FIRST HERESY 
An abusive extension 
of the indefectibility and infallibility 
of the Church in her head, 
in her pastors and in her people

ARGUMENT

LET us go to the chapter on The transmission of Divine Revelation and more specifically to the chapter on The interpretation of the heritage of the faith. This has always been an important question. But it is particularly so in our times, and especially if the modernism of today, “ the sewer wherein every heresy collects ” (St. Pius X), is to be identified with the forced march of the apostasy predicted by St. Paul in his First Letter to Timothy: “ The Spirit has explicitly said that during the last times there will be some who will desert the faith and choose to listen to deceitful spirits and doctrines that come from the devils; and the cause of this is the lies told by hypocrites whose consciences are branded as though with a red-hot iron. ” (1 Tim 4.1-2; cf. 2 Th 2.3-12; 2 Tim 3.1-5; 4.3-4; Second Letter of St. Peter 3.3; cf. the warning of Jesus Himself, Mt 24.4-13).

The heritage of the faith entrusted to the whole of the Church

84. The “ sacred heritage ” of the faith (depositum fidei) contained in Sacred Tradition and in Holy Scripture was entrusted by the apostles to the whole of the Church. “ By adhering to it, the entire holy people, united to its pastors, remain constantly faithful to the teaching of the apostles, to the brotherly communion, to the breaking of bread and the prayers, so that, in maintaining, practising and confessing the faith that has been handed on, a singular unity of spirit is established between the pastors and the faithful. ”

One can dream of an inaccessible ideal, but it is unhealthy. The “ whole of the Church ” is a woolly, democratic and unanimist concept. And the idyllic memory of the early community of Jerusalem (Acts of the Apostles 2.42; 4.32-35; 5.12-16) cannot pass without abuse as a definition of the Church of the centuries, still less of “ the civilisation of love ” proclaimed by Paul VI for the happy days following the Council, and which did not come.

Such a concept of the totality of the Church is flattering for the people, reassuring for the mediocre and the bad, but it may quite easily turn out to enslave and persecute the witnesses of the true faith and of the true Cross in these pharisaical times.

The Magisterium of the Church

85. “ Responsibility for the authentic interpretation of the Word of God, whether written or handed on, was entrusted exclusively to the living Magisterium of the Church, whose authority is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ ”, that is to say, to the bishops in communion with the successor of Peter, the Bishop of Rome.

86. “ Yet, this Magisterium is not above the word of God, but is its servant. It teaches only what was handed on to it, since by God’s mandate and with the help of the Holy Spirit, it hears this Word with love, guards it with dedication and expounds it faithfully. Everything that it proposes for belief as being revealed by God is drawn from this single deposit of faith. ”

Once again it is a dream of what should be ! It paints an ideal of wisdom, fidelity and virtues pushed as far as holiness and heroism. It is, in fact, the portrait of St. Pius X, that model of pontiffs ! It is the affirmation of a duty to be fulfilled, if you like, but not the affirmation of an effective and continuous perfection, and still less a present perfection, seeing that the CCC does not once quote this saint, this doctor, this beacon of the Church for our 20th century !

Besides, he himself would not have recognised himself in it, for this presumption of universal infallibility, compounded by a general indefectibility on the part of the episcopal body, is so unrealistic as to appear mendacious. It denotes a dangerous pride among the pastors, a pride which manages to pass itself off by flattering the pride of their people, granting them an infallibility and impeccability equal and complementary to that which they attribute to themselves by such novel absurdities as the following:

The supernatural sense of faith

87. Mindful of Christ’s words to his apostles: “ He who hears you, hears me ” (Lk 10.16), the faithful receive with docility the teachings and directives given to them in different forms by their pastors.

That is a complete untruth. The optative mood or the imperative perhaps needs to replace this demagogic indicative, the result of which is before our eyes: universal anarchy beneath the delighted gaze of an impotent hierarchy.

