Novus Ordo Denials of the Resurrection

Novus Ordo Denials of the Resurrection

Novus Ordo Church Leaders Deny
the Bodily Resurrection of Christ

The repugnant sculpture "The Resurrection" by Pericle Fazzini
serves as a background in Paul VI Hall in the Vatican

Modernists reject genuine miracles because they loathe the supernatural and do not have the Faith. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that many in the Novus Ordo Church deny even the very dogma of the Bodily Resurrection of Christ, which is the greatest of all of Christ's miracles and the definitive proof that He is the True God and the True Messiah.

Of course, they do not deny the Resurrection explicitly. They do not say, "We do not believe in the Resurrection." Rather, they subtly change the meaning of the dogma, which, however, is still a denial thereof, because dogmas must be believed exactly as defined: "Hence, too, that meaning of the sacred dogmas is ever to be maintained which has once been declared by Holy mother Church, and there must never be any abandonment of this sense under the pretext or in the name of a more profound understanding" (First Vatican Council, Dogmatic Constitution Dei Filius, Ch. 4 [1870]; Denz. 1800).

We will take a look at three theological giants in the New Church to substantiate the claim that the modernist Vatican II Sect teaches, condones, or tolerates a denial of the dogma of the Resurrection of Christ: Walter Kasper, Gerhard Ludwig Muller, and Joseph Ratzinger. (It so happens that all three of these characters are German - the country of the Reformation and long a sewer of Modernism.) It must be remembered at the outset that one of the characteristics of Modernism is the use of high-sounding and ambiguous words and confusing language in order to camouflage the errors. In addition, what is denied in one place is sometimes affirmed in another, so that the modernist can inject his poisonous errors more craftily, for thus he seems confused rather than pertinacious, he prevents others from pinpointing his heresies exactly, and he always leaves a loophole for plausible deniability should he ever be challenged or found out. This is part and parcel of Modernism, and we need to keep this in mind as we review the evidence:

Walter Kasper"Cardinal" Walter Kasper is the former president of the so-called "Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity"; in other words, he was the Vatican's chief ecumenist. In the Novus Ordo Church, Fr. Kasper is a "bishop" and a "cardinal" and was appointed to be the ecumenical head honcho by "Pope" John Paul II and kept in office till his retirement by "Pope" Benedict XVI. Kasper is considered a theological heavyweight and read by many clerics and seminarians in the New Church, which makes his denial of the Resurrection all the more serious, for he is not merely affecting himself but, through his writings and "authority," giving theological direction and impetus to generations of Novus Ordo clerics and "theologians". The bodily Resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ, Kasper says, is "no objectively and neutrally ascertainable historical fact." Regarding the Easter and Ascenion accounts in St. Mark's Gospel, Kasper says "we are not talking about historical characteristics but [linguistic] means of style which are to get people's attention and create suspense [excitement]." (Source) Further information on the heretical "cardinal" and his errors can be found here: "Cardinals with No Faith: Walter Kasper and Karl Lehmann". You can thank John Paul II and Benedict XVI for giving this man more authority and leverage to spread his errors that he had ever had before.

Gerhard Ludwig MüllerMr. Gerhard Ludwig Muller is currently the head of the Novus Ordo "Congregation for the DestructionDoctrine of the Faith" and holds the office of "Archbishop". In other words, he is the New Church's top doctrinal watchdog, appointed directly by Benedict XVI, who also allowed Muller to publish and edit the Ratzinger Opera Omnia (Collected Works), of which numerous volumes have been published to date. In other words, Ratzinger knows this man very well and obviously has great confidence in his dogmatic theological expertise. Now, as the chief overseer of doctrine, it is Muller's job to ensure orthodoxy flourishes throughout the Church, heresy is identified, uprooted, eliminated, and prevented. In theory.Wouldn't it be a shame if the 'orthodoxy chief' turned out to be a heretic himself! Let's see what he says about the Resurrection of Our Lord (note the "clarity" of his language):

"A running camera would not have been able to make an audio-visual recording of either the Easter manifestations of Jesus in front of his disciples, nor of the Resurrection event, which, at its core, is the consummation of the personal relation of the Father to the incarnate Son in the Holy Ghost. In contrast to human reason, animals and technical devices are not capable of a transcendental experience and thus also lack the ability to be addressed by the Word of God through perceptible phenomena and signs. Only human reason in its inner unity of categoricality [sic] and transcendentality [sic] is determinable by the Spirit of God to enable it to perceive in the sensory cognitive image (triggered by the manifestation event) the person-reality of Jesus as the cause of this sensory-mental cognitive image" (Müller, Katholische Dogmatik, 8th ed. [Freiburg: Herder, 2010], p. 300).

