Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost, October 5, 2014

Sold for a Mess of Pottage

If I had to choose a religion, which one should I choose? Well, considering the fact that God Himself revealed the true Religion, and requires all human beings to believe in it, and to belong to it, do I have a right to choose whatever religion I want? Obviously not! I must choose the religion approved by Him. Those who don’t want to believe God go their own way and choose from among the false religions.  

God Himself came to us as a man, and proved by many amazing miracles that He was indeed God the Son. What more do we need? God has spoken, and Jesus Christ is the Word, the Word that became flesh, and dwelt among us (Jn.1:14).

A recent article in The Catholic Thing (D. Bonagura, Jr., Why Catholicism is the True Religion, Aug. 21, 2014) deals with the problem of choosing the right religion. The author tells about a man who once asked a teaching brother, “How do we know that of all the religions in the world Catholicism is the right one?” The brother replied: “We don’t know. We have to take it on faith.”

What? Well surely a brother teaching in a Catholic High School should be able to do better than that. But the author himself then takes up the question, saying:

“After we parted, I wondered how I would have answered that question. Of course,” says he, “there is no external, rational standard by which we can assess religions, or many other claims that are not empirically verifiable.”

I beg your pardon! While it may be true that we cannot prove the truth of the Catholic Religion by the use of test tubes and microscopes, we can verify its truth by examining the evidence of history and the testimony of credible witnesses. The Gospels, besides being the revealed word of God, are historical documents too. They can stand at the head of the line of the most reliable historical documents ever written. And no other historical character of His time is so well documented by as many reliable witnesses as the Lord Himself, Jesus Christ.

The Apostle St. John, the most reliable of witnesses, speaks to us in the words of his Gospel, offering us as proof of the divinity of Jesus Christ His many ‘signs,’ or miracles:

“Many other signs also Jesus worked in the sight of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name” (Jn.20:30,31).

Looking with the Church through the lens of St. John’s Gospel, we see, and we believe. But take care that you look with the Church, you will lose your way.

Take the case of Cardinal George. In a speech delivered by the Cardinal at the 114^th Annual Meeting of the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago, he said that Catholics didn’t know who they were until Vatican II. And now they have a new identity: 

“The Catholic Church,” he said to his Jewish hearers, “is in the process of remembering a great event that redefined us, that helped us know who we are by refocusing us. The Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, as it’s called, took place between 1962 and 1965. It shaped the direction of the Church at the end of the twentieth century and into the Third Millennium of Christianity.”  

The Cardinal then referred to the Vatican Document, Nostra Aetate, which he said “is a constant part now of a rather small book that contains the decrees of ecumenical councils from the fourth century up to the present time. Those aren’t reformable - they can be interpreted - but they are always there as a constant point of reference. So it’s not a question of examining a policy statement that can be reversed. Nostra Aetate can’t change as a point of reference.”

On March 22, 1984, John Paul II received
representatives of the organization "b'nai b'rith"

And where did this set-in-stone Vatican II Document, Nostra Aetate, come from? Well, what a surprise! It came from the Jews. At Vatican II Jewish individuals and groups such as the Jewish Masonic organization, B’Nai Brith, managed to change the Catholic Church through this document, which was a collaborative effort of the secret Jewish caucus headed by Cardinal Bea. This is confirmed by a famous article in Look Magazine by Joseph Roddy, entitled: How the Jews Changed Catholic Thinking (Look Magazine, Jan. 25, 1966, Vol. 30, No. 2).

Nostra Aetate is now the sun around which the Church of Vatican II must orbit. Like Esau, who traded his birthright and inheritance to his brother Jacob for a “mess of pottage” (Gn.25:29-34), Catholics are now expected to trade their ancient Catholic heritage for the “mess” that is Vatican II.  

But for Cardinal George, Nostra Aetate is the touchstone of the Catholic Faith. He asks:

“What happens in the future? Will the Catholic Church change back to its being a carrier of anti-Semitism as it has been in some places over many years? Should that happen, then it will happen in some group that is no longer living within the terms of Catholic identity as it has been defined for us by Vatican II.”

And we thought our Catholic Faith was defined for us by the great creeds of the Church – the Apostles Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Athanasian Creed, and by the dogmatic decrees of the true Councils and Popes of the Catholic Church. Vatican II was supposed to be a non-dogmatic “pastoral council”. But for Cardinal George and the present Vatican II “Magisterium” Vatican II has become the Super-Dogma that replaces the true Catholic Religion. Then, of course, there is the “guilt clause”, mandatory in every speech aimed at the Jews. The Cardinal says contritely:

The "formalized" One World Church
of the New World Order closes in on us...

“One of the elements of Nostra Aetate is its intentional focus on remembering. When applied to the Jewish people, Catholics are called upon to remember the anti-Judaism which was often customary among Christians throughout history, to remember anti-Semitism as a racist philosophy, and, of course, most profoundly, to return to the Shoah (Holocaust) itself, which must never be forgotten”

(The Religious Significance of the Catholic Church’s Relationship with the Jewish People, Oct.1, 2014, http://tradcatknight.blogspot.com,). 

Tragically, what the Cardinal and his Vatican II co-religionists have chosen to forget is the ancient and holy Faith of the Catholic Church. Like Esau, they have traded it for the “mess of pottage” handed them by the Jews. We say to them as Joshua said to the Israelites: 

“If it does not please you to serve the Lord, decide today whom you will serve… As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord” (Jos.24:15).

God's Blessings,

Fr. Campbell

  

The Talmudisation of the Vatican