SECOND HERESY 
Error concerning the universal and absolute predestination of men to grace, 
to the remission of sins and to life eternal

ARGUMENT

HERE, in the first of the 2265 sections of this Catechism, is the kerygma of the postconciliar Church: its Good News to the world:

The life of man - to know and love God

1. God, infinitely Perfect and Happy in Himself, in a plan of pure goodness, has freely created man to make him share in His own blessed life. That is why, at all times and in all places, God draws close to man. He calls him, helps him to seek Him, to know Him and to love Him with all his strength. He summons all men, whom sin has dispersed, into the unity of His family, the Church. To do this, He sent his Son as Redeemer and Saviour when the fullness of time had come. In Him and through Him, He calls men to become, in the Holy Spirit, His adopted children, and therefore the heirs of His blessed life.

From the very first words, it seems to me that some lethal poison has been mixed with the exquisite Catholic nectar, some heretical gnosis, as old as the world.

It has indeed ! The man it speaks of at the outset might be Adam, Adam and Eve, and all their descendants. What it goes on to say about God’s concern for this man might still apply to the golden age of this earthly Paradise. But how can one believe in God’s supposed loving concern for all men at all times and in all places, calling and summoning them to enter into the unity of a Church that does not yet exist and of which, for the most part, they know nothing... thus to become, from all time, His adopted children and the heirs of His blessed life ?

Between the short duration of Paradise, before the Fall, and the time of the Church with its long duration of slow and uncertain growth, what an immense gap, what a time of ignorance and crime when God had not yet spoken, at least not to the pagan nations ! Well, here we have to believe in God’s equal concern at all times and among all peoples, adopting all men and making them share in all His blessings.

– Is it a fantasy ? We shall be shown that it is not. It is up to us to revise our concepts. – But does this Good News, which is announced on the side of God, have its complement on the side of man ? Yes, like this.

Man has the “ capacity ” for God

27. Desire for God is written into the heart of man, for man is created by God and for God; God never ceases to attract man to Himself, and it is only in God that man will find the truth and happiness he never stops searching for: “ The most sublime aspect of human dignity is to be found in man’s vocation to commune with God. This invitation that God addresses to man to dialogue with Him begins with human existence. For if man exists, it is because God has created him through Love and, through Love, never ceases to give him being; and man can only live fully in accordance with the truth, if he freely recognises this Love and entrusts himself to his Creator. ”

Here we are again, transported to the earthly Paradise. And we understand that the desire of our first parents, whom God constituted in happiness and holiness, met with His own and most loving desire for this inexpressible communion, so desired by both parties. We could term this “ Adam’s dignity ”, but it would be truer and more modest to speak of his holiness and justice... But lo, without any warning, these lofty desires and sentiments are now attributed to each man and to all men, mystics from their birth who find no rest except in God. You will notice that this time there is no longer even any allusion to sin, something which did not amount to very much anyway: nothing more than a seed of division among men.

If I were to exclaim that this is baianism, I should scarcely shed much light on this mystery. But if I refer to our extended knowledge of the men of the Bible, Jews as well as pagans, the men of both history and pre-history, and the masses of people alive today, how is it possible to recognise in this miserable human race such virtue, such mystical restlessness, such communion with God in love, and ultimately such ecstatic abandonment, as is spoken of here ?

– And yet, that is what we have to believe, according to this Catechism. We must believe without seeing, because it is dinned into us until this esoteric gnosis takes hold of our minds – a gnosis that displaces the predestination of God, transferring it from us Catholics, who are showered with every gift, to all men of all times and to all peoples, claiming that they are invisibly, but no less certainly, as cherished and favoured by God as we are. We had better watch out then for the backlash !

The idea is not understood any the better for being repeated, but its charm will inevitably invade our thoughts and gradually change our hearts:

God comes to meet man

50. By natural reason man can know God with certainty, on the basis of His works. But there exists another order of knowledge which man cannot reach by his own powers, that of divine Revelation. Through an entirely free decision God reveals Himself and gives Himself to man. He does so by revealing His mystery, His benevolent design, which He formed from all eternity in Christ, for the benefit of all men. He fully reveals His plan by sending His well-beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit.

Here we recognise our Catholic religion; the words are similar to those of our former catechisms. Except, however, for an almost imperceptible nuance: It is to all men of all times that God reveals His plan. All men are the fortunate beneficiaries of God’s Revelation and His gifts, His Word and His Life, which will, however, be more perfectly communicated in the time of Christ.

It is plainly a new and insistent teaching, giving us to understand that we are not the only ones to be loved by God ! And who would be so ignoble even to think so ! All men – even if this is impossible to see or prove – are predestined to the perfect life, and one must embrace this gnosis as being on a level with the ancient truths.

