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July 2003 No. 53
The Second Vatican Council imposes a variation of the doctrine on marriage contrary to the Catholic Church's constant teaching. In the Vatican II document, Gaudium et Spes [hereafter GS-Ed.], the married state is denned as "the intimate partnership of life and love which...has been established by the creator..." (GS§48), whose proper end is procreation:
Note that it does not find its "reason for being" in the procreation and education of children, but its "crown." This leads one to believe that the end of the state of matrimony is mutual perfection of the spouses, that is, the secondary end becomes the first, since the true end (the procreative one), becomes secondary because it is proposed as a consequence (or "crowning glory") of the personalist value of marriage. > In §49 of GS, Vatican II offers a definition of conjugal love that opens the way to eroticism in marriage, as against the Church's entire tradition. It reads:
The love spoken about here, because it is "eminently human," enrich[es] the sentiments of the spirit and their physical expression…." This can only refer to the ensemble of acts through which the spouses arrive at the conjugal act. Here, these acts, these "expressions," are justified exclusively as a corporal manifestation, that is, a sensual expression of conjugal love and, therefore, for their erotic value. On the contrary, the Church has always taught that these acts are permitted, and only within legitimate limits, solely as acts which favor the conjugal embrace, understood as a natural act committed to procreation and, therefore, allowed in relation to the first end of marriage, which is procreation, and not for satisfaction itself of conjugal love, understood as the secondary end of marriage and limited by its primary end (Casti Connubii, dz. 2241). > Vatican II asserts:
This is a formally correct statement but it is incomplete and, for that reason, a source of doctrinal error. Its incompleteness is due to the fact that it doesn't quote what is written in Genesis 2:18-23 here. [Gen. 2:18-23 opens with "And the Lord God said: It is not good for a man to be alone: let us make him a help like unto himself." Verse 23 reads: "And Adam said: This now is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man."-Ed] By failing to do so at this propitious moment in the text, GS creates the false impression that God created man and woman at the same time, rendering them totally equal. On the contrary, first Genesis sums up God's work (Gen. 1:27), and then explains in detail what actually took place (Gen. 2:18ff.). And in the initial exposition, inspired by the Spirit of Truth, the hagiographer justly puts man and woman on the same plane, in order to tell us that both were made by God in His image, and thus both are equal before God: "And God created man to his own image: to the image of God he created him: male and female he created them." But he then specifies that woman was created after man, from his side, in order to be his companion:
Similar, but not equal, as St. Paul explains to us, speaking in the name of the Lord in the famous passage of I Cor. 11:3ff. (which Vatican II never quoted and today has fallen into obscurity) beginning with
Vatican II's entire pastoral on marriage (GS §§47-52) is completely silent on the natural difference between the sexes established by God. From the premise of a non-Catholic idea, it advances to a natural and total equality between the spouses-considered in the abstract as "persons"-as beings who express themselves freely in the "community of [matrimonial] love," completely ignoring the teaching of St. Paul and the Church throughout the ages, according to which, as we have seen, man is the natural head over the woman and, thus, over the family. This ignores the principle of nature that a woman's fundamental vocation is as spouse and mother, of bringing children into the world and educating them in a Catholic way. > Vatican II opened the way to the preliminary dogmas of feminism, that particularly perverse contemporary sub-culture which, in the name of false equality, exalts false liberty and homosexuality and destroys marriage and family. These overtures to feminism are evident in the Second Vatican Council documents. It is evident in the implicit recognition of the contention that in our day, "...women claim parity with men in fact as well as of rights, where they have not already obtained it;..." (GS§9). It is in the implicit recognition that women's life choices be accepted as expressions of alleged "basic personal rights."
A further overture to feminism is also present under the heading, "Recognition of Everyone's Right to Culture and Its Implementation" in GS.
A subtle undermining of motherhood is found under the heading, "Fostering Marriage and the Family: A Duty for All." The slight shift of emphasis is dangerous and is especially manifest when considering what has happened to the esteem for generous motherhood over the last 40 years. In many way, genuine motherhood has been outright abandoned.
