Editor’s Note: The most recent issue of The Fatima Crusader, titled “Exposed: The Errors of the 2023 Synod,” contains articles from eight good and faithful priests on the eight principal errors proposed by the Synod. One of those articles, “One Religion or Many?” by Father Terry Brennan, addresses the problem of Religious Indifferentism. The modern-day face of this heresy goes by the name of ‘Ecumenism.’ This article provides additional material in support of Father Brennan’s article.
A man who was a life-long Protestant once asked The Fatima Center in what ways the Catholic Church’s teachings had changed during the past 100+ years since the time of the Fatima apparitions. He had come across the stirring 1931 “prophecy” of Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli (the future Pope Pius XII):
“I am worried by the Blessed Virgin’s messages to Lucy of Fatima. This persistence of Mary about the dangers which menace the Church is a divine warning against the suicide of altering the Faith, in Her liturgy, Her theology and Her soul … A day will come when the civilized world will deny its God, when the Church will doubt as Peter doubted. She will be tempted to believe that man has become God.”
It was interesting to me that a Protestant would be so genuinely concerned about the Catholic Church’s “suicide” as it has unfolded during our lifetimes. It would not surprise me at all to learn that he is a Catholic today. What resonated very clearly to him at the time, and what Pius XII’s words express so poignantly, is that in fact, there can be no such changes. The teachings of Christianity must always be the teachings of Christ Himself. Otherwise, there would be no basis to the claim of being Christian.
Our Lady of Fatima promised that in Portugal, the dogma of the Faith would always be preserved. This in itself is a most dire warning for the rest of the world. A warning that the Faith will be lost.
What does it mean to lose the Faith? Apostasy may be the first thing that comes to mind, particularly since it is reliably known (through the testimony of Cardinal Luigi Ciappi) that the Third Secret of Fatima warns explicitly about great numbers of the faithful being led into apostasy by churchmen at the highest levels of the hierarchy.
But apostasy is the rejection of the entire body of Christian teachings. What would be the effect of abandoning just one dogma of Faith, such as the defined truth that Outside of the Church There Is No Salvation? Saint Thomas answers very concisely that in the obstinate rejection of any single dogmatic teaching, the Faith is already lost in its entirety:
“[H]e who adheres to the teaching of the Church, as to an infallible rule, assents to whatever the Church teaches; otherwise, if, of the things taught by the Church, he holds what he chooses to hold, and rejects what he chooses to reject, he no longer adheres to the teaching of the Church as to an infallible rule, but to his own will. Hence it is evident that a heretic who obstinately disbelieves one article of faith, is not prepared to follow the teaching of the Church in all things… Therefore it is clear that such a heretic with regard to one article has no faith in the other articles, but only a kind of opinion in accordance with his own will.” (S.T., II-II Q. 5, a. 3)
False Doctrines as a “New Theology”
Strictly speaking, then, we must insist that the Church’s doctrines have not been altered in any way since the day of its founding. In recent decades, however, the Church’s authoritative public representatives, on the whole, have not been faithful to their duty of believing and teaching those truths. The effect, of course, has been catastrophic. At the present time, it is not uncommon to find practicing “Catholics” who find the Church’s traditional liturgy repugnant, who do not know the Hail Mary, and who do not believe that Jesus Christ is present in the Blessed Sacrament, or even that Jesus Christ is God Incarnate. We must pray with great fervor for Our Lady to deliver us from this debacle. In the meantime, it is of the greatest importance to understand whence the poisoned waters have been flowing for the past sixty years.
An array of tenets of a “New Theology” was proposed at the Second Vatican Council, all quite contrary to Catholic Faith, especially regarding religious liberty, collegiality, and ecumenism (being clear infiltrations of the revolutionary Freemasonic platforms of “liberty, equality, and fraternity”).
To continue with the example named above (regarding the necessity of belonging to the Catholic Church for salvation), we find a host of deadly errors subtly insinuated in the Council’s document on the Church, Lumen Gentium. Through diabolically ambiguous language, the true Faith is put in question, leaving poorly informed Catholics vulnerable to deadly errors – particularly, that Our Lord’s true Church on earth is not exclusively identified with the Catholic Church, but rather is present also, in all its essential elements, in non-Catholic sects; that these sects are used by the Spirit of Christ as means of salvation, having an apostolic mission of their own; and that these sects share with the Catholic Church the same Christian faith, and an at least imperfect communion. All of these false notions, implicitly admitted by Lumen Gentium’s loose terminology, would be given explicit expression after the Council.
Rediscovering the True Faith
Let us make a brief summary of the Church’s true view of Ecumenism.
