Rorate Caeli

Editorial: Dogmatic but not on dogma

Editorial: Radicati nella fede, February 2015
Newsletter of the Catholic community of
Vocogno, Diocese of Novara, Italy

Dogmatic but not on dogma appears to be the exact state of affairs in the Church these past decades.

While theologians and the various pastoralists are allowed to dabble with Christian doctrine in complete freedom  dangerously reformulating the truths of the faith by transforming it into something else; while preaching is allowed to run free like a river – placing in danger the entire Catholic Creed, there is this [tendency] to become dogmatic, fixed and authoritarian on what is not essential in the Church, for example: diocesan and parochial pastoral organization.

Once instead, the Church was concerned about the preservation of dogmas and truth, including the truths of the Gospel. Once instead, the Church was concerned about safeguarding and transmitting the entirety of Catholic morality, by repeating the Commandments and elaborating them for the faithful, so that they would make an effort to apply them to the reality of their own lives.

Also discipline, once strict in the Church, was so, in order to safeguard the wholesome transmission of God’s Grace through the framework of the Sacraments.

She was strict in guaranteeing the conditions of receiving the Sacraments fruitfully, but, with regard to the all the rest there was no dogmatization, or so it seems to us. The history of the Church is the history of freedom, great freedom, in responding to the will of God. If we think about the Saints, we notice that they are not the same at all; the great imagination of God and the great freedom of man in doing good are seen in their lives. At the same time, though, in the very diverse lives of the Saints, we see a remarkable uniformity as regards the dogmas, i.e. what they believed, the importance given to the Sacraments, the centrality of the Mass, life conceived as a participation in the redemptive sufferings of Our Lord, love for the Church, scrupulosity in the works of mercy, faith in eternal life, decisiveness in praying for the living and the dead etc. In short, they were a living catechism: we could teach doctrine fruitfully starting with the lives of the Saints of all the different Christian epochs, and we would always arrive at a rescript of the same catechism. 

The Saints, the Church, were uniform; that is, united, in the Faith and in the discipline which logically develops from it, but not [necessarily] in all the other things.

Nowadays, to be precise, it’s not  like that anymore: you are checked on ‘all the other things’,  and you have to conform to one style i.e. “ the modern Church”. If you don’t conform, you no longer belong to this Church; and if you aren't thrown out, you live in the shadows: they know you’re there, but do everything possible to make you invisible     It’s of no importance that you are a devout Catholic, that you safeguard the integral doctrine of the Church in its timelessness.  

This is the new dogma. It’s the super-untouchable-dogma, which envelopes all the timeless dogmas, by neutralizing and contaminating them in the new ideology.

The true dogmas are the truths revealed by God we are obliged to believe in, through the authority of God Who revealed them. The Church is their custodian. The pastors have the grave responsibility of transmitting these, so that souls may be saved.

The super-dogma of modernity, by contrast, does not come from God. Men invented it. And they claim to re-interpret everything along the lines of this affirmation: “The Church must keep up with the times, otherwise She’ll find Herself outside history.”

This is a falsity that comes from way back in the past; Masonry has become its most devastating propagator over the last few centuries;  this lie has entered slowly, slowly into the Church, and appears to have won today.

Inside this bulletin you will find a fine article by Padre Emmanuel, where he discusses “the mystery of iniquity” and defines Masonry as “the cesspit of all mankind’s corruptions”.  This global  re-interpretation of Catholicism modern-style, is the heart of the Masonic work to transform Catholicism into a useless natural religion, made up of empty words about human solidarity.

“The Church must keep up with the times, otherwise She’ll find Herself outside history” is a lie, and they will never explain it to you, but they’ll impose it on you with violence. They would never explain it, because if they did, their heresy would be evident, and would reveal they weren’t from God.

From the very beginning modernity has never been a concern of the Church. Her concern was always being faithful to Our Lord Jesus, to Divine Revelation. Think about what St. Paul writes in the letter to the Galatians:

But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach a gospel to you besides that which we have preached to you, let him be anathema.  As we said before, so now I say again: If any one preach to you a gospel, besides that which you have received, let him be anathema.” (Galatians, Chapt. 1 vv 8-9)

Frightening! “But though we or an angel from heaven preach a gospel to you besides that which…”  St. Paul warns the faithful –   not only about an angel from heaven, but not even he, the great apostle, can change a single word of that gospel that he had already preached to them.

Who are they then, these modern theologians and pastoralists?  Who do they think they are – asking us to modify the faith by re-interpreting it along the lines of the super-dogma of modernity?  Must the Church adapt to the world of today? Can She not do today what She did in the past? 

Oh, yes that’s what they are saying, you can no longer do what the Church did in the past…you have to adapt to the modern world. But again, they never tell you why, they never explain why.

Why shouldn't we experience the Mass like once before? Why shouldn't we receive the Sacraments like once before? Why is it that we have to distort practices consolidated in the Church for centuries, just to apply the dubious ecclesiastical recipes of today? Why is the clear and simple traditional catechism no longer any good? Why can’t the people in the churches of today not experience prayer like the Christians of two thousand years ago? Why do we have to change the rules to receive the Sacraments, if they come from the truth of the Gospel and safeguard dogma?

The modern clergy say that we must change because the men of today wouldn't understand. Yet even here they don’t explain this. They say that’s the way it is, that it’s not up for discussion.

It seems to us instead, that it is the modernized clergy themselves, who cannot support the Church and Her glorious history of grace and holiness. They aren't able to support the timeless Church, because they have lost the reasons, and so in order not to leave they have been working to change Her with the dogma of modernity. Indeed, they have really changed Her where they were able to, disfiguring Her and causing the greatest crisis in Christian history.

But the Church is of God, and for this reason we continue serenely, in Tradition, awaiting the hour of liberation.

[Rorate translation by contributor Francesca Romana]