namely, public external Revelation.

In the book Liberalism is a Sin, Fr. Salvany notes that there are distinctions in degrees of both venial and mortal sin, and then explains that, with the exception of formal hatred of God, sins against Faith are the greatest of all sins.

“The gravity of sin is determined by the object at which it strikes. (…) With the exception of formal hate against God… the gravest of all sins are those against Faith. The reason is evident. Faith is the foundation of the supernatural order, and sin is sin in so far as it attacks this supernatural order at one or another point; hence that is the greatest sin which attacks this order at its very foundations. To destroy the foundation is to destroy the entire superstructure. To cut off the branch of a tree will not kill it; but to lay the ax to the trunk or the root is fatal to its life. Henceforth it bears neither blossom nor fruit. St. Augustine, cited by St. Thomas, characterizes sin against faith in these words: ‘This is the sin which comprehends all other sins’.” (8)

He then quotes St. Thomas, who said:

“The gravity of sin is determined by the interval which it places between man and God; now sin against Faith divides man from God as far as possible, since it deprives him of the true knowledge of God; it therefore follows that sin against Faith is the greatest of all sins." (I-II Q 10, A 3)

Naturalism and Rationalism – both of which directly attack the Faith - are, therefore, the greatest sins known to man, with the exception of formal hatred of God.

Liberalism

Just as Rationalism is the application of Naturalism to human reason, so Liberalism is the application to the human will. Rationalism denies that man must believe what God has revealed; Liberalism denies that man must obey what God has revealed. Liberalism is to the practical order what Rationalism is to the speculative order. Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange said: “From the standpoint of the intellect, Rationalism is opposed to Christian Faith. From the standpoint of the will, Liberalism is opposed to Christian Obedience”. (9)

Liberalism denies the Rights of God and the universal Kingship of Christ over individuals and nations, and seeks to be a law unto itself.

Our Lord Jesus Christ is the universal King of all creation, and therefore, as Pius XI taught, “has dominion over all creatures, a dominion not seized by violence nor usurped, but His by essence and by nature. His Kingship is founded upon the ineffable hypostatic union. From this it follows not only that Christ is to be adored by angels and men, but that to him as man [both] angels and men are subject, and must recognize his empire; by reason of the hypostatic union Christ has power over all creatures. … Christ is our King by acquired, as well as by natural right, for he is our Redeemer … it is a dogma of Faith that Jesus Christ was given to man, not only as our Redeemer, but also as a law-giver, to whom obedience is due”. (Quas Primas)
Since all men have a duty to acknowledge their Creator and submit to Christ the King – the “law-giver, to whom obedience is due” – man will never possess an inherent right to violate the Law of Christ. Just as no one will ever possess an inherent right to violate the Fifth Commandment by procuring an abortion, so too no one will ever possess an inherent right to violate the First Commandment by the practice of a false religion. That’s why Pius IX formally condemned the proposition that: “Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true” (Syllabus of Pius IX, #15)
Liberals ignore the Rights of God and focus exclusively on a disordered notion of the rights of man, extending them “to many things in respect of which man cannot rightly be regarded as free”. (Libertas, Leo XIII)

Man’s rights flow from his duties, and his duties correspond to the Rights of God. God has the right to enact laws to guide man in his actions. Man has the corresponding duty to acknowledge his Creator and submit to His laws, as well as a right to the means necessary to fulfill his obligations to God. Since man’s rights flow from his duties, and since his highest duty is to obey God, man will never possess an inherent right to do that which God forbids. All men are morally bound to obey the Commandments of the Decalogue and submit to the Law of Christ, and “by the Law of Christ we mean not only the natural precepts of morality and the Ancient Law… but also the rest of His doctrine and His own peculiar institution”. (Tametsi, Leo XIII)

Liberalism denies man’s obligation to submit to God’s law. They claim that since man is by nature free, he should be able to do as he pleases, as long as what he pleases does not result in physical harm to another. Pope Leo XIII exposed the fundamental error of Liberalism in the encyclical Libertas, in which he distinguished between natural liberty (free will) and moral liberty. Natural liberty is the capacity to make a moral choice; it is not an end in itself, but only a means to an end. Moral liberty establishes necessary boundaries for our natural liberty in order to guide man to his proper end. Natural liberty is the ability to choose; moral liberty directs the will in what it chooses. The boundaries establishing our moral liberty consist of law, whether known by the natural light of reason, or imposed upon man by God through Divine Revelation.