Got it? It will be a cold day in hell before a Modernist will ever be clear in his assertions. The strategy is quite simple: Intimidate your opponent by making yourself sound really smart and totally 'above' that pre-Vatican-II country Catholicism; use vague and ambiguous language in order to make clear things confusing, thus allowing you to introduce heresies and other errors in a subtle way; when asked to clarify, simply offer more of the same; when accused of heresy or some other error, say you've been misunderstood; and finally, when all else fails, simply say that your opponent is just too stupid to understand you. It's worked very well for the Vatican II Modernists so far. (In fact, when the Society of St. Pius X, German District, accused Muller of heresy in 2012, he claimed precisely that he had been "misunderstood" and that the SSPX's objections were "stupid".)

But wait - Muller's got more for you: "The realization of the reality of the transcendental event is triggered by the Easter manifestations. The belief of the disciples is the historically-verifiable sign that points to the Easter event and through which the Easter event becomes accessible" (p. 301). Note well: Here Mr. Muller sneakily claims that what is historically-verifiable fact is not the Resurrection or the appearance of the Risen Christ per se, testified to by the disciples, but merely the disciples' belief in the Resurrection and appearance of the Risen Christ. It is not their historical testimony regarding a historical fact that makes the truth of the Resurrection accessible to us, but merely their belief in a "transcendental event" that a running camera would not have been able to capture. This is more orless what Pope St. Pius X warned us against: "Tradition, as understood by the Modernists, is a communication with others of an original experience, through preaching by means of the intellectual formula" (Pope St. Pius X, Encyclical Pascendi, 1907, par. 15).

It is not surprising, therefore, that Muller tops it off with this: "Whether the women's visit to the tomb in the early Easter morning and the discovery that the Body of Jesus is [sic] no longer there, was a historical occurrence in the manner portrayed, does not need to be decided here. It's possible that this [narrative] reflected a veneration of the tomb by the community of Jerusalem" (p. 303). Remember now: This man is supposed to be the enforcer of orthodoxy in the Novus Ordo Church. That's like putting Michael Moore in charge of Weightwatchers. Except that the consequences of Muller's heterodoxy are eternal for his victims.

Joseph RatzingerThis man shouldn't need much introduction. Fr. Joseph Ratzinger was known in the Conciliar Sect as "Pope Benedict XVI" and currently sports the made-up title "Pope Emeritus". Suspect of heresy by the real Holy Office in the 1950s under Pope Pius XII (source), Ratzinger hasn't exactly eliminated this suspicion - to the contrary. Ratzinger has been a big name in Novus Ordo circles since his behind-the-scenes work at the Second Vatian Council (1962-65), when he was the theological "expert" adviser to Cologne's liberal Cardinal Joseph Frings. No doubt Ratzinger is the most-widely-read of the three Modernists examined here. As far as the dogma of the Resurrection is concerned, Fr. Ratzinger has not exempted it from his habitual "reinterpretation" along Modernist lines. In a nutshell, Benedict XVI denies the Catholic dogma of the Resurrection by misrepresenting the orthodox teaching, belittling it, and then replacing it with something supposedly "more profound". The following quotes are taken from several of his books, both before and after his claim to the papacy.

First, Fr. Ratzinger tells us that the statement "Jesus is risen" expresses an experience on which our Faith is grounded - as opposed to referring to a historical fact: "The sentence 'Jesus has risen' thus expresses that primitive experience on which all Christian faith is grounded..." (Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology [San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987], p. 184).

That the Resurrection is a historical event in the same way that the Virgin Birth and the Crucifixion were historical events, Ratzinger denies - that's just not 'deep' enough for him, even though this is professed by the entire Church: "Thus the Resurrection cannot be a historical event in the same sense as the Crucifixion is. For that matter, there is no account that depicts it as such, nor is it circumscribed in time otherwise than by the eschatological expression 'the third day'" (Principles, p. 186). Ah! Even though the Bible relates the facts about Christ's Resurrection the way it does all the other facts about Our Lord's life, this isn't proof for Ratzinger that the Resurrection is a historical fact. Got it. Plus, the fact that Ratzinger calls "the third day" an eschatological expression indicates that he does not necessarily even affirm that Christ's Body actually rested in the tomb for some time on Good Friday, all day Holy Saturday, and the early hours of Easter Sunday, as is the dogmatic teaching of the Church.

