These are the words of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre to the then Cardinal Ratzinger at a meeting in July of 1987. They are only part of the discussion over the role of the State vis-a-vis the Church and reflect the Archbishop's wise discernment of Cardinal Ratzinger's total miscomprehension of the Social Kingship of Our Lord Jesus Christ. This episode is mentioned because recently our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI spoke in Germany regarding his views of the nature of the Church, and in it we can see another side to this divorce between the temporal and spiritual orders so much a part of the mind of Joseph Ratzinger. They are words which are dangerous, especially given the current anti-Christian bias of western politics. Like many expressions of Liberalism, while they contain a grain of truth, there is utter confusion as to where this grain of truth fits into the general picture. The result, as in this case, is disaster. Let us take a look at the ideas recently expressed by the Pope at the Concert Hall in Freiburg.
There is not room to analyze the complete speech. We may summarize the first part by saying that the Pope answers the charges that the Church needs to change if it is to hold on to its members, and obviously the context is the growing disillusion in Germany. Now the Pope says that there is always need for change, but he does not embrace the radicalism looked for by the ultra-modernists. He quotes Mother Teresa of Calcutta by saying that change begins with oneself, and then points out that all of us are the Church, not just the hierarchy. Now it is true that all, both clergy and laity, are members of the Church, but it is not quite true that both have equal responsibility in changing the Church, nor that change that involves reform should not come from the rulers. However, He then mentions Pope Paul VI and his encyclical "Ecclesiam Suam" (the very one that introduced the nefarious idea of dialogue):
"If the Church, in Pope Paul VI’s words, is now struggling “to model itself on Christ’s ideal”, this “can only result in its acting and thinking quite differently from the world around it, which it is nevertheless striving to influence” (Ecclesiam Suam, 58). In order to accomplish her mission, she will constantly set herself apart from her surroundings, she needs in a certain sense to become unworldly or 'desecularized'."
Now this sounds very pious, and it is certainly true that the Church should not think in a worldly manner, that is, in a matter that demonstrates a naturalist spirit that identifies itself with the pursuit of the world, the flesh, and the devil. The problem arises when it comes to understanding separation from the world. This is the same pontiff that destroyed the transcendent nature of the Roman Liturgy, who assured mankind that the Church more than any other embodied the honor due to man. It is, of course, possible that Paul VI was acting like a modern Caiaphas, prophesying by means of his office. However, it is also possible, and indeed, likely, that the pope had something else in mind. His was the pontificate that abhorred the triumphalist Church, that gave his tiara to the United Nations. This separation from the world, then, signifies more than a supernatural vision. Pope Benedict now enters more deeply into what he means.
Firstly, he reminds us of the purpose of the Incarnation of Christ, which is to shape our understanding of the Church's mission. He speaks of a theme much written of by the fathers, that is the "admirabile commercium", the "admirable exchange" by which Christ and man, as partners each give to the other:
"The Christ event includes the inconceivable fact of what the Church Fathers call a commercium, an exchange between God and man, in which the two parties – albeit in quite different ways – both give and take, bestow and receive. The Christian faith recognizes that God has given man a freedom in which he can truly be a partner to God, and can enter into exchange with him. At the same time it is clear to man that this exchange is only possible thanks to God’s magnanimity in accepting the beggar’s poverty as wealth, so as to make the divine gift acceptable, given that man has nothing of comparable worth to offer in return."
Again we see a traditional theme, but with a difference. Why does God become man? It is, of course so that man can be restored to the supernatural order, the life of sanctifying grace, and this is to be accomplished by means of the supreme act of atonement- the Cross. This redemptive act of Christ, this perfect act by which the justice of God is payed by the Blood of Christ is ignored. It is a question of the "I" and "Thou" of Personalism, not the restoration to the supernatural order of man by a God offended by sin. This is a constant lacuna in the works of the pope, and one that is highly problematic. But this takes us away from the Church-State problem. This exchange begun by the Incarnation is carried on by the Church:
"The Church must always open up afresh to the cares of the world and give herself over to them, in order to make present and continue the holy exchange that began with the Incarnation."
The Church, then, cares for the world and its concerns, and works to build unity with God. But the Pope contrasts this with another vision of the Church seen in history:
"In the concrete history of the Church, however, a contrary tendency is also manifested, namely that the Church becomes settled in this world, she becomes self-sufficient and adapts herself to the standards of the world. She gives greater weight to organization and institutionalization than to her vocation to openness."
It is the Church as an institution that becomes the problem. It is too settled in the world, and too attached to the world's standards. The Church's vocation is "openness" a term which is wildly subjective and vague. But it allows us into the mind of the Pope, who like every liberal is uncomfortable with "structures". The problem does not end here. How is the Church to recover her openness, her detachment from the world?