– But how can the Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal men, not to mention those of China and Japan, have access to such an elevated life and doctrine ? – Well… just like you do ! How could you believe otherwise !

Man’s response to God

142. By His Revelation “ proceeding from the immensity of His charity, God, who is invisible, addresses men as His friends and converses with them in order to invite them to enter into communion with Him and to be welcomed into this communion. ” The adequate response to this invitation is faith.

143. By faith, man completely submits his intelligence and his will to God. With his whole being, man gives his assent to God the Revealer (cf. DV 5). Holy Scripture calls this response of man to God revealing Himself “ the obedience of faith ”. (cf. Rom 1.5; 16.26)

We are undoubtedly becoming acclimatised now to this novelty with its double language, in which the language of the gnosis appears, disappears and shows through again in the course of a teaching that in every point is Catholic. Here, the Catholic language is heard clearly: the catechumen is instructed in the Christian revelation and he will receive the life of Christ through baptism. And he believes in this Credo and in this sacrament with all his soul.

The other language, that of a mysterious and secretly diffused knowledge – a “ gnosis ” therefore – quite clearly shows through here: like the Christians of all times, men everywhere receive signs and words from God who reveals Himself to them in secret, beyond the rites and words of the various religions like ours, and they trustingly abandon themselves to these communications. It is no longer the faith-knowledge of our former Church, but the faith-trust of Luther, which suffices for the salvation of all men of all times.

One understands why the Council should have repeated ad nauseam that in revealing Himself, God revealed man to himself ! This underlying religion, which constitutes the “ dignity ” of man, and this pre-established and satisfying communion of God with all men… are these not exhilarating revelations that quite surpass our old catechism lessons about the sin of Adam, the necessity of baptism, limbo, hell... ?

– In this dream religion, in this gnosis, man is immersed in Love. He is filled with Love and his very self is transfigured in the Love that is God, in God Himself.

The implications of Faith in One God

222. To believe in God, the One God, and to love Him with all our being has immense consequences for our whole life:

225. It means knowing the unity and true dignity of all men: everyone is made “ in the image and likeness of God ” (Gen 1. 26).

229. Faith in God leads us to turn towards Him alone as our first origin and our ultimate end, to prefer nothing to Him and to substitute nothing for Him.

Section 222 is the literal transcription of the shema ’Israël (Dt 6.4) and of the shahada (Sura II 163), a profession of “ monotheistic ” faith that has been drawn up today, both in Israel and in Islam, in opposition to “ us ”, practising Catholics, in an inexpiable holy war. But the Author could not care less.

God is Love. Love of man also.

220. The love of God is “ eternal ” (Is 54.8) ... “ I have loved you with an everlasting love That is why I have continued my faithfulness to you ”. (Jer 31.3)

221. St. John will go even further when he affirms that “ God is love ” By sending His only Son and the Spirit of Love in the fullness of time, God reveals His innermost secret: He Himself is an eternal exchange of love: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and He has destined us to have a share in it.

As soon as one agrees to let go of the old Catholic religion and to overturn its narrow dogmas, everything becomes so wonderful ! Thus, even before we have got to the second article of the Creed, we are already besotted by what is revealed to us in this delirious gnosis: God is Love, a Love of three Persons, an eternal exchange of absolute, unconditional and indefectible love... And the Church is reproached for having kept this hidden from us for so long under the influence of her petty interests and her personal, if not racial, vanity:

God has destined us, all of us men, to enter into this same Love, which is God, Absolute, Unconditional, Universal, and Eternal. It is thus that God loves us in advance and thus that we love Him and love one another for ever and ever...

The gnostic author of the Catechism comes close to winning us over. I myself read and re-read with enthusiasm his hymn of thanksgiving, an exultant hymn of gratitude to God for His infinite goodness towards “ us ” men, His so beloved creatures:

The Divine Works and the Trinitarian Missions

257. “ O Trinity, blessed light, O primordial unity ! ” God is eternal blessedness, immortal life, unfading light. God is Love: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. God freely wills to communicate the glory of His blessed life. Such is the “ plan of His loving kindness ” (Eph 1.9) which He conceived before the creation of the world in His well-beloved Son, “ predestining us to be His adopted sons ” (Eph 1.4-5), that is to say, “ to reproduce the image of His Son ” (Rom 8.29), thanks to “ the Spirit of adoption ” (Rom 8.15). This purpose is a “ grace granted to us before the beginning of time ” (2 Tim 1.9-10), immediately proceeding from the love of the Trinity. It is unfolded in the work of creation, in the whole of salvation history after the fall, and in the missions of the Son and of the Spirit, which are continued in the mission of the Church.