Next, the German Modernist tackles the nature of the Resurrection itself: "Now it must be acknowledged that if in Jesus’ Resurrection we were dealing simply with the miracle of a resuscitated corpse, it would ultimately be of no concern to us. For it would be no more important than the resuscitation of a clinically dead person through the art of doctors" (Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week: From the Entrance Into Jerusalem to the Resurrection [San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2011], p. 243). This is a perfect example of what we said earlier, namely, that Modernists first distort an orthodox teaching, then belittle it, and then replace it with something "deeper." Ratzinger here distorts the true teaching, which holds not only that Christ's Body came back to earthly life (which, by the way, no doctor could have done), but that His Body was now in a state of glory, not subject to earthly limitations. He then belittles the teaching ("it would ... be of no concern to us", etc.) and instead offers something much more "enlightened"--such as an evolutionary ontological "leap":

"...Jesus’ Resurrection was not just about some deceased individual coming back to life at a certain point, but ... an ontological leap occurred, one that touches being as such, opening up a dimension that affects us all, creating for all of us a new space of life, a new space of being in union with God” (Jesus, p. 274). What proof or argumentation does Ratzinger offer for this totally-unheard-of claim? Absolutely none. Instead, he pushes more and more of his modernistic theses: "The Resurrection accounts certainly speak of something outside of our world of experience. They speak of something new, something unprecedented — a new dimension of reality that is revealed" (Jesus, p. 244).

Sounds profound, huh? Benedict XVI then has the guts to claim that though Christ rose, He didn't come back from the dead but somehow - probably quite dynamically and profoundly - from the living: "Jesus, however, does not come from the realm of the dead, which he has definitively left behind: on the contrary, he comes from the realm of pure life, from God…" (Jesus, p. 269). Of course, this sounds much cooler, much more "Spirit-filled" than the morbid "He rose again from the dead". Unfortunately for Benedict, "He rose again from the dead" is Catholic dogma.

The testimony of Holy Scripture regarding Our Lord possessing a physical Body as before, but now glorified, is very clear in Luke 24:36-44: "Now whilst they were speaking these things, Jesus stood in the midst of them, and saith to them: Peace be to you; it is I, fear not. But they being troubled and frightened, supposed that they saw a spirit. And he said to them: Why are you troubled, and why do thoughts arise in your hearts? See my hands and feet, that it is I myself; handle, and see: for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as you see me to have. And when he had said this, he shewed them his hands and feet. But while they yet believed not, and wondered for joy, he said: Have you any thing to eat? And they offered him a piece of a broiled fish, and a honeycomb. And when he had eaten before them, taking the remains, he gave to them."

Ratzinger accuses St. Luke of exaggerating [!] and has no qualms about blasphemously asserting that there is a contradiction in the sacred text: "Most exegetes take the view that [St.] Luke is exaggerating here in his apologetic zeal, that a statement of this kind seems to draw Jesus back to the empirical physicality that had been transcended by the Resurrection. Thus Luke ends up contradicting his own narrative, in which Jesus appears suddenly in the midst of the disciples in a physicality that is no longer subject to the laws of space and time” (Jesus, p. 269).

This is how Ratzinger treats Sacred Scripture, God's very own Speaking!

But not enough. The German heretic also calls the language of Scripture regarding the Resurrection "mythological": "The mythological language expresses, on the one hand, the Lord’s closeness, as he reveals himself in human form, and, on the other hand, his otherness, as he stands outside the laws of material existence” (Jesus, pp. 267-268). In case you're not sure what "mythological" means, it means "imaginary; fictitious" (Dictionary.com).

Ratzinger is an enemy of the Faith! Under the guise of a "profounder understanding", he destroys Catholic teaching at its very foundations and insults God and the Church in the process.

