In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
Well, Rome was quite an experience. The conference was good. It was very hard to go away from the conference, though, and to go down into the City of Rome and around St. Peter’s and everything like that, because, every where you go the traditional Catholic is virtually assaulted, and I don’t mean by people or even principalities and powers. What I mean is the remnants of the so-called beatification of John Paul II are everywhere there. They are still, I am sure, scraping the remnants of the grape Kool-Aid off the walls and ceilings and things from all the Novus Ordo hype over there. But, it is truly nauseating, truly nauseating, every where you turn. There are even books that say John Paul the Great. Everything — you walk into a store and the first thing they come up to you and say in English, Do you want a John Paul rosary? So, for the traditional Catholic it becomes a bit much.
When I got back, though, I was overjoyed to see a couple of things, first of all home and my parishioners. There is really nothing like home and I really don’t like — I don’t know, unless they fix airplanes, I don’t think I’ll be doing too much of that anymore. But one thing that happened when I got home is I got notice from Angelus Press of a new book that they are in the process of translating from the French into the English. It has already been published in French. It will soon be out in English. And what this book is, it’s a book by — first of all, the French priest who wrote it is Father Patrick de La Rocque, and, so, you already know it’s going to be decent because of his first name. (Congregation laughing) It is called John Paul II, Doubts About A Beatification. Now, why was I overjoyed at seeing this book being published? Well, when I read the blurb about it, there were a couple of things I was overjoyed about. First of all, that there was so much talk — people are always asking me, Oh, do you think the Society of Pius X is going to compromise with Rome and cave in in their theological discussions, and this kind of thing. I am sure that this book has completely torpedoed any possibility that that is going to happen, because it is an official publication of the Society of Pius X.
Furthermore, a copy of it was given by way of devil’s advocate to the Vatican before the so-called beatification of John Paul II. It had no effect, although it should have had an effect, but it was, nonetheless, delivered. And so I was overjoyed to see that.
Now, the book isn’t out in English yet, I don’t think, because I just got the blurb just this week that it is coming out, and I don’t think they are that fast about it. But a synopsis of it is given in this month’s Angeles Magazine by a Fr. Dominique Bourmaud. Fr. Bourmaud is the head of the House of Priestly Studies in Kansas City, so he is in charge of the priests’ training program there for priests that want to come and learn how to be traditional priests.
Now, I wanted to say a few words about this today, because Fr. Bourmaud makes a point in the beginning of the article that silence is consent. Now you’ve heard me speak about the whole John Paul II issue before. But I really feel now that his beatification so-called has become a reality that will have to be undone by a future Pope, but for us it is a practical reality that traditional Catholics have to be a little bit of a voice of sanity. Yes, we are the voice crying in the wilderness, but there was so much hype and nonsense and stupidity at the very core of the Church about an event that shouldn’t have ever happened to one of the worst Popes in the history of the Church, that we have to know what to say to these Vatican II Novus Ordo people who are nothing short of the equivalent of the followers of Jim Jones in Catholic disguise. They are not only taking their little cup of Kool-Aid, they are drinking it by the gallon. They’re bathing in it, they’re washing their floors with it. It’s all over the place. And it is so upsetting to see that an entire Church has lost its’ mind, that something has to be said to you to fortify your faith. I am not, even though I am, I mean, I am knocking John Paul II — how could you not, but I mean I’m not really attacking him, that is not the point of what I’m saying here. But part of what I am saying here is to fortify your faith and know what to say to these complete bubble heads who are swallowing that he is this great saint somehow. We have to keep some sanity in the Church, and if it’s only us, then it’s only us. But you have to have a reason for what you think.
So he makes the point, silence is consent. And it is. And one thing I was thinking about, thank God for SSPX. You know, with all their faults, and we all have faults, could the Fraternity of St. Peter have put out this book? Could the Institute of Christ the King have put out this book? Could any of the indult, you know, Ecclesia Dei organizations have put out this book? Unh-unh. But should they have? Yes. And their silence is consent. Father accuses indirectly but accuses all people in the Church who know better and who said nothing, of consenting to this awful crime, this so-called beatification.
So, I agree that silence is consent, and he says about telling our congregations even about the reality of this thing that happened May 1st in Rome. He said, Speaking up — he’s talking about speaking up — he says, “This is a necessary gesture of sanity in an insane environment, an act of sobriety in the company of drunkards. For those who have not bowed to Baal, for souls in search of truth, as a testimony for future generations, at least someone must speak his mind and say with the child of the fable: ‘The emperor has no clothes!’”
You could go on for quite a while about this. What I want to say is when that book comes I will be the first to get it and not long after that you will be the second, because it is so necessary to have this book. It is apparently, from what Father describes in the French edition, very well footnoted, it is not railing against anybody, it is presenting a classic devil’s advocate position against the canonization of somebody. In this case, the devil’s advocate never had an easier job in all his life. He had a virtual smorgasbord to choose from and he put a lot of that smorgasbord into this book.