As a final exhibit to prove our point, we quote from Vatican II's "Decree on the Apostolate of Lay People," Apostolicam Actuositatem (Nov. 18, 1965):
Note the wider participation of women in society is not the necessity of a religious character, but by virtue of the simple fact that "women are taking an increasingly active share in the whole life of society." The more active participation is provoked, to a great extent, by the false "dogmas" that we have just related, and carried out under their signature, a participation that was condemned by Pius XI as "a grave disorder to eliminate at all cost" in his encyclical, Quadragesima Anno, because it takes "mothers of families" away from their proper duties (AAS23 [1931] 200).
8) Errors Concerning Members of Sects, Heretics, and Schismatics (i.e., the So-called "Separated Brethren") > In Unitatis Redintegratio §3, the Second Vatican Council promotes a historically baseless and pernicious thesis:
In other words, men became heretics and schismatics through the fault of "men on both sides." > This paragraph in UR continues:
The statement is theologically erroneous since the "sin of separation" remains to the present because the schismatic and/or heretic who "grows up" in the doctrines of his sect, once becoming an adult, gives these doctrines his conscious intellectual and willful belief. Thus he progresses from the state of a material heretic and schismatic to being a. formal heretic and schismatic, and, through a positive personal act, refuses to submit himself to Christ's revealed doctrine and to the authority He instituted. > Further, from §3 of UR we read the statement:
Both statements contradict the Church's universal tradition, reaffirmed by Pope Pius XII in Mystici Corporis:
This statement is valid for all public heretics and schismatics, even if they are of good faith [i.e., material heretics and schismatics-Ed.]. Nevertheless, the latter differ from formal heretics and schismatics because of their willingness to profess the true faith in the true Church (votum Ecclesiae). By means of this willingness, they are "ordained" through a "certain unconscious desire for the Mystical Body of the Redeemer." And while they find themselves outside this Body's visible entity, they can belong to it in an invisible way, thereby attaining justification and salvation. Nevertheless, they remain "deprived of many gifts and...heavenly aids." This is why, like his predecessors, Pope Pius XII invites them "to favor interior movements of grace and to remove themselves from their present state, in which they cannot be sure of their salvation"; "That they therefore come back into Catholic unity" (AAS 35 [1943] 242-243; dz. 2290). In this regard, it is also necessary to recognize the falsehood of yet another sentence from §3 of UR:
This sentence introduces the idea that, by virtue of just being baptized, non-Catholics are to be counted among the members of the Catholic Church without any belief in the true Faith and without being obedient to legitimate pastors. This statement results from the manipulation of a passage from the Council of Florence (1429), referenced in a footnote Number 17 [see boldfaced footnote no. 17 in excerpt immediately above-Ed.] in Unitatis Redintegratio. The passage is excerpted from the famous pro Armenis decree that re-established unity with the Armenian Church. But that decree showcased the seven Sacraments as Catholics must understand them, that is, as all seven, without making any reference to the baptism of heretics nor giving it any heterodox meaning: "The first of all of the sacraments is Baptism, the door to spiritual life: thanks to it, we become members of Christ and part of the Body of the Church" (Dz- 696). Here, those who are "incorporated" into Christ and the Church are the Catholics and not heretics and schismatics. > In Vatican II's Lumen Gentium (§8) there is a description of the false ideas of what constitutes the "separated brethren" patrimony:
In UR §3, this thinking marches on to its obvious and logical conclusions:
Based on the above, however, it is impossible to understand how "the life of grace" and the three theological virtues (faith, hope, and charity) could have been conserved in heretical and schismatic communities-rebels against the authority of the one legitimate Church of Christ-since here they are referred to as "communities," that is, foreign organisms opposed to the one Church of Christ, and not as individuals. Moreover, one would like to know what possibilities for "sanctification" and what "truths" are contained in the doctrines and manner of life of the heretical and schismatic communities who oppose the Roman Pontiff and all that is Catholic. Even the idea of "sanctification" is denied in many of these "communities" and some even defend a completely subjective idea of truth, including revealed truth. > In its § 15, the document Lumen Gentium speaks about non-Catholic Christians-that is, formal heretics and schismatics, or at least material ones-who are joined to the Catholic Church.