In contrast to the modernistic drivel from Kasper, Muller, and Ratzinger, the Roman Catechism, edited by St. Charles Borromeo and promulgated by Pope St. Pius V, also known as the Catechism of the Council of Trent, explains the orthodox Catholic teaching on the Resurrection (Our Lord's as well as our own after the Last Judgment) quite beautifully. Here are some excerpts regarding the resurrection of the body on the last day:

• "That in this Article the resurrection of mankind is called the resurrection of the body, is a circumstance which deserves special attention. It was not, indeed, so named without a reason for the Apostles intended thus to convey a necessary truth, the immortality of the soul. Lest anyone, despite the fact that many passages of Scripture plainly teach that the soul is immortal, might imagine that it dies with the body, and that both are to be restored to life, the Creed speaks only of the resurrection of the body. Although in Sacred Scripture the word flesh often signifies the whole man, as in Isaias, All flesh is grass, and in St. John, The Word was made flesh; yet in this place it is used to express the body only, thus giving us to understand that of the two constituent parts of man, soul and body, one only, that is, the body, is corrupted and returns to its original dust, while the soul remains incorrupt and immortal. As then, a man cannot be said to return to life unless he has previously died, so the soul could not with propriety be said to rise again. The word body is also mentioned, in order to confute the heresy of Hymeneus and Philetus, who, during the lifetime of the Apostle, asserted that whenever the Scriptures speak of the resurrection, they are to be understood to mean not the resurrection of the body, but that of the soul, by which it rises from the death of sin to the life of grace. The words of this Article, therefore, as is clear, exclude that error, and establish a real resurrection of the body.
• "But as it is of vital importance to be fully convinced that the identical body, which belongs to each one of us during life, shall, though corrupt and dissolved into its original dust, be raised up again to life, this too is a subject which demands accurate explanation.... It is a truth conveyed by the Apostle when he says: This corruptible must put on incorruption, evidently designating by the word this, his own body. It is also clearly expressed in the prophecy of Job: In my flesh I shall see my God, whom I myself shall see, and mine eyes behold, and not another. Further, this same truth is inferred from the very definition of resurrection; for resurrection, as Damascene defines it, is a return to the state from which one has fallen. Finally, if we bear in mind the arguments by which we have just established a future resurrection, every doubt on the subject must at once disappear. We have said that the body is to rise again, that every one may receive the proper things of the body, according as he hath done, whether it be good or evil. Man is, therefore, to rise again in the same body with which he served God, or was a slave to the devil; that in the same body he may experience rewards and a crown of victory, or endure the severest punishments and torments.
• "But the members especially, because they belong to the integrity of human nature, shall all be restored at once. The blind from nature or disease, the lame, the maimed and the paralysed in any of their members shall rise again with entire and perfect bodies. Otherwise the desires of the soul, which so strongly incline it to a union with the body, would be far from satisfied; but we are convinced that in the resurrection these desires will be fully realised. Besides, the resurrection, like the creation, is clearly to be numbered among the principal works of God. As, therefore, at the creation all things came perfect from the hand of God, we must admit that it will be the same in the resurrection. These observations are not to be restricted to the bodies of the martyrs, of whom St. Augustine says: As the mutilation which they suffered would prove a deformity, they shall rise with all their members; otherwise those who were beheaded would rise without a head. The scars, however, which they received shall remain, shining like the wounds of Christ, with a brilliance far more resplendent than that of gold and of precious stones. The wicked, too, shall rise with all their members, even with those lost through their own fault...."

(Roman Catechism, Part I, Article XI: "The Resurrection of the Body")

Joseph Ratzinger does not believe these things. In fact, he says the following: "It now also becomes clear that the real heart of faith in resurrection does not consist at all in the idea of the restoration of the body, to which we have reduced it in our thinking; such is the case even though this is the pictorial image used throughout the Bible" (Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity [New York: Herder and Herder, 1970], p. 270). Did you get this? The Resurrection is "not at all" the restoration of the body, "to which", he claims, "we have reduced [!] it in our thinking." Who "reduced" it to this? No one -- it is the immemorial teaching of the Catholic Church! Holy Scripture itself clearly teaches this, and Ratzinger admits it: "even though [!] this is the pictorial image used throughout the Bible." Pertinacity is rarely stated more clearly. Ratzinger is quite aware that God's own Revelation contradicts him, yet he clings to his modernistic thesis anyway, dissing the truth of Scripture as a mere "pictorial image" which does not bind him in the least.