91. The whole body of the faithful share in the understanding and the handing on of the revealed truth. They have received the anointing of the Holy Spirit, who instructs them and guides them into all truth.

Yet another counter-truth, which, if taken seriously, will lead the faithful to seek this “ anointing of the Holy Spirit ” in some Protestant, Jewish or Hindu sect. We shall return to this heresy in its own place later. It is number six of the twelve.

92. The whole body of the faithful cannot be mistaken in the faith, and they manifest this quality through the supernatural sense of the faith, which is that of the people as a whole when, “ from the bishops to the last of the lay faithful ”, they manifest a universal consent to truths relating to faith and morals. ”

From exaggeration to exaggeration, where will it end, this absurd Catechism ? The hundreds of millions of the faithful of today’s Church cannot be mistaken ? It is grotesque and wholly imaginary. It is a caricature – which will collapse at the first impact of the proceedings we are instituting – of the very real Catholic infallibility of the Church, which is constituted as a hierarchy, a pyramid and a monarchy, and has the promise of Jesus that the gates of hell will never prevail against her ! But as for the “ universal consent ” of this licentious and decerebrated “ people as a whole ”, declared by Vatican II to be the “ People of God ”, that is pure fantasy.

93. “ Thanks in effect to this sense of faith which is aroused and sustained by the Spirit of truth, and under the direction of the sacred Magisterium, the People of God unfailingly adhere to the faith once and for all delivered to the saints. They penetrate it ever more deeply by correctly interpreting it and they put it into ever more perfect practice in their lives. ”

We have not as yet attained the summits of this extravagance. But we are not surprised at this further degree of madness which, after Maurice Pujo, we shall call “ theodemocracy ”. It is the paranoid delusion of the likes of Robespierre, Lenin, and Hitler, not to mention and incriminate Leo XIII and Pius XI ! It is the radicalisation of unanimism that Vatican II dreamed about. And it has become a gnosis at the same time as a euphoric and hallucinogenic drug: they imagine the reality that stares them in the face to be quite other than in fact it is and they shape it to please our desires.

And so, in the very prologue of this Catechism we are warned that everything it invents will have to be accepted as the infallible word of the Church’s Magisterium and embraced by the totality of an indefectible people of gods. It is a conscious and deliberate act of madness. Let us read the rest:

99. Because of their supernatural sense of faith, the People of God as a whole never cease to welcome the gift of Divine Revelation, to penetrate it more deeply and to live it more fully.

100. Responsibility for authentically interpreting the Word of God has been entrusted solely to the Magisterium of the Church, to the Pope and to the bishops in communion with him.

In the image of Robespierre, Napoleon, Stalin, and a few other “ fascists ”, there we have a picture of modem ecclesiastical totalitarianism: the people never cease to welcome, in the ambience of the one unanimous party, every impulse from the State executives who are entirely devoted to the Führer, to the Duce, or to the Pope who “ is always right ! ”

That is plainly not the reality, neither of yesterday nor of today. But it is the gnosis of the Pope and of the college of bishops, adopted enthusiastically by the totality of the Christian people. Most Holy Father, it is impossible ! We are not part of this, and never will be, neither we nor You !

ANATHEMA TO THIS UNANIMISM OF PRIDE AND THIS WILL FOR POWER !
THERE IS NO CHARISMATIC INDEFECTIBILITY OR INFALLIBILITY, BUT ONLY THE LIMITED INFALLIBILITY OF THE CATHOLIC MAGISTERIUM

It is through the fallibility of human minds and the defectibility of human hearts that all the great crises to have shaken the Church from century to century can be the most simply explained. And this is so that none may glorify himself before the Lord for his personal infallibility and impeccability ! Again, it is this same unfathomable and immeasurable human fragility that explains the increasing anarchy into which is decomposing this fabled people of God, theodemocratic and totalitarian. If is for this people, for us men today, that Jesus uttered his complaint when referring to the apostasy of the latter times: “ But when the Son of man comes, will He find any faith on earth ? ” (Lk 18.8; cf. CCC 675 !)

