Fr. Campbell, The True Mission of the Church

The True Mission of the Church

Fr. Campbell 

Tonight at Midnight people all over the world, in one time zone after another, will wish one another a Happy New Year, as the old year passes away and the New Year begins. The strains of “Auld Lang Syne” have already been heard in Australia and the Philippines and the other countries around the far Pacific Rim, and are spreading across Asia, Europe and Africa, and will finally be heard in the Americas within a few hours. The world looks forward in hope to a year of peace and prosperity, but the euphoria of New Year’s Eve will probably not last beyond the first day of January, 2018.  

We have reason to take St. Peter’s advice: “Be sober, be watchful! For your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, goes about seeking someone to devour” (1Pet.5:8). People must be warned that their souls are in extreme danger. They have not found the narrow path that leads to eternal life. And those who should be reminding us to “work out your salvation with fear and trembling” (Phil.2:12), are totally preoccupied with making this world a better place. Benedict XVI called Jesus Christ the Savior of all men, but his idea of salvation is different. In his writings the heretical doctrine of Universal Salvation is taken for granted.

Speaking to the crowds on Christmas Day, Benedict described an earthly salvation – salvation from war, poverty, hunger, slavery, and injustice. Jesus Christ has already taken care of the salvation of souls. All the Church has to do is to preach peace and justice for all men. The condition for peace, says Benedict, is the integral good of the human person, respecting each man and every woman and their proper dignity. We can work out our earthly salvation, and that without fear and trembling.     

Incredibly, there is no mention whatever of eternal life, nor is there mention of the saving of souls. But whatever is left of “human dignity” after humanity’s fall from grace – Original Sin – does not absolve us from the need for Baptism and membership in the one, true Church of Jesus Christ. Original Sin has no place in the New Theology, and the boundaries of the “church” are expanded so as to include the whole of humanity.

“With the Incarnation, as the Second Vatican Council stated,” says Benedict, “the Son of God has in some way united himself with each man and woman (cf. ‘Gaudium et Spes’, 22)”. How many souls are being misled and will be lost eternally because of this false teaching?

In his January 1^st message for the World Day of Peace, 2007, entitled “The Human Person, the Heart of Peace,” Benedict is convinced that respect for the person promotes peace and that, in building peace, the foundations are laid for a serene future is for coming generations. Respect for the person? True respect for any person is to call him to faith in Jesus Christ, and to Baptism “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.”

Because human beings are made in the image and likeness of God (Gen.1:27), they are endowed with human dignity, says Benedict. This may be true. But Human Dignity takes the place of Sanctifying Grace in the New Theology. Human Dignity is all men need to do good works that are pleasing to God. Because of their Human Dignity men can cooperate in creating peace in this world and can build a “civilization of love”. Hindus, Buddhists, Jews and Muslims, even atheists, have Human Dignity. They have no need of Baptism, Sanctifying Grace, or the Catholic faith. 

In the same New Year’s message, Benedict referred to the United Nations Organization and the Declaration of Human Rights which it published in 1948, asking that the rights described in the Declaration be held to be based “on man’s very nature and his inalienable dignity as a person created by God.”   

Why do we turn to human organizations that base their philosophy on secular humanism, when we already have in the Holy Gospels the key to peace and justice in this world, and eternal life in the next? Our Lord told His Apostles:

“Go into the whole world and preach the gospel to every creature. He who believes and is baptized shall be saved, but he who does not believe shall be condemned” (Mk.16:15,16).      

The Holy Father, Pope Pius XII, speaks to the faithful in St. Peter’s Square after a Lenten Mission preached in the Diocese of Rome:

“These preachers, like their predecessors in past centuries, have impressed upon you with a burning zeal, and sometimes also with a loving severity, the duty of giving serious thought to and providing for the ‘unum necessarium’ (Luke, x, 42), the one thing necessary – namely, your own personal spiritual salvation and sanctification…

“In this blessed time, the Divine Sower has passed amongst you and has abundantly sown the seed of His word in your souls, which by constant prayer and penance, had been made ready to receive it as upon good and fertile soil. And now, in the presence of the true Cross, from which Christ with arms extended invites and awaits you, we, His unworthy vicar, beseech you, beloved sons and daughters, ‘that, denying ungodliness and worldly desires, we should live soberly, and justly, and godly in this world, looking for the blessed hope and coming of the glory of the great God and Savior Jesus Christ’ (Titus, ii, 12-13)” (Pope Pius XII, Address in St. Peter’s Square, March 18, 1945, The New York Times).

St. Peter, our first Holy Father, speaking to the crowds on the first Pentecost, gave us the true Gospel message he learned from Jesus Christ Himself: “Brothers… Save yourselves from this perverse generation” (Acts 2:29a;40b).