Compare what you just read above from the Roman Catechism, so beautifully clear and straightforward, with what Ratzinger says in the next two quotes: "...the biblical pronouncements about the resurrection: their essential content is not the conception of a restoration of bodies to souls after a long interval; their aim is to tell men that they, they themselves, live on; not by virtue of their own power but because they are known and loved by God in such a way that they can no longer perish" (Christianity, p. 273); and further: "...the essential part of man, the person, remains; that which has ripened in the course of this earthly existence of corporeal spirituality and spiritualized corporeality goes on existing in a different fashion. It goes on existing because it lives in God’s memory" (Christianity, p. 274).

This flatly contradicts Catholic teaching, especially as found in the excerpts from the Roman Catechism above. It isprecisely the reunion of the immortal soul to the decomposed, to-be-glorified body -- after a more or less long interval -- that is the essence of the resurrection of the body which we profess in the Creed (for the damned, of course, the resurrected body will be a little less than glorious). Ratzinger's reference to people living "in God's memory" is reminiscent of the German (another one!) pantheist philosopher Georg Hegel (d. 1831), for whom everything evolves within and as a part of Absolute Spirit -- perhaps he borrowed from him.

But Ratzinger has more to say, with his usual modernistic cynicism: "Experience of the risen Christ is something other than a meeting with a historical man, and it must certainly not be traced back to conversations at table and recollections which would have finally crystallized in the idea that he still [?] lived and went about his business. Such an interpretation reduces what happened to the purely human level and robs it of its specific quality" (Christianity, p. 236-237). Like all Modernists, he is primarily concerned with experience (as in "encounter") rather than facts, and he belittles anyone who would refer back to Christ meeting the Apostles at table and eating with them as support for the truth of the Resurrection. You see, Ratzinger is just "too smart" for such peasanty dimwit Catholicism, as all Modernists think they are: "It is pride which puffs them up with that vainglory which allows them to regard themselves as the sole possessors of knowledge, and makes them say, elated and inflated with presumption, 'We are not as the rest of men,' and which, lest they should seem as other men, leads them to embrace and to devise novelties even of the most absurd kind" (Pius X, Pascendi, par. 40).

As Ratzinger firmly rejects the idea of the resurrection of the body as a resuscitation of a dead man who then comes back to life, it is very instructive to consider that in the Spanish language, for example, the word "resurrect" isresucitar, and "risen" is rendered as resucitado or resucitó. What a tragic coincidence this must be to anyone who was looking for some ontological leap cognate instead.

In an unusually candid moment, Fr. Ratzinger fully admits that he does not believe in the separation of the soul from the body at death, which then waits for its reunion with the body at the resurrection of the dead: "[T]he idea of theanima separata (the "separated soul" of scholastic theology) has in the last analysis become obsolete" (Christianity, p. 272), he writes. Ah, yes. Like the "separated soul" was just an idea of scholastic theology - you can just dismiss it with no real consequences to Catholic teaching on anything.

But it turns out that Pope Benedict XII defined the following: "According to the general disposition of God, the souls of all the saints..., immediately after death and, in the case of those in need of purification, after the purification..., since the ascension of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ into heaven, already before they take up their bodies again and before the general judgment, have been, are and will be with Christ in heaven, in the heavenly kingdom and paradise, joined to the company of the holy angels. Since the passion and death of the Lord Jesus Christ, thesesouls have seen and see the divine essense [sic] with an intuitive vision and even face to face, without the mediation of any creature by way of object of vision; rather the divine essence immediately manifests itself to them, plainly, clearly and openly, and in this vision they enjoy the divine essence. Moreover, by this vision and enjoyment thesouls of those who have already died are truly blessed and have eternal life and rest. Also the souls of those who will die in the future will see the same divine essence and will enjoy it before the general judgment" (Pope Benedict XII, Constitution Benedictus Deus, 1336; italics added).

Eight letters for you, Fr. Ratzinger: A-N-A-T-H-E-M-A.

So why does Ratzinger pronounce the "scholastic" teaching of the separated soul "obsolete"? Because it doesn't fit in with his dynamic ontological leap heresy, that's why. Wisely did the great Pope St. Pius X say about the Modernists: "They recognize that the three chief difficulties which stand in their way are the scholastic method of philosophy, the authority and tradition of the Fathers, and the magisterium of the Church, and on these they wage unrelenting war. Against scholastic philosophy and theology they use the weapons of ridicule and contempt. Whether it is ignorance or fear, or both, that inspires this conduct in them, certain it is that the passion for novelty is always united in them with hatred of scholasticism, and there is no surer sign that a man is tending to Modernism than when he begins to show his dislike for the scholastic method" (Pius X, Pascendi, par. 42).

