Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in The Fatima Crusader magazine, Issue 74, Summer 2003. It is being reprinted (slightly edited) here and on subsequent days as a series of three much shorter articles.
As is shown by the book, The Devil’s Final Battle, we are living today in the midst of the Great Apostasy which was foretold in Sacred Scripture. This apostasy, Cardinal Ciappi tells us, begins at the top of the Church. Cardinal Oddi tells us that in the Third Secret Our Lady is warning us against apostasy.
One of the first and greatest bulwarks and defenses against apostasy is to have a firm grasp of and adherence to the dogmatic definitions of the Catholic Faith. It is precisely the dogma of the Faith that Our Lady speaks explicitly about in the beginning of the Third Secret when She says: “In Portugal, the dogma of the Faith will always be preserved etc.” The “etc.” written down by Sister Lucia herself, clearly indicates that Our Lady said more.
Every Fatima scholar agrees that Our Lady went on to say that in other parts of the world, the dogma of the Faith will be attacked and not preserved as it should, it may even be lost altogether. We must not allow ourselves to be victims of this creeping apostasy all around us. We must save our souls and save our dogmatic truths.
In our time many Catholics – priests, bishops and Cardinals, as well as lay persons – are losing the sense of dogma. They are forgetting that if they do not safeguard their faith sufficiently, so that they culpably deny or even doubt one dogma – a doctrine of the Catholic Faith that has been infallibly taught by Jesus Christ through His Catholic Church – then they commit a mortal sin. If they do not repent of this sin and make a worthy confession (or an act of Perfect Contrition on their deathbed) then they shall go to hell for all eternity. Saint Thomas Aquinas teaches that sins against Faith are among the greatest of sins.
Some people are losing the sense of dogma because they do not sufficiently guard their minds against false ideas, teachings and doctrines which seek to supplant or to suppress or to undermine their Catholic faith. Others, by never trying to understand or not seeking to know what the real teachings of Jesus Christ and His Catholic Church are, do not even recognize that they have bought into the lies of the age which exclude them from accepting the teaching of the Gospel in one or many points.
We are, in fact, living through the age of Apostasy: the period of time foretold in Sacred Scripture by Jesus Christ Himself, as well as by St. Paul. The sin of heresy constitutes denying one or more dogmas of the Faith, and this is a mortal sin that sends souls to hell. Yet, apostasy is much worse. The sin of apostasy is the rejecting of all (or much of) the Gospel. And this age of Apostasy is upon us.
Some fall into apostasy through ignorance, never knowing even the fundamentals of the Gospel. Others fall into it because they have learned the fundamentals and held to them for only a while. These are like the seed [in the Gospel parable] that did not fall on good ground; they do not take precautions to safeguard their faith against false doctrines, and these false doctrines choke their faith so that they fall away. Others fall away because they have followed the bad example of blind priests, bishops and Cardinals who teach false doctrine. These false teachers who profess heretical doctrines – and there is no shortage of them in the Church today – scandalize the souls entrusted to them into heresy and apostasy.
Sister Lucia, in the early 1970s, called them “blind guides”. It is no wonder that she has been silenced.
We must recover the sense of dogmatic Truth. And if a priest, bishop, Cardinal or even a pope were to say something or do something which explicitly or implicitly teaches some heretical doctrine, we must abhor and resist it. We must defend our own soul, and to the extent we can, we must defend the souls of others by resisting the heretical statements from no matter what quarter. Even if it were the Pope to say such things.
Most Catholics are unaware that there have been instances in Church history when a pope either taught heresy or failed in his duty to suppress heresy. And if it happened before, it can happen again.[1]
For example, Pope Nicholas I said that Baptism was valid whether administered in the name of the Three Persons of the Most Holy Trinity or in the name of Christ only. In this Pope Nicholas was mistaken. Baptism in the name of Christ only is not valid.[2]
Pope Honorius, in order to justify a compromise with heretics, said in 634: “We must be careful not to rekindle ancient quarrels.” On this argument, the Pope allowed error to spread freely, with the result that truth and orthodoxy were effectively banished. St. Sophronius of Jerusalem, almost alone, stood up to Honorius and accused him of heresy. Eventually the Pope repented, but died without repairing the immeasurable harm he did to the Church due to his compromising principle. Thus, the Third Council of Constantinople cast its anathema upon him, and this was confirmed by Pope St. Leo II. (See D.S. 561.)
Pope John XXII said at Avignon, on the Feast of All Saints, 1331, that the soul does not enjoy the Beatific Vision until the resurrection of the body, at the last day. After which, the Pope was rebuked by the theologians from the University of Paris. They rebuked the Pope because they knew that this theory of the Pope was a heresy. It wasn’t until shortly before John XXII died in 1334 that he recanted his error.[3]
Faith Is Paramount
The Deposit of Faith is the foundation of our salvation. It is the foundation of the papacy. It is the foundation of the sacraments. If the Deposit of Faith is not safeguarded, there is nothing in the Church that is safe from attack. This attitude of the primordial importance of safeguarding each and every one of the dogmas of the Faith is not just my opinion. It is the solemn teaching of the Catholic Church. One of the Catholic Creeds which we are all bound to believe starts as follows:
“Whoever wishes to be saved, needs above all to hold the Catholic faith; unless each one preserves this whole and inviolate, he will without a doubt perish in eternity.” (D.S. 75)
This obligation surpasses the law of charity to the poor or to our neighbor – it is before all good works. The obligation to the Faith is more important than the respect or deference owed to Pope, bishops, priests or family and friends. St. Paul said, “But though we, or an angel from Heaven, preach a Gospel to you besides that which we have preached to you, let him be anathema.” (Gal. 1:8) We must not listen to such a preacher who contradicts traditional Catholic teaching.
[Continue reading Part 2.]
END NOTES
[1] To the objection, “The Pope can never teach or promote heresy because he is infallible”, we must answer: The Pope is not infallible in everything but only in certain conditions which are strictly defined and solemnly taught by the Catholic Church, particularly at the First Vatican Council. For more on this subject, see “Mission Infallible” by Jonathan Tuttle in The Fatima Crusader magazine, Issue No. 66, page 23ff.
[2] See John Henry Newman, Certain Difficulties (London, 1876), cited in Michael Davies, Lead Kindly Light: The Life of John Henry Newman (Long Prairie, Minnesota: Neumann Press, 2001), pp. 181-182. See also Dz. 229, Dz. 297A, Dz. 430, Dz. 482.
[3] Catholic Counter Reformation, June 1973. For more, see The Popes, a Concise Biographical History, edited by Eric John, published in 1964. Recently republished by Roman Catholic Books, Harrison, New York. See also Dz. 530; D.S. 1000.