John VennariEditor’s Note: This article (originally titled “Paul VI to be ‘Canonized’?”) first appeared on the old CFN website (Dec. 19, 2012) and was subsequently published in the January 2013 print edition. In light of today’s “canonization” of Paul VI, John Vennari’s (R.I.P.) treatment of the subject is even more timely and needed than when it first appeared. Please share widely and educate others about the truth regarding Pope Paul VI. Also read and share John’s article entitled Doubt and Confusion: The New “Canonizations”.
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In 1980, while still new to the Traditional Movement, I heard an interview by Michael Davies on Vatican II. Speaking of Paul VI, Davies said he considered him to be the worst pope in Church history.
“If you look at the state of the Church when he took over (1963), and then look at the state of the Church when he died (1978),” said Davies, there has never been such a wholesale devastation of the Church in so short a time period. It all took place on his watch and was due to his revolutionary Conciliar policies.
The destruction of the Mass by means of implementing the Novus Ordo Missae is the most far-reaching act of Paul VI’s papacy. It affected the Catholic in his primary connection to the Church, Sunday Mass. Paul VI insisted on foisting a new liturgy upon the Church that was built on a Protestant model.
Journalist Jean Guitton, a close friend and confident of Pope Paul VI, confirmed that it was the aim of the Pope to protestantize the liturgy.
In a radio interview in the 1990s, Guitton said:
“The intention of Paul VI with regard to what is commonly called the Mass, was to reform the Catholic liturgy in such a way that it should almost coincide with the Protestant liturgy – but what is curious is that Paul VI did that to get as close as possible to the Protestant Lord’s supper… there was with Paul VI an ecumenical intention to remove, or at least to correct, or at least to relax, what was too Catholic, in the traditional sense, and, I repeat, to get the Catholic Mass closer to the Calvinist Mass.”[1]
It was Paul VI who championed the entire new program of the Council, especially its novel policy of ecumenism that no longer seeks conversion of non-Catholics, but convergence with non-Catholics. Vatican II’s Decree on Ecumenism (Unitatis Redintegratio) warmed the heart of Protestants. Lutheran Observer Robert McAffee Brown, a “minister” who favored divorce and birth control, celebrated the new orientation.
In his 1967 book, The Ecumenical Revolution, McAffee Brown applauds the Council’s Decree on Ecumenism:
“The document makes clear how new is the attitude that has emerged. No more is there talk of ‘schismatics and heretics’ but rather of ‘separated brethren.’ No more is there an imperial demand that the dissidents return in penitence to the Church who has no need of penitence; instead there is recognition that both sides are guilty of the sins of division and must reach out penitentially to one another. No more are Protestants dismissed merely as ‘sects’ or psychological entities alone; instead it is acknowledged that there is a measure of ‘ecclesial reality’ to be found within their corporate life.”[2]
Worse, the two central papal documents of the early 20th Century on Ecumenism, Pope Pius XI’s 1928 Mortalium Animos and Pope Pius XII’s 1949 Instruction on the Ecumenical Movement, were neither mentioned nor footnoted in the Council’s Decree on Ecumenism. Paul VI’s Council pretended these texts did not exist.
These two papal documents state that the only true unity of Christians can be accomplished by the return of non-Catholics to the one true Church. This Catholic principle, founded on the words of Christ Himself, was at odds with Pope Paul’s Council.
Dr. George May noted the grave consequences of Vatican II’s ecumenical approach:
“Following this particular cherished ‘fruit’ of the Council, (ecumenism) a ‘revaluation’ of Protestantism got underway everywhere among Catholics, and certain lucid Protestants could not hide their surprise,” notes Dr. May. “The Council had prepared the astonishing rehabilitation of Protestantism insofar as it described with great partiality, the religious communities resulting from the Reformation. Only the positive aspects were noticed. The immense evil that Protestantism brought upon the world and the aggressiveness against the Roman Catholic Church that even today it manifests everywhere where its affairs are not supported by the Catholic Church, all that was omitted. The Church will have to pay for this error of the Conciliar Fathers.”[3]
Indeed, a Benedictine monk said to Jean Madiran that, thanks to Vatican II, we have passed from theocentrism (God-centeredness) to anthropocentrism (man-centeredness).[4]
As we recall the disastrous effects of the Council; as we remember the years 1963 to 1978, with its collapse of dogmatic and moral theology, the upheaval in Catholic schools, seminaries and religious orders, the breakdown of Church discipline, the scorn for Scholastic philosophy, the persecution of traditional Catholics, the worldwide confusion, the mass defection of Catholics, and the appointment of countless revolutionary bishops, we gasp with disbelief at the latest news from Pope Benedict’s Vatican: Theologians, cardinals and bishops of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints have given the go ahead for Paul VI’s beatification.