As the Catechism of the Council of Trent teaches (Part I, Article 9), all false religions come from the father of lies. Inter-faith prayer gatherings are a relatively new phenomenon, but in essence they amount to nothing less than false worship, forbidden by the First Commandment. In this broader context, and from the time of the Apostles, the voice of the Church has been clear:
“Be ye not partakers with them. For ye were heretofore darkness, but now light in the Lord; walk ye as the children of the light, …and have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness.” (Eph. 5:6)
“Bear not the yoke together with unbelievers; for what participation hath justice with injustice? Or what fellowship hath light with darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial? Or what part hath the faithful with the unbelievers?” (2 Cor 6:14-15)
We have also this moving injunction of Pope Paul IV to the Catholics in England, written at a time when they were suffering the most severe persecutions unless they agreed to go from time to time to the public churches:
“Great has been the grief of our mind for the tribulations and calamities you have constantly undergone for your adherence to the Catholic faith; and as we understand that these trials are become more severe at present, our affliction is increased exceedingly. For we are informed that you are compelled, under the most grievous penalties, to go to the churches of heretics, to frequent their meetings, and be present at their sermons. Indeed we are fully persuaded that you who, with so much fortitude and constancy, have hitherto undergone almost infinite miseries ‘that ye might walk without stain in the law of the Lord,’ will never consent to be defiled by communicating with those who have forsaken the Divine law. Nevertheless, urged by the zeal of our pastoral duty, and from paternal solicitude with which we daily labor for the salvation of your souls, we are forced to admonish and conjure you, that on no account you go to the churches of heretics, or hear their sermons, or join in their rites, lest you incur the wrath of God; for it is not lawful for you to do such things, without dishonoring God, and hurting your own souls.”
At any time and under any circumstances, any participation whatsoever in inter-faith endeavors would be the matter of a grave sin. Pope Pius XI condemned the modern Ecumenical Movement from its very beginning in the early 1900s, calling it a threat to “the foundations of the Catholic faith.” He wrote in his encyclical Mortalium Animos:
“There is but one way in which the unity of Christians may be fostered, and that is by furthering the return to the one true Church of Christ of those who are separated from it. … While you may hear many non-Catholics loudly preaching brotherly communion in Jesus Christ, yet not one will you find to whom it ever occurs with devout submission to obey the Vicar of Christ in his capacity of teacher or ruler. Meanwhile, they assert their readiness to treat with the Church of Rome, but on equal terms, as an equal with an equal. … This being so, it is clear that the Apostolic See can by no means take part in these assemblies, nor is it in any way lawful for Catholics to give such enterprises their encouragement or support. If they did so, they would be giving countenance to a false Christianity quite alien to the one Church of Christ.”
Bishop George Hay of Scotland was already warning Catholics against the errors of ecumenism in the late 19th Century, before they had given shape to the Protestant movement of that name:
“[A]ll communication in matters of religion with those separated from the Church of Christ … is a very great crime in the sight of God, and strictly forbidden by His holy law, as being intrinsically evil in its own nature, …because such communication implies an approbation of their false doctrine…. [W]e are obliged to love the persons of those who are engaged in false religions, to wish them well, and to do them good; but … we are expressly forbidden all communication in their religion – that is, in their false tenets and worship. [This would include] going to their places of worship, hearing their sermons, joining in their prayers, …partaking of their sacraments …or other divine office whatsoever….”
Father Francis Connell, C.Ss.R., author of Outlines of Moral Theology, is no great authority in the Church, but he explains the Catholic teaching very succinctly and in a way that modern ears can readily understand:
“[A] Catholic would do something gravely wrong if he played the organ, sang, etc., at a public non-Catholic service, even though he were in extreme need of material support or even if he were commanded to take part by the officials of army or navy…, [or likewise if he were to] join in the prayers or hymns at a non-Catholic public service…, even when there is nothing erroneous expressed in these hymns or prayers…. [I]t is wrong to take part actively in such a service…because…the only religious body authorized by Christ to conduct public services is His one true Church.”
Distinguishing Black from White
Opposed to this authentic Catholic teaching, however, we find in the Second Vatican Council’s Decree on Ecumenism (also called Unitatis Redintegratio) this scandalous “exhortation” which flies straight in the face of Pope Pius XI’s condemnation:
- 4. The Sacred Council exhorts all the Catholic faithful to recognize the signs of the times and to take an active and intelligent part in the work of ecumenism.
- 8. [D]uring ecumenical gatherings, it is allowable, indeed desirable that Catholics should join in prayer with their separated brethren.
- 15. [S]ome worship in common (communicatio in sacris) … is not only possible but to be encouraged.
- 9, 18. It is the Council’s urgent desire that … every effort should be made toward the gradual realization of this unity, especially by prayer, and by fraternal dialogue … where each can deal with the other on an equal footing….
Importance of Maintaining Clarity about the Faith
It has been to our great loss (and danger) that Catholic catechesis has been so neglected in recent years. Had more Catholics been properly instructed and on their guard, they might have recognized these novel teachings of the Council for what they are – condemned errors.
As Catholics, we are bound to the authentic Catholic rule of faith, particularly as defined by the Church’s Extraordinary Magisterium – a charism which the Pope and bishops at the Second Vatican Council expressly declined to exercise. Where we find the documents of that Council departing from the Church’s constant prior teaching (such as occurs regarding Ecumenism), we must hold fast to the traditional Faith.