Leo XIII explains that a thing acts freely when it acts according to its nature. Since man is by nature rational, he acts freely when his actions are according to right reason. A free act is not simply an act that a person freely chooses, but a freely chosen act that is in accord with its nature. On this point, St. Thomas wrote:

“Man is by nature rational. When, therefore, he acts according to reason, he acts of himself and according to his free will; and this is liberty. Whereas, when he sins, he acts in opposition to reason, is moved by another, and is the victim of foreign misapprehensions. Therefore, 'Whosoever committeth sin is the slave of sin' (John 8:34)". (10)

The two-fold function of the will is to desire and choose, but the will itself is a blind faculty. It always desires the good, since good is the proper object of the will; but it is incapable of discerning a true good from a merely apparent good. Therefore, the will needs something to direct it in its choice. This something is the intellect (or reason), which judges what is truly good, and then enlightens the will so it can choose accordingly. On this point, Pope Leo XIII wrote:

“The will cannot proceed to act until it is enlightened by the knowledge possessed by the intellect. In other words, the good wished by the will is necessarily good in so far as it is known by the intellect; and this the more, because in all voluntary acts choice is subsequent to a judgment upon the truth of the good presented, declaring to which good preference should be given. No sensible man can doubt that judgment is an act of reason, not of the will. The end, or object, both of the rational will and of its liberty is that good only which is in conformity with reason”. (Libertas, Leo XIII)

Now due to original sin, man’s intellect is itself defective and therefore prone to error. It too needs a guide. This is the purpose of the revealed Law of God, which informs the human reason and prevents it from deviating into error. If the reason errs in its judgment, it will misdirect the will in its choice; and the blind following the blind, both will end in the pit. “If the mind assents to false opinions”, wrote Leo XIII, “and the will chooses and follows after what is wrong, neither can attain its native fullness, but both must fall from their native dignity into an abyss of corruption”. (Immortale Dei) By accepting the truths God has revealed, man’s reason is perfected and thereby safeguarded from error.

Now, since man is by nature rational, and therefore capable of receiving the revealed Law of God, man is morally bound to accept it. On this point Leo XIII wrote:

“Nothing more foolish can be uttered or conceived than the notion that, because man is free by nature, he is therefore exempt from law. Were this the case, it would follow that to become free we must be deprived of reason; whereas the truth is that we are bound to submit to law precisely because we are free by our very nature. For law is the guide of man's actions; it turns him toward good by its rewards, and deters him from evil by its punishments”. (Libertas)

Just as the will must be subject to reason in order to choose rightly, so too the reason must be subject to God’s Laws in order to protect it from erring. True liberty does not consist in each man doing what he desires, but in each man doing what he ought; for only by doing what he ought will he arrive at the end for which he was created.

All of this is denied by the Liberals, who say to God “not Thy will, but my will be done”, and attempt to put man in the place of God. According to the Liberal Jean-Jacques Rousseau, any man who submits to a will other than his own (which includes the Divine Will) renounces his manhood. He wrote:

“Man is free by nature and nobody has the right to lay down a law for him except himself; no man can be obliged except by himself. A law cannot be imposed on any man except by himself. If any man allows a law to be imposed upon him by any extraneous will, he will renounce his manhood”. (11)

The only boundaries Liberalism places on the will of man are actions that injure another man. For them, each man has the “right” to violate God’s law, so long as in so doing he does not harm his fellow man. There is no concern for the Rights of God; only for the rights of man. This Liberal error is enshrined in Article 4 of the infamous Declaration of the Rights of Man, which reads: “Liberty is the power of doing what we will, so long as it does not injure another”. (12)