As if to ensure that we definitely won't mistake him for being an orthodox Catholic, Ratzinger re-emphasizes his error at the end: "To recapitulate, Paul teaches not the resurrection of physical bodies but the resurrection of persons, and this not in the return of the ‘fleshly body’, that is, the biological structure, an idea which he expressly describes as impossible (“the perishable cannot become imperishable”), but in the different form of the life of the resurrection, as shown in the risen Lord" (Christianity, p. 277). Thus says Joseph Ratzinger -- in contrast to the Holy Roman Catholic Church and all her saints and martyrs. It is the body that rises on the last day, not the soul, and not the "person", for the person implies the soul. Is it any surprise that Fr. Ratzinger's book Introduction to Christianity was banned by the Archbishop of Warsaw, Poland, upon its publication in 1968? "In 1968, when Ratzinger’s best-selling book, Introduction to Christianity, came out, it was still considered liberal enough that Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski banned it in his diocese of Warsaw" (Gary Wills, "A Tale of Two Cardinals", The New York Review of Books, April 26, 2001).

It is noteworthy - and very revealing - that Ratzinger never even attempts to prove any of his novel claims; he merelymakes assertions, and (apparently) expects them to be taken as the truth, as though he himself were God's Anointed One (cf. Matt. 7:29): "It is pride which fills Modernists with that self-assurance by which they consider themselves and pose as the rule for all" (Pius X, Pascendi, par. 40). Real Catholic theologians, on the other hand, always seek toprove what they teach, as is clear from perusing any theological manual, for they are but the servants of the truth, not the Master.

To see more of Ratzinger's errors on the Resurrection dissected and refuted, please download this PDF file: Modernism Resurrected: Benedict XVI on the Resurrection by Bp. Donald Sanborn (2011).

Now, remember, it will not do to say that these Modernists simply have a greater, wider, or more profound grasp of the same dogma of the Resurrection, since, as we saw at the beginning of this post, Catholic dogma must be believed exactly as once defined: "[T]hat meaning of the sacred dogmas is ever to be maintained which has once been declared by Holy mother Church, and there must never be any abandonment of this sense under the pretext or in the name of a more profound understanding" (Vatican I, Dei Filius, Ch. 4; Denz. 1800).

The Catholic Church has no need of anyone - certainly not a Walter Kasper, a Gerhard Muller, or a Joseph Ratzinger - to improve on her 2,000-year-old teaching, which she received from her Divine Lord and which she will preserve to the end, even this worst onslaught of heretical filth notwithstanding. Deo Gratias!

Resurrection Reality Check:

• "The Resurrection of the Savior is not properly a fact of the historical order. It is a fact of merely the supernatural order (neither demonstrated nor demonstrable) which the Christian conscience gradually derived from other facts." --CONDEMNED by Pope St. Pius X, Lamentabili Sane (1907), error no. 36
• "And if Christ be not risen again, your faith is vain, for you are yet in your sins." (1 Cor 15:17)
• "Now whilst they were speaking these things, Jesus stood in the midst of them, and saith to them: Peace be to you; it is I, fear not. But they being troubled and frightened, supposed that they saw a spirit. And he said to them: Why are you troubled, and why do thoughts arise in your hearts? See my hands and feet, that it is I myself; handle, and see: for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as you see me to have. And when he had said this, he shewed them his hands and feet. But while they yet believed not, and wondered for joy, he said: Have you any thing to eat? And they offered him a piece of a broiled fish, and a honeycomb. And when he had eaten before them, taking the remains, he gave to them." (Luke 24:36-43)
• "Then he saith to Thomas: Put in thy finger hither, and see my hands; and bring hither thy hand, and put it into my side; and be not faithless, but believing. Thomas answered, and said to him: My Lord, and my God. Jesus saith to him: Because thou hast seen me, Thomas, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and have believed." (John 20:27-29)
• "Early on the morning of the third day after His death, that is, on Sunday, His soul was reunited to His body, and thus He who was dead during those three days arose, and returned again to life, from which He had departed when dying.... By the word Resurrection, however, we are not merely to understand that Christ was raised from the dead, which happened to many others, but that He rose by His own power and virtue, a singular prerogative peculiar to Him alone. For it is incompatible with nature and was never given to man to raise himself by his own power, from death to life. This was reserved for the almighty power of God.... This divine power, having never been separated, either from His body in the grave, or from His soul in hell, there existed a divine force both within the body, by which it could be again united to the soul, and within the soul, by which it could again return to the body. Thus He was able by His own power to return to life and rise from the dead." (The Catechism of the Council of Trent, Part I, Article V).
• Modernism Resurrected: Benedict XVI on the Resurrection [PDF] by Bp. Donald J. Sanborn
• The Novus Ordo religion also attacks the Resurrection by means of the hideous and irreverent sculpture in the Vatican's Paul VI Hall (see big photo at top of post). This sculpture, created by Pericle Fazzini, shows a distorted Christ figure that is repulsive to behold and does not inspire people to pious thoughts. In fact, the whole sculpture looks downright sinister (which makes it very appropriate for the Vatican II religion, actually). In a future blog post, we will take a closer look at this frightening effigy and examine it in detail.