So, first of all, I want to talk — now, what I’m saying here is some of it comes from me because I’ve said it before. But he organized it in such a way, I’m taking both a little bit from Father Bourmaud and from Father de La Rocque in this sermon today. So it’s not original. Just so you know I’m not plagiarizing, I’m synthesizing and sometimes adding my comments, but they are so good and so direct, and then we’ll all have the book anyway to fill out what I am lacking today, because with the time we have we can’t possibly.
But, anyway, first of all, it’s Father Bourmaud who addresses the matter of infallibility of a beatification or a canonization. Now, why is this important? Because the Novus Ordo, especially conservatives, go, Oh, well, canonization is an infallible thing. If the Pope canonizes John Paul II, then he’s a saint and this, that and the other thing. Well, Father reminds us that classically a canonization process, classically meaning before Vatican II — What happens now is anything but classical. It’s punk, if you want, but it’s not classical. A canonization process is based on three things. When they want to canonize somebody they look at the orthodoxy of their statements and their writings, even their personal writings. Are they in perfect conformity with the faith. The second is the heroism of the virtues that they practiced. Were they heroic in their practice of the virtues. And, finally, the authenticity of the miracles. Ultimately, all of these three things rely on the first, which is the authenticity of the writings, and I’ll tell you why. Because the first, the testimony of the heroism of their practice of the virtues sometimes can be fake. Even St. Thomas Aquinas says that the testimony of people can be bought or these people can be lying when they give testimony of the heroic virtues of a particular saint. So, once again, the reference then goes back to their orthodoxy which is in writing.
The third one, the miracles, are for the most part not completely reliable, because in many cases, the devil, as Father Bourmaud says, can ape God, meaning in the effect of miracles he can do some effects that look like a miracle from God and aren’t. It was in one of the exorcism books I read that a good point, the devil can make somebody sick and then, when you do something, let’s say, superstitious, he can take away his influence making you sick and make you feel a little better, and you think you’ve gotten a cure. But he is still leading you in the wrong direction and the same can happen there. So, even with the case of the miracles, the reference goes back to the orthodoxy of the person involved. So, when theologians refer to infallible canonizations, they mean the canonizations rely on that first point, is everything that person said in conformity with the doctrine of the Church and, therefore, would be infallible. As the process has changed so much, a Catholic is allowed to be suspicious of the infallible character of modern canonizations. For example, the miracle in the case that they used for John Paul II, there was a woman, and this is their one miracle. You are actually supposed to have more, but now they’ve reduced it to not one, but maybe point three miracles necessary for a canonization. And she was shaky, okay? She had the shakes. Now, looking back on the case, I think it was the DTs, but she was shaky and somebody said, well, we think you have Parkinson’s Disease. And then she got some medical treatment for that. And then she prayed to John Paul II, or something like that, and she got better from her shakiness. Now, what’s wrong? First of all, the miracle — the so-called miracle says she was cured of Parkinson’s. She was never diagnosed with Parkinson’s. The diagnosis was not conclusive. And second of all, probably more importantly, she received medical attention. She received treatment. And so that cannot count as a miracle. Not that it wasn’t a miracle, but it cannot count in the case of a canonization.
For example, someone has cancer. They get chemotherapy and then they decide to go to Lourdes or whatever. And in Lourdes they come away with no cancer. Okay. Now, you can’t count — it might have been miraculous but you can’t count it as a miracle because it could be due to the chemotherapy. And if there is any possibility of that in the Church, it does not count as a bona fide miracle of the sort necessary to canonize a saint.
So, she was never fully diagnosed with Parkinson’s. She was given medical treatment and then she stopped shaking, and this was the best miracle they could come up with for their cause. Very, very suspicious.
The other thing is, what ulterior motives might Benedict XVI have had for speeding up this process of the canonization of John Paul II? Well, to make a long story short, John Paul II was a key figure and, in fact, embodied Vatican II and the spirit of Vatican II. He imposed ruthlessly the nonsense of Vatican II on the entire Church during his almost 27 years as Pope. Now, it is suspected, and Benedict XVI has said as much, that he felt John Paul II was the embodiment, basically, of Vatican II. What Benedict XVI was doing with his few years left as Pope was to rescue his life’s work of Vatican II and destroying the Church. He basically canonized Vatican II. He beatified — not canonized yet, thank God — (Father knocking on wood) superstitious, I know. Knock on wood, as they say, this will never happen. But he beatified Vatican II, he beatified modernism. And the thinking seems to have been that by giving a beatification to the embodiment of the horrible spirit of Vatican II, that people will think everything he taught was fine, Vatican II is wonderful, it is now canonized. It has now been beatified as well. And, of course, we can see by examining the council of documents that there is even heresy in those documents. That’s another day’s work, too.
So, that’s the ulterior motives. The book itself, then, which he describes, is in four parts and brilliantly deals with the virtues, first of all, the theological virtues of faith, hope and charity, and finally the cardinal virtue of prudence, as exemplified and as it was manifested in the ministry and pontificate of John Paul II.