Like Lucifer, the Liberals refuse submission to God’s law, and substitute for true liberty, unbridled license. “But many there are”, wrote Leo XIII, “who follow in the footsteps of Lucifer, and adopt as their own his rebellious cry, ‘I will not serve’; and consequently substitute for true liberty what is sheer and most foolish license. Such, for instance, are the men belonging to that widely spread and powerful organization, who, usurping the name of liberty, style themselves Liberals”. (Libertas)

The adherents of Liberalism apply this error both to the individual and to society as a whole - to the individual reason and the social reason - in such a way that individual morality is purely subjective, based solely on the individual reason; while civil law is equally subjective, being derived from the collective reason, or “the will of the people”. Consequently, both the individual reason and the collective social reason are considered sovereign, and therefore “liberated” from the obedience due to the Eternal Reason of God, and from the jurisdiction of the Kingship of Jesus Christ… or so they think. Like the unbelieving Jews who had Christ put to death, the Liberals cry out: “We will not have this man to reign over us”.

“Liberalism … asserts the sovereignty of the individual and the social reason, and enthrones Rationalism in the seat of Authority. … Liberalism denies the absolute jurisdiction of Jesus Christ, who is God, over individuals and over society.

“Morality requires a standard and a guide to rational action (…) In the moral order the Eternal Reason alone can be that principle or fundamental rule of action, and this Eternal Reason is God. In the moral order the created reason, with power to determine its course, must guide itself by the light of the Uncreated Reason, who is the beginning and end of all things. The law, therefore, imposed by the Eternal Reason upon the creature, must be the principle or rule of morality. … But Liberalism has proclaimed the absurd principle of the absolute sovereignty of human reason; it denies any reason beyond itself and asserts its independence (…) Liberalism is radical immorality. (Liberalism is a Sin, Ch. 3)

The “radical immorality” of such crimes as legalized abortion, gay “marriage”, and “same sex unions”, are merely effects proceeding from a cause; and the cause is Naturalism and its two offspring.

Next month we will see how this unholy Trinity of errors has overthrown ‘Altar and Throne’ and launched the world into a New Paganism, thereby preparing the way for the advent of Antichrist.

Footnotes

1) Catholic Encyclopedia, Naturalism
2) Ibid.
3) Ibid.
4) The Principles of Catholic Apologetics, by T.J. Walsh, pgs 144-45. The book is an English translation and re-arrangement of De Revelatione by Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange. Therefore, the quotations are being attributed to Garrigou-Lagrange.
5) Ibid. Pg. 105
6) Ibid. Pg. 154
7) The Spiritual Life, Pg. 394
8) Liberalism is a Sin, Ch. 4
9) The Principles of Catholic Apologetics
10) Cited in Libertas
11) The Mystical Body of Christ in the Modern World, Pg. 33
12) Ibid. Pg. 53

Has the Old Covenant been Revoked?

Has the Old Covenant Been Revoked?


By Robert J. Siscoe

(This article was published in the March 2013 issue of Catholic Family News - cfnews.org)

In this article, we will consider the question of whether or not the Old Covenant has been revoked. In order to clear up the ambiguity that has clouded this issue during recent decades, we will distinguish between two different old covenants: one that God made with Abraham (the Promise), and another that God made with Moses (the Law). We will also distinguish between “Israel according to the flesh” (1 Cor. 10:18), and what St. Paul calls “the Israel of God” (Galatians 6:16). At the end we will examine a troubling rise in what can only be described as a diabolical form of anti-Semitism being promoted by high ranking prelates in Rome.
We will begin by distinguishing between two Old Covenants: an immutable Covenant that was fulfilled and never revoked, and a temporary Covenant that was fulfilled and then rendered null.

The Abrahamic Covenant

The first covenant we will discuss is the Covenant God made with Abraham. This Covenant contains a temporal promise and a spiritual promise.

