(LifeSiteNews) — Does the Catholic Church actually still exist?
I asked myself this question when I was studying the catechism – and not only the so-called “World Catechism,” or Catechism of The Catholic Church, of John Paul II but also the earlier catechisms, from the Roman Catechism (1566) to the Catechism of Pope Pius X (1912).
Certainly, all catechisms represent a continuum of faith and endeavor to present the faith in an unabridged form; John Paul II, therefore, calls his catechism a “safe norm.”
However, norms have become obsolete in our time. This also applies to the norms of faith, and even the statements of Holy Scripture – after all, the “norma normans non normata” – are now open to disregard or arbitrary interpretation by those who, according to the Catechism, are appointed as pastors and teachers of the Church, namely the Pope and his bishops.
Thus, Pius X writes in his catechism: “The Pope and the bishops united to him form the teaching Church. It is so called because it has the mission from Jesus Christ to teach the divine truths and laws to all men. Only from her do men receive their full and certain knowledge, which is necessary to live a Christian life” (No. 114).
If we apply these lines as a “safe norm” to the pontificate of Pope Francis, it appears to us at best as a caricature of what was once Catholic. Under him and his followers, the “teaching church” no longer serves the spread of “divine truths and laws” but error, confusion, and even apostasy.
This has probably been best demonstrated – along with far too many examples – by the introduction of a “blessing” of irregular and homosexual couples, with which Francis and his “prefect of the Dicastery of the Doctrine of the Faith” have fundamentally departed from the norm of divine law – and all the bishops who follow them in this.
A “church” in which the personal acceptance of homosexuality has become a factor of integration in the church hierarchy is certainly no longer the “Catholic” church and therefore no longer the church of Christ. It is a diabolical monster that stands in opposition to divine revelation, casually speaking a “gay church” that is as much a caricature of Catholicism as Francis himself.
When we speak of the Catholic Church today, we are undoubtedly talking about a church that has undergone such a profound transformation that we can only speak of a lasting break with everything that has been Catholic over the centuries.
Even more than in the establishment of the “gay church,” this can be seen in the systematic persecution of the traditional Latin mass and its followers, i.e., all those who are still truly Catholic.
On the part of the Pope and his people, this is done with such pathological hatred that one is inclined to call this persecution “diabolical,” all the more so as it is directed at what is most sacred to all Catholics, namely the Holy Mass.
No pope before Francis would ever have dreamed of what is happening here, and certainly least of all Pius X when he wrote his catechism.
And yet, Francis is only the most extreme symptom of Catholicism’s disintegration, and he is most certainly an engine that has accelerated a process that has been underway for a long time, probably long before the Second Vatican Council.
Back then, in the mid-1950s, the young Joseph Ratzinger wrote a spectacular essay on the neo-pagans in the Catholic Church. Ratzinger was referring to the unbelievers who, in the post-war period and in the emerging affluent society, formally adhered to the Church but had long since replaced their personal faith with their own idols.
Of course, he was right about this, and yet Ratzinger himself would hardly have guessed at the time that these neo-pagans would hijack the Church and almost completely infiltrate the clergy, right up to the papacy.
As Pope, Ratzinger undoubtedly tried to stop this development. But while he himself remained a faithful servant and “co-worker of the truth,” the momentum of the neo-paganism passed over his pontificate and brought one of its own to the Holy See in the person of Francis. Or how else could one describe a pope who publicly denies the only salvation through Jesus Christ, if not as a “neo-pagan”?
In the disintegration of Catholicism, the hallmarks of the new paganism have since been strikingly evident everywhere: the Church is no longer understood as a divine foundation and thus in the way that all catechisms describe it, but as a playground for supposedly “contemporary” reform projects.
Francis has given this new “Catholic” church the label “synodal church” and has given himself the appearance that he can change the Church as he pleases. This has already been seen in the unspeakable example of the “gay blessings,” and Francis will also lend a hand in other neuralgic areas if providence still allows.
There is no longer any doubt that he will introduce female “deacons,” and the opening up of the offices of acolyte and lector to (female) lay people clearly points in this direction.
Incidentally, this detail also shows the end of Catholicism: offices that until the Catechism of Pius X belonged to the sacrament of Holy Orders as “lower orders” (cf. no. 400) were first abolished or profaned (1972) and now serve to clericalize (female) laypeople, who will soon function as “deacons” and one day certainly also as “priests.”
The – incipient – reorganization of the ordained ministries, which can already be seen in the Pope’s tactics, has its precondition in the persecution of the traditional Mass. In other words: with the new female ministries and the new Mass, a “new” church is also emerging.
Pope Francis may proclaim this church to be “synodal,” and it may well be – whatever that is supposed to be. But there is one thing it will no longer be: Catholic. A glance at all the catechisms that have ever been written in the course of Church history is enough to prove this.