I dare not put a damper on this perfect hymn of thanksgiving for “ our predestination ”, that of us all, to the glory and blessedness of the sons of God, in Him our God, to total, perfect, absolute, and universal Love... I will simply show you the former Catholic hymn from which this wider, more generous and much more beautiful hymn is drawn. The duplicity shows through only momentarily, when the author of the CCC perfidiously plays on the words “ predestining us ”, just like a turntable that diverts us from the Catholic faith and switches us onto the rails of his wondrous, but heretical, gnosis:

Epistle to the Ephesians

Address. “ Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, to the saints who are at Ephesus and faithful to Jesus Christ. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. ”

The divine plan of salvation. “ Blessed be the God and Father of Our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. He predestined us in love to be His adoptive sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of His will, to the praise of His glorious grace which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.

“ In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace, which He lavished upon us...

“ In Him, according to the purpose of Him who accomplishes all things according to the counsel of His will, we [the Jews] who first hoped in Christ have been destined and appointed to live for the praise of His glory.

“ In Him you also [the pagans], who have heard the word of truth, the Gospel of your salvation, and have believed in Him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit...

“ And you He made alive, when you were dead, through the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience. Among these we all [the Jews] once lived in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of body and mind, and so we were by nature children of wrath , like the rest of mankind...

“ But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which He loved us, even when we [pagans and Jews] were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ – by grace you have been saved ! – and raised us up with Him, and made us sit with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. ”

The whole Epistle needs reading, or rather the whole of the Scriptures ! And all our dogmas and our whole Tradition need to be recalled in order to discern, reject, combat and pulverise this antichrist gnosis, whereby this baneful Catechism will corrupt the whole teaching of the hierarchical Church and thence the faith of all the faithful for the ruin of us all !

That in itself opens up dramatic vistas on the extraordinary dishonesty of the CCC, falsifying the Scriptures to make every man “ predestined ”. Let us pretend, however, to ignore this hitch and return to the doctrine we now know to be equivocal.

“ He does whatever He pleases ” (Ps 115.3). “ Thou art merciful to all, for Thou canst do all things ” (Ws 11.23).

273. ... “ for with God nothing will be impossible ” (Lk 1.37) ...

274. “ Nothing therefore is more apt to confirm our faith and our hope than this conviction profoundly engraved in our souls that with God nothing is impossible. For then, everything that the Creed proposes to us for our belief, the greatest and most incomprehensible things, even things way beyond the ordinary laws of nature, will be easily and unhesitatingly accepted, once our reason has grasped the idea of the divine Omnipotence. ” (Roman Catechism I, 2, 13)

It’s heads or tails. Having duly warned us that nothing is impossible to God, the Roman Catechism will be able to propose to the faithful all of our Mysteries, without legitimately discouraging them. But this new Catechism awards itself this blind confidence in order to make us swallow without flinching its lethal mixture of Catholic nectar and antichrist venom.

So it continues with incredible boldness:

278. If we do not believe that the love of God is All-Powerful, how can we believe that the Father could have created us, His Son redeemed us and the Holy Spirit sanctified us ?

Did you let yourself be taken in ? So did I. For, indeed, is it not stupid, senseless and wicked to think that God-Love could have created us, created man, all men, redeemed us and sanctified us, to make us fail in the end or to allow us to be damned at the gates of salvation and of eternal life ? Listen to this limpid language, where the poison and the nectar are mixed:

321. Divine providence consists of the dispositions whereby God wisely and lovingly guides all creatures to their ultimate end.

This “ guiding ” by God is thus infallible and, of course, impeccable. All men will, therefore, reach their ultimate end through God’s all-powerful love. Sometimes perhaps by following paths that wind and undulate. That is the problem of Evil, which the CCC will treat with its habitual audacity, as though it were an incident of no consequence...

God knows how to draw good out of evil

323. Divine providence works also through the actions of creatures. God gives human beings the ability to co-operate freely with His designs.

311. Angels and men, as intelligent and free creatures, have to journey towards their ultimate destiny by a free choice and a preferential love. They can therefore go astray. Indeed, they have sinned. Thus it is that moral evil has entered the world... In no way is God, directly or indirectly, the cause of this. He permits it, however, out of respect for the freedom of His creatures and, mysteriously, knows how to draw good from it...