Papal Warnings against Modernist Language & Tactics:

• "In order not to shock the ears of Catholics, the innovators sought to hide the subtleties of their tortuous maneuvers by the use of seemingly innocuous words such as would allow them to insinuate error into souls in the most gentle manner. Once the truth had been compromised, they could, by means of slight changes or additions in phraseology, distort the confession of the faith that is necessary for our salvation, and lead the faithful by subtle errors to their eternal damnation.... [This] cannot be excused in the way that one sees it being done, under the erroneous pretext that the seemingly shocking affirmations in one place are further developed along orthodox lines in other places, and even in yet other places corrected; as if allowing for the possibility of either affirming or denying the statement, or of leaving it up to the personal inclinations of the individual – such has always been the fraudulent and daring method used by innovators to establish error. It allows for both the possibility of promoting error and of excusing it." --Pope Pius VI, Constitution Auctorem Fidei (1794)
• The heretic Nestorius "expressed himself in a plethora of words, mixing true things with others that were obscure; mixing at times one with the other in such a way that he was also able to confess those things which were denied while at the same time possessing a basis for denying those very sentences which he confessed." --Pope Pius VI, Constitution Auctorem Fidei (1794)
• "Our Apostolic Mandate requires from Us that We watch over the purity of the Faith and the integrity of Catholic discipline. It requires from Us that We protect the faithful from evil and error; especially so when evil and error are presented in dynamic language which, concealing vague notions and ambiguous expressions with emotional and high-sounding words, is likely to set ablaze the hearts of men in pursuit of ideals which, whilst attractive, are nonetheless nefarious." --Pope St. Pius X, Apostolic Letter Notre Charge Apostolique (1910)
• "Although they express their astonishment that We should number them amongst the enemies of the Church, no one will be reasonably surprised that We should do so, if, leaving out of account the internal disposition of the soul, of which God alone is the Judge, he considers their tenets, their manner of speech, and their action. Nor indeed would he be wrong in regarding them as the most pernicious of all the adversaries of the Church. For, as We have said, they put into operation their designs for her undoing, not from without but from within. Hence, the danger is present almost in the very veins and heart of the Church, whose injury is the more certain from the very fact that their knowledge of her is more intimate. Moreover, they lay the ax not to the branches and shoots, but to the very root, that is, to the faith and its deepest fibers. And once having struck at this root of immortality, they proceed to diffuse poison through the whole tree, so that there is no part of Catholic truth which they leave untouched, none that they do not strive to corrupt. Further, none is more skillful, none more astute than they, in the employment of a thousand noxious devices; for they play the double part of rationalist and Catholic, and this so craftily that they easily lead the unwary into error; and as audacity is their chief characteristic, there is no conclusion of any kind from which they shrink or which they do not thrust forward with pertinacity and assurance. To this must be added the fact, which indeed is well calculated to deceive souls, that they lead a life of the greatest activity, of assiduous and ardent application to every branch of learning, and that they possess, as a rule, a reputation for irreproachable morality. Finally, there is the fact which is all but fatal to the hope of cure that their very doctrines have given such a bent to their minds, that they disdain all authority and brook no restraint; and relying upon a false conscience, they attempt to ascribe to a love of truth that which is in reality the result of pride and obstinacy." --Pope St. Pius X, Encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis (1907), par. 3
  

May 20, 2013 7:09 PM