How then is it possible to parade such a claim to an unlimited, perpetual infallibility and indefectibility for the Pope, the bishops and the whole people of God when, since 1960, everybody has known, or should have known, the Secret of Fatima, announcing the general apostasy of the Church, in her Roman Head and in almost all her members, in their abandonment of the true faith and their sin against the Holy Ghost, as a punishment for their contempt and rejection of Our Lady’s requests formulated in the name of her Son Jesus Christ our God ?

Thus, with no modesty or fidelity, this new Catechism proclaims itself to be the teaching of the present living Authority concerning the mysteries of our faith, presented in new words and adapted to our times and to modem culture. In fact, it is the other way round. Beneath the classical Christian words and language, it is another religion that is being taught, a dark humanist gnosis, where the supernatural is naturalised and the natural supernaturalised in a double contortion: our Christian mysteries are judaised, relativised, and emptied of their divine singularity, whilst brutal instincts and worldly, atheist thinking, everywhere triumphant, are divinised !

It is understandable that such a project for harmonising God and Mammon should require that its inventors and pioneers begin by assuming an absolute, unquestionable, universal and perpetual authority, transcending the former classical rules and definitions concerning the exercise of the Catholic Magisterium. Thus they and their so-called people of God avail themselves of the direct illumination of the great Inspirer of this gnosis, which they call the Spirit.

To me it seems urgent and indispensable to oppose this by dogmatic sentences and an anathema:

DOGMATIC SENTENCES

I. No man, nor assembly – be they Pope, Council, college of bishops or priests, group of theologians or body of lay people, nor even an allegedly universal Church – may impose their doctrinal or moral opinions as though invested with some sort of infallibility, outside of the perfectly defined boundaries of the solemn or ordinary Magisterium.

II. Every member of the Catholic faithful has the right, if not the duty, to stand up against any new teaching, even though emanating from the “ authentic ” magisterium of the Pope and the bishops, and to appeal from this imprecisely bounded magisterium to the decisions of the infallible Magisterium of these same legitimate authorities.

It is necessary to specify that the authority of the ordinary Magisterium can only be claimed when it is used to teach what the Church has always believed, at all times and in all places. Novelty is absolutely excluded from what is called the “ ordinary magisterium ”. If novelty is proposed as “ authentic ”, it is only through a regrettable abuse of trust.

III. It is through an abuse of language or even of intention that in numerous texts the postconciliar Magisterium declares, without any room for doubt or discussion, that the Magisterium itself and the people of God constantly exercise the virtue of their Catholic faith, the former to teach doctrine and the latter to accept and consent to it, without the possibility of them either being deceived or intending to deceive.

IV. A Council, a Pope even, and any episcopal or sacerdotal assembly, outside of the exercise of their official Magisterium in its canonical forms, can be materially and even formally heretical, schismatic or scandalous, for they are not gods but fallible and defectible beings like other men.

V. Among the attributes of the Catholic Magisterium is the power and the duty to exercise discernment on revelations that are improperly termed “ private ”. But having recognised them as “ authentic ”, in both their supernatural facts and in their error-free doctrine, the Magisterium is not at liberty to place them below its own authority and pastoral power in order to ignore them or fight against them. Its office is to study their truth and reality and not to decide whether or not they are opportune or in the interests of the Church. Whatever is from Heaven imposes itself on all.

Of such a nature are the divine gifts recognised by the preconciliar Church: the cult of the Holy Shroud of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and especially the apparitions and requests of Our Lady of Fatima. These constitute world events, providential aid for the Church, and inner joy for souls of predestination.

ANATHEMA

If anyone says that the Pope, the Council or the Christian people cannot be deceived or cannot deceive, but that they profess the divine truth and discharge the role of the teaching Magisterium or their prophetic charisms in a way that is indefectible, such that they can never be subject to any canonical complaint or accusation in the Church, let him be anathema.