Falsity is the Sign of the Devil

The Kiss of Judas

In his Angelus Message last Sunday, August 26, 2012, the Holy  Father spoke on the disciples who abandoned the Lord on account of the difficulty of the teachings on the Eucharist. His commentary on Judas Iscariot is worth reflecting on: 

"In the end, Jesus knew that even among the Twelve there was one who did not believe: Judas. Judas too could have left like the other disciples did; perhaps he should have left had he wanted to be honest. Instead he stayed with Jesus. He stayed not because of faith, not because of love, but with the secret plan to get back at the Master. Why? Because Judas felt that Jesus had betrayed him and he decided to betray Jesus in turn. Judas was a zealot and wanted a victorious Messiah who would lead a revolt against the Romans. Jesus frustrated these expectations. The problem is that Judas did not leave and his gravest fault was falsity, which is the sign of the devil. Because of this Jesus said to the Twelve: “One among you is a devil!” (John 6:70). Let us pray to the Virgin Mary, who helps us to believe in Jesus, as St. Peter did, to be ever more sincere with him and with everyone."

I think these are very courageous words. I think dissenters in the Church should not hide their dissent under the guise of Intellectual or Academic Freedom. If you do not believe... by all means, leave! Don't dissent and still call yourself Catholics! Falsity is the sign of the devil.


Read the entire address: ZENIT - On Believing in Jesus, Bread of Life

On Reinventing Jesus

In the bookstore, I found this book published in 2007 by Dr. Erwin Lutzer, a senior pastor of The Moody Church in Chicago. Little may he have realized it but Dr. Lutzer was proving the Popes right in their teachings against Modernism:

"Living as we do at the beginning of a new century, many new Jesuses are being fabricated year by year; this is the age of designer Jesuses. Often the only similarity is the name; the character traits are entirely different. So your Jesus might not be my Jesus and mine might not be the Jesus of my-next-door neighbor.

"...The Jesus whose biography is found in the New Testament is being treated like putty in the hands of those who wish to refashion Him to fit to their particular view of the world. Just take a moment to browse your neighborhood bookstore and you will find dozens of books, with topics ranging from Jesus and women's rights to Jesus and Zen to Jesus and inner healing. Jesus is used - or rather, misused - for every cause imaginable, from gas-saving minivans to religious zealots. I'm reminded of the words of the late Yasser Arafat, who at a press conference at the United Nations in 1983 called Jesus "the first Palestinian fedayeen who carried his sword." Think of it: Jesus was the first freedom fighter for Islam!

"It seems as though everyone wants Jesus in their parade," writes Joseph Stowell: 'From gay activists to abortionists to religious leaders to politicians, making Jesus fit their agenda and flying His flag provides a guise of propriety and credibility.'

"Stowell is right, but we have to ask: How can scholars take the radical, all-demanding Jesus of the Gospels and reinvent Him so that He, like a book on the shelf, is wholly within our power to do with Him as we will? This Jesus allows us to be in charge, never insisting that we come under His authority, never asking us to stake our eternal destiny on His claims.

"No other name has inspired such great devotion and so much controversy; no other person has been tweaked to serve so many agendas. Scholars are writing books not about Christianity, but about 'Jesusanity', as my friend Darrel Bock describes it. Learning about these evolving images of Jesus will help us identify the one Jesus who stands above all others and is actually as good as His word!"

E. Lutzer, Slandering Jesus: 6 Lies People Tell About The Man Who Said He Was God, 4-5.

On the Modernist as Reformer

"It is abundantly clear how great and how eager is the passion of such men (modernists) for innovation. In all Catholicism, there is absolutely nothing on which it does not fasten. They wish philosophy to be reformed, especially in the ecclesiastical seminaries. They wish the scholastic philosophy to be relagated to the history of philosphy and to be classed among absolute systems, and the young men to be taught modern philosphy which alone is true and suited to the times in which we live. They desire the reform of theology: rational theology is to have modern philosophy for its foundation, and positive theology is to be founded on the history of dogma. As for history, it must be written and taught only according to their methods and modern principles. Dogmas and their evolution, they affirm, are to be harmonized with science and history. In the Catechism, no dogmas are to be inserted except those that have been reformed and are within the capacity of the people. Regarding worship, they say, the nuber of external devotions is to be reduced, and steps must be taken to prevent their further increase, though, indeed, some of the admirers of symbolism are disposed to be more indulgent on this head. They cry out that ecclesiatical government requires to be reformed in all its branches, but especially in its disciplinary and dogmatic departments. They insist that inwardly and outwardly it must be brought into harmony with the modern conscience, which now wholly tends towards democracy; a share in ecclesiastical government should therefore be given to the lower ranks of the clergy, and even to the laity, and authority, which is too much concentrated, should be decentralized. The Roman Congregations, and especially the Index and the Holy Office, must be likewise modified. The ecclesiasticl authority must alter its line of conduct in the social and political world, while keeping outside its political organizations, it must adapt itself to them, in order to penetrate them with its spirit. With regards to morals, they adopt the principle of the Americanists, that the active virtues are more important than the passive, and are to be more encouraged in practice. They ask that the clergy should return to their primitive humility and poverty, and in that their ideas and action they should admit the principles of Modernism; and there are some, who, gladly listening to the teaching of their Protestant masters, should desire the suppression of the celibacy of the clergy. What is left in the Church which is not to be reformed by them and according to their principles?"

Pope St. Pius X, Pascendi Dominici Gregis, Sept. 8, 1907, 38.

The reformist ideas of Modernists which St. Pius X condemned in 1907 seem to be the "stuff" which the "reform" of the Church today is made of. The question is: Should we really adapt the Church to the trends of modernity? Should it rather not be the Church elevating the modern world to the realm of the Gospels that we have received from Christ and the Apostles? When the Church proclaims to the Gentiles, should the teachings of Christ conform with the spirit of the world? Shouldn't it be rather that the world abandons its worldly spirit and take upon itself the image of Christ?

A Description of our Times?

As early as 1832, Pope Gregory XVI was already sounding the alarm about the loss of the sense of the sacred which he attributes to liberalism. Looking at this document, we can see a clear description of our present times:

"We speak of the things which you see with your own eyes, which We both bemoan. Depravity exults; science is imprudent; liberty, dissolute. The holiness of the sacred is despised; the majesty of divine worship is not only disapproved by evil men but defiled and held up to ridicule. Hence sound doctrine is perverted and errors of all kinds spread boldly. The laws of the sacred, the rights, institutions and discipline - none are safe from the audacity of those speaking evil. Our Roman See is harassed violently and the bonds of unity are daily loosened and severed. The divine authority of the Church is opposed and her rights shorn off. She is subjected to human reason and with the greatest injustice exposed to the hatred of the people and reduced to vile servitude. The obedience due bishops is denied and their rights trampled underfoot. Furthermore, academies and schools resound with new,monstrous opinions, which openly attack the Catholic Faith; this horrible and nefarious war is openly and even publicly waged. Thus, by institutions and by the example of teachers, the minds of the youth are corruptedand a tremendous blow is dealt to religion and the perversion of morals is spread. So the restraints of religion are thrown off, by which alone kingdoms stand. We see the destruction of public order, the fall of principalities and the overturning of all legitimate power approaching. Indeed this great mass of calamities had its inception in the heretical societies and sects in which all that is sacrilegious, infamous and blasphemous has gathered as bilge water in a ship's hold, a congealed mass of all filth." (Gregory XVI, Mirari Vos, 15 August 1832, 5.)