This is false doctrine. The "separated brethren" are separated precisely because they rebel against the teaching of the Church and thereby resist the Holy Spirit. They therefore cannot be "united" to the Catholic Church as separated communities that live in rebellion. Nor can any of these heretics and schismatics, who have not professed the truth faith, a faith they even fought, have the title "martyr" conferred upon them. Murdered Protestant missionaries cannot be considered martyrs since they were not witnesses to the true Faith. By God's grace a formal heretic can be converted and die for the true Faith, but then he dies a Catholic. In an invisible way, through votum Ecclesiae, the material heretic belongs to the Catholic Church. Therefore, if he is martyred, he also dies a Catholic and not a heretic and schismatic. That, however, as Pope Pius IX said, is "God's secret." But §15 of LG is not referring to heretics and schismatics in this way. On the contrary, it clearly enough states that non-Catholics, as such, have been assisted by the Spirit of Truth to the extent that a certain number among them have shed their blood, that is, undergone martyrdom for their faith. This amounts to saying that they have been martyred for their errors. This text lends itself to the worst interpretation by alluding to "martyrs" who are not specified as to their faith-which, in any case, is a. false faith-to also refer to obstinate heretics, tenacious corruptors of souls, justly condemned in the past by the Church. > A new pastoral task is entrusted to the Church, expressed especially in Gaudium et Spes§3:
This order is addressed to Catholics and, reinforced by other Vatican II documents, asks them to collaborate with heretics and schismatics in order to elaborate on commonly held translations of Holy Scripture (Sacrosanctum Concilium, Part III, Sec. A. "General Norms"). In the name of "common patrimony of the Gospel," Catholics are told in the document Apostolicam Actuositatem to collaborate with "other Christians" and "non-Christians" in the work of Catholic apostolate.
In the following three excerpts from Unitatis Redintegratio the same ideas are espoused:
All of this is totally new pastoral teaching because it is exactly the opposite of what the Apostles ordered regarding the proper attitude regarding willful heretics: "A man that is a heretic, after the first and second admonition, avoid: knowing that he, that is such an one, is subverted, and sinneth, being condemned by his own judgment" (Tit. 3:10,11), and "If any man come to you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into the house nor say to him, God speed you. For he that saith unto him, God speed you, communicateth with his wicked works" (II Jn. 1: 10,11). It is evident that the false ecumenism promoted by the Second Vatican Council is the basis of the new pastoral teaching. Common "patrimony" and "values" do not exist and cannot exist with heretics and schismatics. Protestants do not recognize Tradition as a source of dogma nor the truth of Faith according to which it is incumbent on the Magisterium of the Church assisted by the Holy Spirit to define "the meaning and interpretation of the Scriptures" (Dz. 786). Moreover, the approach of heretics and schismatics to Scripture is to deform it since they believe in individual free interpretation, to which they dare submit the meaning of one or another revealed truth. Martin Luther, their primary leader, destroyed doctrine and morality. He denied the authority of the Pope, of Tradition, of the Priesthood. He changed Scripture, denatured the very idea of the Church, reduced the number of Sacraments from seven to two, and these two were bastardized. He denied transubstantiation and the propitiatory meaning of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, Purgatory, and the perpetual virginity of Mary. He derided the principle of sanctity, virginity, and chastity. He allowed divorce. He denied free will and the meritorious value of good works. He fomented hatred among Christians and incited them to revolt against the principle of authority. The Anglicans have maintained the Episcopate. However, it is as if they had not done so because their consecrations and ordinations are null and void. Pope Leo XIII declared this in a dogmatic judgment in 1896 (Dz. 1963). They are null because of the lack of form and intention. They are a sect that submits to political power, a "civil religion" with a Christian fagade. The presence of "priestesses" has spread among today's Protestants. This is a form of neo-paganism resulting from the penetration of feminism among heretics which they would also like to see installed in the Catholic Church. > Vatican II uses the title "Church" ambiguously. In UR §3, the ambiguous term "Churches or communities," or, again "separated Churches and communities," referring to non-Catholic denominations. Also in LG §15 we read, "their own Churches or communities." Such terminology describing heretical and schismatic sects as "Churches" qualifies as an obvious theological error since only the Catholic Church is the Church founded by Christ. No communities separated from this Church, founded by Christ on Peter, can pretend to be-either individually or in union with other separated communities-the one Catholic Church that Jesus Christ instituted. Nor can they allege to be a member or part of it since they are visibly separated from Catholic unity. And this same condition pertains to the Eastern schismatics, as was reaffirmed by all of the Roman Pontiffs from Pius IX to Pius XII, thus countering the pretensions of non-Catholic ecumenism. > In Vatican II’s UR §11, there is the following exhortation addressed to Catholic theologians. We quote part of it here; the rest is quoted in our next point.