It is a soothing solution: all’s well that ends well. And on the other hand, God is exonerated from any insolent reproach ! Wonderful. He respects the freedom of His creatures ! That is a word not to be forgotten ! Ultimately, it will allow us to explain the eternal damnation of the demons and the wicked as a glorious act of respect for their dignity. By going only a fraction further, we can now place this dignity above the “ bourgeois ” happiness or misfortune of Heaven and hell, our self-glorification having incited human grandeur and the freedom inherent in the Person to the point of defying God – an act which is the eternal glory of Satan ! Do not laugh. You will behold such events in this gnosis, just as Dostoyevsky’s Kirillov had prophesied !

For the moment, the CCC thinks of reassuring us:

324. Divine permission for physical and moral evil is a mystery that God illuminates through his Son, Jesus Christ, who died and rose to vanquish evil...

Evil, therefore, will be vanquished in the end, doubtless through the conversion and the salvation of both its authors and its victims. This mad idea is something that Dostoyevsky had also foreseen !

With each new section, the certainty of the universal and absolute predestination of “ man ” grows. For the author it becomes a truism, an argument so simple that its conclusion is self-evident, even in the worst of cases:

Even the power of Satan works for our good.

God cannot fail in his plan of salvation for those whom He loves. And that means “ us ”... yes, all of us... So certain is this that not even the devil can thwart it:

395. The power of Satan is, however, not infinite. He is only a creature, powerful from the fact that he is pure spirit, but still only a creature. He cannot prevent the construction of God’s Kingdom. Although Satan may act in the world out of hatred for God and His kingdom in Jesus Christ, and although his action may cause great harm – of a spiritual nature and, indirectly, even of a physical nature – to each man and to society, this action is permitted by divine providence, which strongly but gently directs human and cosmic history. Divine permission for diabolical activity is a great mystery, but “ we know that God makes everything work for the good of those who love Him ”. (Rom 8.28)

So, it is quite clear: all will love Him and all will be saved.

It is a syllogism in barbara, but it is false ! The author has not even taken the trouble to draw out his conclusion ! Here it is in the last article of the Credo:

1058. ... If it is true that no one can save himself, it is also true that “ God desires all men to be saved ” (1 Tim 2.4), and that for Him “ all things are possible ”. (Mt 19.26)

The essential will be retained: With God all things are possible; now, God desires all men to be saved; therefore, all will be saved by their All-Powerful and Merciful God. True or false ? The author banks on “ True ”. It is “ False ” ! This first heresy will give birth to ten and twenty others, changing the terrible drama of human destiny into a happy idyll... an idyll that is illusory, unholy, deceptive and cruel.

“ The world was created for the Glory of God ”.

288. The revelation of creation is inseparable from the revelation and realisation of the covenant of the One God with His People. Creation is revealed as the first step towards this covenant, as the first and universal witness to God’s All-Powerful love...

294. … “ The Glory of God is living man, and the life of man is the vision of God ” (St Irenaeus)… And so, the ultimate purpose of creation is that God, “ who is the Creator of all things, finally becomes ‘ all in all ’ (1 Cor 15.28), thus simultaneously assuring His own glory and our beatitude. ”

“ Us ”, that is indeed us. And “ all ”, that is all men. “ Our beatitude ”, that is the life in God, already here on this earth, and in Heaven for all eternity. It is all the happiness of God in all.

865. ... Then [at the end of time] all men redeemed by Christ, made in Him “ holy and immaculate in the presence of God in Love ”, will be gathered together as the one People of God...

Here and there we find references to the damned, but it is as though they did not count, as though they were a negligible and absolutely insignificant quantity. I have made this point too rapidly, so I shall return to it later.

GOD ? HIS NAME IS HOLY, HIS WILL IS SOVEREIGN

“ Is everyone predestined ? ” The trick of diabolical pride.

260. The ultimate end of the divine economy is the entry of creatures into the perfect unity of the Blessed Trinity...

And there we have it ! With or without a wedding garment, man is at home with God and takes the place of honour ! For the CCC, no problem. Cheating with the Word of God is not even a lie when it serves the cause of human Pride ! And so it is that on fourteen occasions we are quoted and reminded of – but never fully or accurately – those words of St. Paul, some of the most explicit in the Bible, which relate to the predestination of the saints to grace and to life eternal.