Temporal Promise

The temporal promise was that God would give to the descendants of Abraham the land of Canaan (Genesis 15:18). The Old Testament records this promise descending from Abraham to his son Isaac (Gen 17:21), and then from Isaac to his son Jacob, and finally through Jacob to all of his posterity (Gen. 28:3-4).

Later in the book of Genesis, we see that Jacob’s name is changed to Israel (Gen. 35:10). This is why the Jews, who are the descendants of Jacob/Israel, are referred to as “the children of Israel”, or simply as “Israel”, or, as St. Paul calls them, “Israel according to the flesh” (1 Cor. 10:18).

The temporal promise God made to Abraham was fulfilled: “And the Lord God gave to Israel all the land that he had sworn to give to their fathers: and they possessed it and dwelt in it” (Josue 21:41).

Spiritual Promise

Unlike the temporal promise, which was given to Abraham’s natural descendants alone, the spiritual promise applied to all the nations of the earth. When Abraham showed his willingness to sacrifice his own son in obedience to God (prefiguring the sacrifice of God’s own Son on the cross), God said to him: “By my own self I have sworn, saith the Lord: because thou hast done this thing, and hast not spared thy only begotten son for my sake: I will bless thee… And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because thou hast obeyed my voice” (Genesis 22:16-18). In this passage we see that, according to this spiritual promise, “all the nations of the earth” would be blessed by Abraham’s seed.

But what is this seed God is referring to? Is it a reference to all of the natural descendants of Abraham, through Isaac and Jacob? In other words, is this seed that will bless the earth the children of Israel collectively? If so, why did he say "seed" (singular) and not "seeds" (plural)? Or was God referring to a particular seed that would be born from the children of Israel? We find the answer to this question in the divinely inspired words of St. Paul to the Galatians, in which the Apostle explains that the seed God was referring to was Christ: "To Abraham were the promises made and to his seed. He saith not, 'and to his seeds', as of many: but as of one, 'and to thy seed', which is Christ" (Gal. 3:16).

Jesus is not only the natural seed of Abraham, as are all the other children of Israel: He is also the seed of God – God Incarnate – who would save His people from their sins. Jesus, the King and Savior of mankind, is the literal fulfillment of the promise God made to Abraham. St. Paul explains that those who are baptized in Christ become one with Christ, and heirs according to the Promise. He wrote:

“For you are all children of God by faith, in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as have been baptized in Christ, have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek… For you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you be Christ’s, then you are the seed of Abraham, heirs according to the Promise” (Galatians 3:26-29).

Jesus was the fulfillment of the Promise God made to Abraham, and all who are members of His mystical body are heirs according to that Promise. Therefore, the Covenant God made with Abraham was never revoked, but rather fulfilled in Christ.

The Mosaic Covenant

Between the time God made the Covenant Abraham and its fulfillment in Christ almost two thousand years later, God established a separate temporary Covenant with the children of Israel. This is the Covenant God established with Moses on Mt. Sinai (Exodus 19-24) four hundred and thirty years after the Covenant with Abraham (Galatians 3:17). The Mosaic Covenant, which is often referred to simply as the Law, is what the term “Old Covenant” traditionally refers to. The purpose of this Covenant was to signify and prefigure Christ, the Promised One, and the New Testament He would establish. It also served as a temporary “schoolmaster” (Galatians 3:23-25) until God’s Promise to Abraham was fulfilled. St. Paul explains:

“To Abraham were the promises made… Now this I say, that the testament which was confirmed by God, the [Mosaic] law which was made after four hundred and thirty years, doth not disannul, to make the Promise of no effect. For if the inheritance be of the law, it is no more of promise. But God gave it to Abraham by promise. Why then was the law? It was set because of transgressions, until the seed should come, to whom He made the Promise… (Galatians 3:16-19).

Our Lord lived under the old Law, obeyed its precepts and fulfilled its types, and rendered it null by his death, “fastening it to the cross” (Col. 2:14). He then establishing the New Testament in His Blood, for the remission of sin (Mt. 26:28), replacing the Mosaic Law with “the law of Christ” (1 Cor. 9:21). (1) St. Paul wrote: “And therefore is He [Christ] the mediator of the New Testament, that by means of His death… they that are called may receive the Promise of eternal inheritance” (Hebrews 9:15).

In Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, we read: “On the Cross, Christ consummated the building of the Church. The Old Covenant ceased and the New Covenant sealed with the blood of Christ began”. (Pg 292)

The establishment of the New Covenant was predicted by Jeremiah, who said: “Behold the days shall come, saith the Lord, and I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel… not according to the covenant I made with their fathers” (Jeremiah 31:31). Commenting on this prophecy, St. Paul explains: “now in saying a new [Covenant], he hath made the former old” (Hebrews 8:13).

In Mystici Corporis Christi, Pope Pius XII confirms that by the death of Christ the Old Law was rendered null:

“And first of all, by the death of our Redeemer, the New Testament took the place of the Old Law which had been abolished; then the Law of Christ together with its mysteries, enactments, institutions, and sacred rites was ratified for the whole world in the blood of Jesus Christ. For, while our Divine Savior was preaching in a restricted area - He was not sent but to the sheep that were lost of the house of Israel (Mt. 15:24) - the Law and the Gospel were together in force; but on the gibbet of his death Jesus made void the Law with its decrees (Eph. 2:15), fastened the handwriting of the Old Testament to the Cross (Col: 2:14), establishing the New Testament in His blood shed for the whole human race (Mt 26:28). ‘To such an extent, then,’ says St. Leo the Great, speaking of the Cross of our Lord, ‘was there effected a transfer from the Law to the Gospel, from the Synagogue to the Church, from many sacrifices to one Victim, that, as our Lord expired, that mystical veil which shut off the innermost part of the temple and its sacred secret was rent violently from top to bottom’.” (Mystici Corporis Christi, #29)

There is a fascinating fact recorded in the Jewish Talmud, of all places, which confirms that the old Law was rendered null with the death of Christ on the Cross. I will quote the Jewish convert, Roy Schoeman, who explained it in an interview he gave in December of 2003.

“Most Christians are aware of the many ways in which the Old Testament supports Christianity's claims that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah, but few are familiar with the passages in the Talmud — a strictly Jewish "scripture" based on oral tradition and written down several centuries after the death of Jesus — which do the same thing. I discuss about a half dozen of these passages in my book. Probably my favorite is the "Miracle of the Scarlet Thread". Shortly put, the Talmud recounts that when the Temple stood in Jerusalem, the sins of the Jewish people were taken away each year on one day, Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year, when the High Priest would enter the Holy of Holies with a sacrifice to atone for the sins of the people for the preceding year. Each year, a scarlet thread was affixed to the entry to the Holy of Holies, and miraculously, when the sacrifice within was accepted, the thread would turn white as a sign that the sins had been forgiven. Well, the Talmud recounts that, for no clearly identifiable reason, the miracle ceased to take place about 40 years before the destruction of the Temple. In other words, after about 30 A.D. the thread never again was turned white! We know, as Christians, that that was precisely when the Temple sacrifices lost their efficacy — at the moment of the Crucifixion, about 30 A.D., when, as a sign of the fact, the curtain in the Temple was rent in two (Matthew 27:51).”

The Council of Florence teaches that not only is the Old Law null and void, but those who seek to be justified by it sin mortally:

“[The Holy Roman Church] firmly believes, professes and teaches that the legal prescriptions of the Old Testament or the Mosaic law, which are divided into ceremonies, holy sacrifices and sacraments, because they were instituted to signify something in the future, although they were adequate for the divine cult of that age, once our Lord Jesus Christ who was signified by them had come, came to an end and the sacraments of the new Testament had their beginning. Whoever, after the Passion, places his hope in the legal prescriptions and submits himself to them as necessary for salvation and as if faith in Christ without them could not save, sins mortally. It does not deny that from Christ's passion until the promulgation of the Gospel they could have been retained, provided they were in no way believed to be necessary for salvation. But it asserts that after the promulgation of the gospel they cannot be observed without loss of eternal salvation” (Cantate Domino).