This contains the erroneous idea, expressly condemned by Pius XI in Mortalium Animos (DZ 2199), that there are revealed truths and dogmas that are more or less important to accept, and that by reason of God's authority we are bound to accept, with the same obligation, all of the truths contained in Divine Revelation, because "it is repugnant to reason that, even in one thing, one not believe God who speaks" (Leo XIII, Satis Cognitum). The above-cited excerpt from UR leads to the absurd conclusion that in "ecumenical dialogue," "doctrinal truths" can be discussed with heretics which in this alleged "hierarchy" occupy a less important position. This is the opening for the false principle contained in the conclusion of § 11 of Unitatis Redintegratio which is the next error of Vatican II we cite. > Vatican II establishes the principle that, in discussing the Church's doctrines by way of comparing them with those of the "separated brethren," account must be taken that there is a "hierarchy of truths," as was noted above in the first part of UR§11. The conclusion?-
This is an unheard-of principle, bordering on heresy, because it entrusts the task of inciting a "deeper realization and a clearer expression of the unfathomable riches of Christ," to theological study done with heretics as if it is not the role of the infallible Magisterium to faithfully transmit and define revealed truth! It would be as if Catholic truth could go hand in hand with the errors of members of sects and schismatics, and even allow a "fraternal rivalry" to make us know better Our Lord's unfathomable riches! Here, UR§11 treasonously quotes Ephesians 3:8 to support its fallacy. What does St. Paul actually say? To me, the least of all the saints, is given the grace, to preach among the Gentiles, the unsearchable riches of Christ (Eph. 3:8). Note that the Gentiles, the heathen, do not preach to St. Paul! The Epistle to St. Timothy reiterates the same principle: Preach the word: be instant in season, out of season: reprove, entreat, rebuke in all patience and doctrine. For there shall be a time, when they will not endure sound doctrine; but according to their own desires, they will heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears. And will indeed turn away their hearing from the truth, but will be turned unto fables (II Tim. 4:2-3). There is nothing to be said for "dialogue" with heretics and schismatics in order to learn something from them, which St. Paul and St. John (and all the Popes) specifically forbid. > Vatican II weakened the dogma of the Council of Trent that only the Catholic Church can "judge the true meaning and interpretation of Holy Scripture" (DZ. 786). The weakening of this dogma occurs in UR§21:
The operative paragraph is the third one above. The Catholic Church has only a "special place in expounding and preaching the written Word of God"? But the Magisterium denotes more than this. It is supernaturally founded and assisted. It is the only judge of the true meaning and of the interpretation of Holy Scripture. > There is an essentially erroneous conception of Protestants' use of Scripture in Unitatis Redintegratio §23:
This statement is erroneous because Protestants "cling to Christ's word" not as Catholics do, that is, as the Catholic Church teaches, but according to the false principle of free interpretation which allows "freely proclaiming anything that seems true [to them]," formally condemned as heretical in 1520 by Pope Leo X, in the Bull, Exurge Domine, which outlaws Luther's heresies (Dz- 769). Canonicus
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