Andre Tornielli writes in the December 14, 2012 edition of Vatican Insider, “The late pope’s Positio – the collection of documents used in the process by which a person is declared a saint – was approved unanimously by all present. All bishops and cardinals expressed themselves in favor of the ‘heroic virtues’ of Giovanni Battista Montini, elected Pope with the name Paul VI in 1963 and deceased in 1978. Theologians who voted separately also voted unanimously in favor.”
Tornielli concludes, “The Pope [Benedict XVI] intends to proceed as quickly as possible. The beatification is expected by the end of the Year of Faith. 2013 marks the 50th anniversary of Montini’s election as Pope and the 35th anniversary of his death.”[5]
The proposed beatification of Paul VI is nothing more than the triumph of wayward sentiment. Again, we see Catholic terms stripped of their meaning. A beatification or canonization, once a sure sign of the heroic virtue of the person canonized, is now degenerated to the level of the Academy Awards. In the case of both Paul VI and John Paul II, it is a special achievement medal bestowed by revolutionary prelates on leaders who advance modernist causes.
Pope Benedict XVI, a life-long Vatican II progressive to this day, has shown himself first and foremost a disciple of the New Theology by agreeing to beatify its star icons.
The beatification of Paul VI and John Paul II also serve another purpose: it is a means of canonizing Vatican II and the conciliar revolution. The new program of Vatican II cannot withstand genuine Catholic scrutiny. It is a rupture with the past; it finds no support in Scripture, Tradition or reason.
Thus, the Conciliar revolution must be imposed by intimidation; not an intimidation at gunpoint, but an intimidation that overwhelms Catholics by proclaiming the alleged saintliness of its most determined innovators. “Blessed” John XXIII, “Venerable” Paul VI, “Blessed” John Paul II, new saints for the new religion, all elevated to their exalted status by a new canonization process that dispenses with the role of “devil’s advocate”, and no longer insures the miraculous beyond all natural explanation.
The new conciliar program reveals its propagators as churchmen who publicly betrayed their Oath Against Modernism, solemnly sworn to God on the night before their ordination. The eminent theologian Msgr. Joseph Clifford Fenton warned in 1960 that the man who took the Oath Against Modernism, and who then promoted Modernism himself, or allowed it to be promoted, “would mark himself not only as a sinner against the Catholic Faith but also as a common perjurer.”[6] Pope Benedict’s Vatican “beatifies” such men.
The diabolical disorientation continues full gallop. While we heed the Message of Fatima to “pray a great deal for the Holy Father,” we also urge Catholics to resist this latest attempt to canonize conciliar confusion.
Notes
[1] Quoted from Michael McGrade, “Redemptionis Sacramentum, DOA, RIP”, Christian Order, Aug.-Sept. 2004.
[2] Robert McAffee Brown, The Ecumenical Revolution, 2nd ed. (Garden City: Doubleday, 1969), pp. 67-68.
[3] Quoted from Arnaud de Lassus, A Layman’s Guide to Vatican II (Winona: STAS Editions, 2012), p. 24.
[4] Ibid., p. 28.
[5] Andrea Tornielli, “Cardinals Vote Unanimously in Favor of Paul VI’s Canonization”, Vatican Insider, Dec. 14, 2012.
[6] Msgr. Joseph Clifford Fenton, “The Sacrorum Antistitum and the Background of the Oath Against Modernism,” American Ecclesiastical Review, October 1960, p. 259.
Matt Gaspers