Pope Benedict XIV taught the same: “the ceremonies of the Mosaic Law were abrogated by the coming of Christ and… they can no longer be observed without sin after the promulgation of the Gospel” (Ex Quo Primum #61).

St. Thomas explains why it is a mortal sin to practice the Old Law:

Question: Whether since Christ's Passion the legal ceremonies can be observed without committing mortal sin?

I answer that, All ceremonies are professions of faith, in which the interior worship of God consists. Now man can make profession of his inward faith, by deeds as well as by words: and in either profession, if he make a false declaration, he sins mortally. Now, though our faith in Christ is the same as that of the fathers of old; yet, since they came before Christ, whereas we come after Him, the same faith is expressed in different words, by us and by them. For by them was it said: ‘Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son,’ where the verbs are in the future tense: whereas we express the same by means of verbs in the past tense, and say that she ‘conceived and bore.’ In like manner the ceremonies of the Old Law betokened Christ as having yet to be born and to suffer: whereas our sacraments signify Him as already born and having suffered. Consequently, just as it would be a mortal sin now for anyone, in making a profession of faith, to say that Christ is yet to be born, which the fathers of old said devoutly and truthfully; so too it would be a mortal sin now to observe those ceremonies which the fathers of old fulfilled with devotion and fidelity” (I II, Q 103, A 4).

This teaching of St. Thomas explains why Catholics should not take part in a Seder Meal, which constitutes active participation in a false religious ceremony, and therefore is equivalent to a false profession of faith.

Two Covenants prefigured by Isaac and Ismael

In his letter to the Galatians, St. Paul speaks of an interesting allegory in the pages of the Old Testament, which prefigures the Mosaic Covenant and the New Covenant in Christ. Before considering what he wrote, let us recall the people from the Old Testament that are used in this allegory.

Before Abraham’s wife Sarah bore his son, Isaac, the Patriarch had another son named Ismael with the slave girl Agar (Gen. 16:15). God promised Abraham that He would give him a son (Genesis 15:4); but due to his old age and the apparent sterility of his wife Sarah, she convinced him to marry the slave girl Agar in the hope that she would bear him a son. After Ismael was born to the slave girl, Sarah conceived Isaac who was the fulfillment of God’s promise (Gen. 21:1-2). After the birth of the promised one, Isaac, Sarah said to Abraham: “cast out this bond woman and her son: for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with my son Isaac" (Gen. 21:10).

Now, in the letter to the Galatians, God explains, through the pen of St. Paul, that these two children prefigure the two Covenants. In the allegory, Isaac (the child of the promise) prefigures the New Covenant in Christ, which includes those who have been baptized in Christ and are members of his mystical body. Ismael (the child of the slave girl) prefigures the unbelieving Jews “according to the flesh” who reject Christ and instead seek to be justified by the Old Law. St. Paul wrote:

“Tell me, you that desire to be under the law, have you not read the law? For it is written that Abraham had two sons: the one by a bond woman [Ismael], and the other by a free woman [Isaac]. But he who was of the bond woman, was born according to the flesh: but he of the free woman, was by promise. Which things are said by an allegory. For these are the two testaments. The one from Mount Sina [the Mosaic Law], engendering unto bondage, which is Agar: … Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are the children of promise. But as then he, that was born according to the flesh, persecuted him that was after the spirit, so also it is now. But what saith the Scriptures? ‘Cast out the bondwoman and her son, for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the free woman’. So then, brethren, we are not the children of the bondwoman, but of the free: by the freedom wherewith Christ has made us free" (Galatians 4: 21-31).

The unbelieving Jews who cling to the slavery of the Old Law are compared analogously to Ismael, the child of the slave girl; while the faithful Jews (those who accepted Christ), along with the believing Gentiles, are compared to Isaac – the child of the promise.