Okay, so briefly, faith, hope, charity and prudence. Briefly, basically, and not to draw this out, but John Paul II fails miserably on every one of the virtues. His virtues are centered on man and not on God as he defines them. And this is not the heroic exercise of a virtue. For example, charity is the virtue that allows you to love God above all things with your whole heart, your whole mind and your whole soul, and your neighbor as yourself for love of God. Well, he forgot about the God part in his charity, so-called. And it’s this humanism, secular humanism at every turn.
For example, his faith is in man. In his first Encyclical, Redemptor hominis, this supernatural is redefined on the basis of personal consciousness — this is according to the article now, and an excerpt from the book — and dragged down, in this encyclical to the level of the natural, setting the tone of his pontificate. Divine Revelation is simply man revealed to man; Christ’s Redemption has justified all men by making them aware of their dignity, sin is but an incoherence within the conscious.
So, on this matter of what his idea of faith consisted of, on the matter of redemption, salvation is universal, applied to everybody. This is one of the things John Paul II believed in. Christ came to earth and everybody was saved on earth, Buddhist or tree worshiper, or whatever it is, not only Catholics, by the mere matter of the Incarnation, and they were saved in a perpetual and inadmissible way from conception, whichever be the lot of everyone
On the matter of baptism, his faith was that sanctifying grace is what bonds together all baptized persons, and the grace of baptism is not destroyed by sin.
And on the matter of sin and satisfaction of sin by Christ: sin does not offend divine justice, it merely upsets the human condition, it causes ripples amongst humanity.
Okay, so that’s the faith. The hope, his hope is to unify the human family but not under Christ. He had the hope of creating what he called the culture of love, that we’re all supposed to get together, no matter what the religions. Of course, this is exemplified at Assisi, that the most important thing was everybody to get along peacefully. The position of the Church has always been the world can only be united peacefully under the banner of Jesus Christ. And his is a remarkable divergence from that.
If you just wait a little while, that book will be out. I can’t go through all the quotes here, obviously, there isn’t time.
Charity, there is no charity in the writings of John Paul II in the sense that I defined it, the virtue that allows you to love God above all things and your neighbor as yourself. If you love your neighbor as yourself, what do you want for your neighbor? The same thing you want for yourself. You want to go to heaven. And, so, you want your neighbor to convert to the Catholic faith, which is the only way of going to heaven. If you love that person, you will want them to go to heaven so you will want them to become Catholic. John Paul II assiduously avoided any proselytism, any conversion. Remember, he got off the airplane in the Holy Land and the first thing he says is, I’m not here to convert you. Well, that’s a gross lack of charity. That’s a mortally sinful lack of charity and there’s no way that on the part of the Pope that can be anything but a mortal sin. So Father says in this, the Pope has shown an improper respect for the Jewish religion, speaking of the “spiritual treasures of the Jewish People”. Anyway, it goes on with lots of other quotes, but what John Paul II has said of the Jews — in fact, what this Pope is also saying of them, is that we have no particular mission to convert them. This is a lack of charity. John Paul II went further to say that they are a necessary part of the Christian, the Catholic faith, they are our elder brothers, they are this, that and the other thing. Well, they are nothing of the sort. They don’t have anything to do with Old Testament Judaism and Judaism has no longer the power to save anyone.
So, he fails then in faith is centered on man, hope is centered on man, charity is not charity, it’s this fraternal love kind of thing, not spiritual love. Prudence — prudence is the virtue that directs your every action towards going to heaven, towards salvation. And look at the many scandals that he perpetuated, the kissing of the Koran. There was one I read about the other day that I never even heard about before. He made a prayer. He said, May St. John Baptist protect Islam. Well, they both have to do with cutting off your head, I guess. But, aside from that, what kind of Pope would say that. And he was anointed by a devil worshiper, he allowed himself to be signed on the forehead by a devil worshiper. A lot of this stuff — what it boils down to is there is no prudence evident in the pontificate of John Paul II.
Now, all of this stuff, the doctrinal questions and things about the virtues, Pope Benedict XIV some time ago, put out a book about canonization. And he said in there, any doctrinal suspicion should bury the process of canonization forever, even a suspicion of somebody’s doctrine being wrong. And, like I said, we have the Home Town Buffet of nonsense when it comes to John Paul II. You don’t even have to be suspicious. There’s evidence damning his orthodoxy everywhere in print when viewed from what the Church has always believed and always taught.
So, my dear faithful, the conclusion of Father de La Rocque’s book and Father Bourmaud’s article is, Will he be canonized? So it said, to which sainthood. What are we to conclude as to the sanctity of the late Pope. This is the churchman who sang the glory of man, rather than “Jesus Christ and Him Crucified”” This is the Assisi leader whom the Masonic lodges vindicate as one of them.
No doubt, Blessed Karol Wojtyla will find a place in his encompassing ecumenical martyrology open to new martyrs and saints. He will be glorified as a hero together with those whose praises he sang, like Luther, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King. Is he your man? Well, good for you! As for me — as the French say — he is no saint of my parish!
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.