On some occasions the CCC deals with this mystery in a tone of hope and of prayer for our salvation, the salvation of us all (1821, 2012), but more often we swim in ambiguity (313, 395, 501, 2852); on other occasions this predestination is understood as that of all men, of “ man ” (1161). But in the end, even when the quotation is extensive and apparently complete, the divinely inspired Word is mutilated, so that it may be surreptitiously contradicted. It is not easy to notice. The essential passage, the major dogmatic truth, which I shall very plainly restore to where it belongs, is replaced by three innocuous little suspension points in the CCC. Here it is:

Christian holiness

2012. “ We know that in everything God works for good with those who love Him, [THOSE WHO HAVE BEEN CALLED ACCORDING TO HIS PURPOSE], for those whom He foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, in order that He might be the first-born among many brethren. And those whom He predestined He also called; and those whom He called He also justified; and those whom He justified He also glorified. ” (Rom 8.28-30)

At the cost of a slight lie of omission, it is a heresy that becomes a new dogma, and this dogma of human pride governs the entire Catholic faith in the service of this humanist gnosis whereby MAN BECOMES GOD, according to his right, through THE INFINITE LOVE OF GOD FOR HIM. We shall find the consequences of this on every page.

DOGMATIC CONSIDERATIONS

I am not opposing the dogmatic novelties of this supposed Catechism lightly. In 1946, at the Seminary of Paris, I opposed this heresy, inspired by Baius, whose optimism is no less delirious than Baius’ aberrant pessimism. It was a heresy upheld by Monsieur Callon, my professor of dogmatic theology, an adept of Fr de Lubac whose work “ Le surnaturel ” would be censured by Rome. In 1989, when the same de Lubac died, the whole Church celebrated him for his doctrine of the Creation of man for immediately supernatural ends, a doctrine at one time condemned by the Church, but now become the corner stone of the cult of Man proclaimed by the Council. All the theological weathercocks pointed in the same direction as Lubac, turning with the prevailing wind.

Here then is this heresy, on the first line of the six hundred pages of this Catechism, poisoning every other page:

The life of man – to know and to love God

1. God, infinitely Perfect and Happy in Himself, in a plan of pure goodness, has freely created man to make him share in His own blessed life. That is why…

Let us stop there. All is virtually lost.

Of course, this postulate is true, historically and existentially. But theologically and phenomenologically it is false. One can indulge in this trickery, but only by violating the Catholic faith and pushing the insult to God to the point of apostasy, and human pride to the point of self-worship. “ Two kinds of love have built two cities: the love of God to the contempt and forgetfulness of self, and the love of man to the contempt and forgetfulness of God. ” For here following is the radiant truth of our Catholic dogma:

Between the work of man’s creation by God and the mysterious plan – so unexpected ! – to raise these billions of future human beings to a share in the very Life of the adorable Trinity, through an extravagance of love incomprehensible to men and angels, there has always been in the faith of the Church – and in the philosophy of men – an unbridgeable gap.

God, having “ freely ” created Adam and Eve, “ in the beginning ”, owed it to Himself, by simple logical coherence and natural justice, to make it a Law for them to love one another, to increase and multiply, to subdue the earth and to live well. Just as He also made it a Law for them to love Him, their Creator and their good Providence. The whole natural order, ecological, political, moral and religious, derives from that Law and has survived sin. St. Thomas expressed this philosophical need in the wonderful Latin expression: Desiderium naturale non potest esse inane. What was necessary for human nature, God wished to provide in Paradise for the human race as a whole, on the sole condition of their fidelity to their duties of thanksgiving, as dictated by natural religion.

To this first plan, God’s love for His creatures – and secretly for the holiest, the wisest, the most loving, the purest and most resplendent of all, the Immaculate Conception, Mary ever Virgin – urged Him to add new relations of a supernatural order ! with our first Parents, like those of a Father with His adopted children, of a Bridegroom with His spouse, of a Master and Friend with His intimate companions and brothers ! This Covenant was clearly a renewal of the pure gratuitousness of the first Creation, but in regard to its proximate ends and it ultimate end, its means and its conditions, it clearly depended purely and solely on the GOOD PLEASURE of this Holy Trinity, to whom such a privileged creature could not but respond with the most eager submission, full of gratitude and love: Magnificat anima mea Dominum...

Never would one have imagined that the Church might one day come to re-examine the contract of this Covenant, in order to denounce its injustice and to demand that it be corrected by virtue of men’s absolute, unconditional, equal, free and universal right both to the Love of God and to the exercise of His Omnipotence to ensure the complete success of all the dreams and desires of their united humanity in this world and the next. As though the misfortune of having created the human race out of Love and with grace must lead to God being reduced to the rank of Man’s slave !

I have said enough. We shall have to examine all the stages of this reversal of fates: Almighty God dethroned as a result of his own Law of Love, and the exaltation of men to this coveted throne, in the very name of the dignity in which He created them and wishes to see them grow and dominate the world !

ANATHEMA

If anyone says that there is no difference between the natural order of the first Creation with its own proper demands, and the supernatural order of predestination to grace and to divine glory, considered as the effect of an absolute, unconditional and universal love of God for man, excluding all damnation, let him be anathema.