The Israel of God

Israel, during the Old Testament, prefigured the Catholic Church in the New Testament. The Jewish religion, which was the true religion at the time of Christ, ceased to be the true religion when its hierarchy rejected Christ. On this point, Msgr. Fenton wrote:

“The rejection of this message constituted an abandonment of the Faith itself. By manifesting this rejection of the Faith, the Jewish religious unit fell from its position as the company of the chosen people. It was no longer God’s ecclesia [Church], His supernatural kingdom on earth.”

The book of Romans explains that the unbelieving Jews have been cut off from the house of Israel, and the believing Gentiles grafted in (11:17-21) – “That the Gentiles should be fellow heirs, and of the same body, and co-partners of his Promise in Christ Jesus” (Eph. 3:6). After the death and resurrection of Christ and the promulgation of the Gospel, true spiritual Israel consists of both Jews and Gentiles who have true Faith in Christ and are members of His mystical body, as St. Paul teaches:

“Know ye therefore, that they who are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham? And the scriptures, foreseeing that God justifieth the Gentiles by faith, told unto Abraham before: ‘In thee shall all nations be blessed’. Therefore they that are of faith, shall be blessed with faithful Abraham. … Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the Law… That the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Christ Jesus: that we may receive the Promise of the Spirit by faith… There is neither Jew nor Greek… For you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you be Christ’s, then are you heirs according to the Promise” (Galatians 3).
Today, the believing Jews and the believing Gentiles together embody, what St. Paul calls, “the Israel of God” (Galatians 6:16).

Diabolical Disorientation

This brings us to our last point. There is, today, what can only be described as a diabolical form of anti-Semitism being promoted by high ranking prelates in Rome, which is masked under the cloak of opposing anti-Semitism.

Due to a heretical “interpretation” of Vatican II (which conflicts with 2000 years of Catholic teaching), and because Vatican II failed to restate the central truth that the Old Covenant is superceded by the New, many misguided prelates are doing all they can to stifle any missionary efforts to convert the unbelieving Jews to Christ, thereby hindering them from becoming heirs according to the Promise and partakers of eternal life. These same men are going further still by claiming that the Jews can be saved by the Mosaic Covenant, which, as we have seen, is not only null and void, but constitutes a mortal sin when practiced. Not to mention the fact that the sacrificial rites of the Mosaic Law, by which the Jews had their sins forgiven, have not been offered since 70AD when the Romans destroyed the Jewish Temple.

While we cannot judge the intentions or motives of these churchmen, there is no question that their words and actions toward the Jews constitute, in their effect, the worst form of anti-Semitism, since they serve as a positive obstacle to the Jews accepting Christ as their Messiah. When we consider that all Jews who die outside of the Catholic Church “will go into the eternal fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels” (2), we can grasp the truly diabolical nature of this form of anti-Semitism.
Cardinal Lombardi recently said “Anti-Semitism in all its forms is a non-Christian act and the Catholic Church must fight this phenomenon with all her strength”.

Therefore, let us do our part to oppose these misguided churchmen who claim that the Old Covenant “was never revoked by God”, and who do all they can to stifle missionary activity targeting the Jews for conversion thereby hindering them from inheriting eternal life; for as our Lord told the unbelieving Jews of His day: “If you believe not that I am He, you shall die in your sins” (John 8:24).

We can begin now to oppose this form of anti-Semitism by including, as an intention in our daily Rosary, the conversion of the unbelieving Jews. May this small act of true charity on our part serve to counter the effects of the diabolical disorientation that has come over these misguided churchmen.

Let us end with the prayer of Pope Pius XI for the conversion of the Jews: “Turn Thine eyes of mercy towards the children of that race, once Thy chosen people: of old they called down upon themselves the Blood of the Savior; may it now descend upon them a laver of redemption and of life”. Amen

Footnote:

1. S.T. I-II, Q 106
2. [The Most Holy Roman Church] “firmly believes, professes and preaches that none of those existing outside the Catholic Church, not only pagans, but also Jews, heretics, and schismatics can ever be partakers of eternal life, but that they are to go into the eternal fire ‘which was prepared for the devil and his angels,’ (Mt. 25:41) unless before death they are joined with Her” (Council of Florence, Cantate Domini).