"Secularizing trends – whether by expropriation of Church goods, or elimination of privileges or the like – have always meant a profound liberation of the Church from forms of worldliness, for in the process she has set aside her worldly wealth and has once again completely embraced her worldly poverty. In this the Church has shared the destiny of the tribe of Levi, which according to the Old Testament account was the only tribe in Israel with no ancestral land of its own, taking as its portion only God himself, his word and his signs. At those moments in history, the Church shared with that tribe the demands of a poverty that was open to the world, in order to be released from her material ties: and in this way her missionary activity regained credibility."
Here we have arrived at the heart of Benedictine liberalism and the apostasy of modern Rome. It reflects a totally un-Catholic way of perceiving the world, much in keeping with Freemasonry and the enemies of the Church, though the pope professes to allow the Church to be more spiritual. Liberation from this institutional spirit comes by means of the State stealing the Church's possessions. This nonsense could hardly have come from the pen of a Saint Pius X, who condemned explicitly this theft by the governments of France and Portugal! The Church must be poor, detached from the world. Certainly there should be a spirit of detachment in every Catholic, and the Church must not lose her supernatural vision of things, but it is not to be forgotten that the Church is not a spirit. She is visible, and to accomplish her mission, she has the right to possess that which is necessary. One sees here a fleeting vision of the Franciscan Spirituals or Wycliffe, with their vision of a disincarnate Church. Yet these visions were heretical. Next, the Pope makes an astounding error in his Scriptural analysis of the Old Testament. The Church is compared to the levitical cities within Israel. Now as everyone should know, the Church is not one tribe of Israel symbolically, but Israel itself. The New Testament refers to the Church as the "Israel of God". (Galatians 6:16) The clergy are to imitate the levites in having the Lord as their portion, as the ceremony of the tonsure reminds us, but that refers to the personal life of the cleric, not to the Church herself. He then tells us that the Church needs to be "released from her material ties" a phrase more in keeping with Protestant than Catholic theology. He does not let us linger in any doubt as to what he means by this comparison. He continues:
"History has shown that, when the Church becomes less worldly, her missionary witness shines more brightly. Once liberated from her material and political burdens, the Church can reach out more effectively and in a truly Christian way to the whole world, she can be truly open to the world."
For the Church to be more effective, it must be "liberated" from the material and political. Where is Christendom in all of this? Where is the duty of the Church to build a Catholic civilization and Catholic States? That was the Church of the past. We are in the age of King Lear. The Church must recover her true mission in this world, and the Pope expresses it nature forthwith:
Saint Augustine would be astounded to see his authority so misused. Is this not the Saint Augustine who saw the validity of the Roman pressure on the Donatists to return to the Church, by means of prosecution by the State? Supposedly the Church does not wish to win men "for an institution with its own claims to power". Perhaps the Pope has forgotten that for men to be saved, it must win men to conversion to the Roman and Apostolic Faith, and thus to the Catholic Church. To seek to make men members of this visible institution is not only not blameworthy, but necessary for the salvation of souls. Where then does the Church lead man if not into the True Fold? "To themselves" of course. And to do that, one leads them to God. There is truth in saying that by reconciling to God one is able to start becoming the man that God wants one to be. But the Divine order and human order are not the same in themselves. Man is not God by nature, and sanctifying grace is an accidental perfection given to the soul, to use the terminology of the schoolmen, not a substantial identification with the Godhead! This grace is by no means a natural perfection of man to which he returns! What then is the Church to do practically, according to the Ratingerian vision?
"All the more, then, is it time once again for the Church resolutely to set aside her worldliness. That does not mean withdrawing from the world. A Church relieved of the burden of worldliness is in a position, not least through her charitable activities, to mediate the life-giving strength of the Christian faith to those in need, to sufferers and to their carers."
The Church becomes the channel of love to the world expressed in the acts of mercy. There is no mention of the Pope that we are practice contempt of the world in our personal lives, that is, living a life of mortification by which Heaven becomes the true end of the Christian life, but rather unworldliness is a kind of detachment of the Church from forms of "Triumphalism" and the Social Kingship of Jesus Christ. This is not the Christianity in which the apostles are sent not only to nations but to kings as it mentions in the Acts of the Apostles. This is not the religion that built Christendom, that taught the rights of God over the social order, the Church of "Quas Primas" in which Christ is said to rule by right over all nations, Catholic or not. This is the religion of apostasy in the name of a pseudo-spritualism in which Christ is stripped again of His rights as He was during His Passion. And this by the hands of a Pope. Kyrie Eleison.
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