Christopher FerraraAnd so Francis has completed his “ecumenical journey” to Lund, Sweden, where the long-planned fiasco elicited nothing but yawns from the post-Christian Swedish populace. The press laughably reported that “hundreds” greeted Francis upon his arrival at the airport.
At Lund, in the very cathedral Lutheran rebels stole from the Catholic Church centuries ago, the one who is supposed to act as the Vicar of Christ participated in a joint “ecumenical prayer service” with pro-abortion, pro-contraception, pro-divorce, pro-homosexual, pro-women’s “ordination” Lutheran laymen and laywomen masquerading in clerical costumes. The cast of clerical fakes that Francis dignified with the presence of a Pope included a lady “archbishop” — what a joke — by the name of Antje Jackelen.
The whole affair, like ecumenism in general, was a game of let’s pretend. Let’s pretend that Saint John, following the mandate of Our Lord Himself, never “forbade any intercourse with those who professed a mutilated and corrupt version of Christ’s teaching,” to quote Pope Pius XI, who condemned the “ecumenical movement” at its origin and forbade Catholic participation in it — for reasons that should be obvious today.
Let’s pretend that there can be “Christian unity” with people who trample on the Gospel of Christ; deny the papal primacy; deny the existence of seven sacraments, the sacrificial priesthood and the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass; flout fundamental moral precepts and condone abominable violations of the natural law, including abortion and sodomy, which cry out to Heaven for divine retribution.
And above all, let’s pretend that Catholics are just as blameworthy as Lutherans — if not more so! — for “divisions” between the one true Church founded by God Incarnate and the ever-more-corrupt and ridiculous human organization whose origin lies in the rebellion of a maniacal, drunken, foul-mouthed, libidinous monk from a late medieval backwater known as Wittenberg.
Going along with the game, therefore, Francis uttered this preposterous prayer during the service: “O Holy Spirit: help us to rejoice in the gifts that have come to the Church through the Reformation, prepare us to repent for the dividing walls that we, and our forebears, have built…”
Nonsense. “We” have built no walls whatsoever. The doors of the Catholic Church are always open, and she is always ready and willing to admit to the religion that Christ established any Lutheran who repents of Luther’s errors, which have only been compounded infinitely by the errors of his supposed heirs in the Lutheran World Federation. It was Luther who put up the original “dividing walls,” and it is only his successors down through the past five centuries who have added to those walls layer after layer of heresy and immorality. But this is a game of let’s pretend, so the “ecumenist” must pretend that the Catholic Church has cruelly built walls against the Lutherans.
Nowhere is the Ecumenical Game of Let’s Pretend more apparent than in Francis’ prepared homily for this disgraceful gathering. Herewith some examples from the text:
“As Catholics and Lutherans, we have undertaken a common journey of reconciliation.”
False. Catholics do not have to be reconciled with Lutherans. Lutherans must be reconciled with the one true Church, whose teachings they defy, and the Christ whose Gospel they have mutilated and corrupted.
“Now, in the context of the commemoration of the Reformation of 1517, we have a new opportunity to accept a common path, one that has taken shape over the past fifty years in the ecumenical dialogue between the Lutheran World Federation and the Catholic Church.”
False. There is no “common path” that Catholics and Lutherans can walk together. There is only the path that Christ established in His Church, which Lutherans have lost and must find again. That path leads only to Rome, and from there to Heaven for those who persevere in the grace of the Sacraments. As Pius XI declared, “For the union of Christians can only be promoted by promoting the return to the one true Church of Christ of those who are separated from it, for in the past they have unhappily left it.”
“Nor can we be resigned to the division and distance that our separation has created between us. We have the opportunity to mend a critical moment of our history by moving beyond the controversies and disagreements that have often prevented us from understanding one another.”
False. We cannot “move beyond the controversies and disagreements that have often prevented us from understanding one another.” It is the Lutherans who lack an understanding — of the truths that Christ revealed. And their ignorance or willful rejection of those truths does not involve mere “controversies and disagreements” but rather fundamental matters of Divine Revelation as well as precepts of the natural law that guide the conscience even of pagan savages on hypothetical deserted islands.
“Certainly, there was a sincere will on the part of both sides to profess and uphold the true faith, but at the same time we realize that we closed in on ourselves out of fear or bias with regard to the faith which others profess with a different accent and language.”
Not only false, but absolutely intolerable. There can be no “sincere will to profess and uphold the true faith” on the part of those who not only adamantly deny dogmas of the true religion but condone even sodomy and the murder of innocent children in the womb. To reduce the differences between Catholicism and the various Lutheran sects to “accent and language” arising from “fear or bias” is an outrageous deception.
I could go on for pages more, but the point is made. The ecumenical escapade in Lund, like the “ecumenical venture” as a whole, is a fraud — a fraud not only upon the Catholic people, but upon Lutherans who so desperately need the helps that only the Catholic Church can provide.
Ecumenism is, in fact, a form of almost unbelievable spiritual cruelty, which ruthlessly determines to leave in darkness those who cannot see the light of the Gospel, refusing to tell them what Pius XI told the Protestants of his day with all the solicitude of a true spiritual father, a mere 34 years before Vatican II supposedly ushered in a “new ecumenical orientation” of the Church:
“Let them therefore return to their common Father, who, forgetting the insults previously heaped on the Apostolic See, will receive them in the most loving fashion. For if, as they continually state, they long to be united with Us and ours, why do they not hasten to enter the Church, ‘the Mother and mistress of all Christ’s faithful’?
“Let them hear Lactantius crying out: ‘The Catholic Church is alone in keeping the true worship. This is the fount of truth, this the house of Faith, this the temple of God: if any man enter not here, or if any man go forth from it, he is a stranger to the hope of life and salvation. Let none delude himself with obstinate wrangling. For life and salvation are here concerned, which will be lost and entirely destroyed, unless their interests are carefully and assiduously kept in mind.’”
May God deliver us — Catholics and Lutherans alike — from the scourge of ecumenism and restore the Church to the sanity and true mercy of her perennial approach to those lost in error. Let the ecumenical game of let’s pretend come to an end for the eternal welfare of souls. Let the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart that Our Lady promised at Fatima set right all that has gone wrong in our beloved Church over the past fifty years, and in the world as a consequence.
Matt Gaspers
