Author: Odon De Castro

1. We have discussed three marks of the Church.
     These are three marks according to St. Robert Bellarmine on whose ecclesiology ‘Lumen Gentium’ was based. And his 15 marks are simply an expansion of the classical four marks of the Church which we recite in the Nicene Creed during Sunday Mass. For all Catholic Sunday Mass goers these signs are very familiar;  One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic. And, of course, those who celebrate the Mass should be very acquainted with these signs. But very few know the expanded 15 signs enumerated by St. Robert Bellarmine, a Jesuit saint and doctor of the Church. Not even most of the Jesuits today. I don’t blame them. Bellarmine’s works are still in its original Latin and is only being translated recently. Fortunately the latest  translation begun with his ‘de controversiis’
     This book deals with the most important current topics the Church needs to answer. Which is the true Catholic Church? Who are inside the Church. Questions about the Papacy. When is the election of a Pope invalid.
     St. Robert’s reasoning is simple. If you have the signs, you are a true Catholic and the priests and bishops in your parish or diocese are truly priests and bishops. On the other hand, if you do not have the signs then even the priests and bishops who lead you are probably not true priests and bishops because they are not even Catholics. The same reasoning goes with the Pope. If the Pope does not have the visible signs of the Catholic Church, then he is not a pope, he is not even a bishop because he is not even a Christian. A non- Catholic cannot be the head of the Catholic Church. See, how important  these issues raised by St. Bellarmine in the 1500 are? With the protestant reform the world became confused; who is going to be saved and who will not be saved. Everybody thought everybody will be saved….. like now.

     The Marks of the true Church describe, first and foremost, the Catholic community. The signs are easier to see if the community have them  It , also, describes the individual true Catholic. But this is more difficult to do but it is possible.  We started with the three Marks that describes the true Church but which can easily describe, also, an individual Catholic.
     It is possible for the whole parish or diocese to have none of the visible signs of Catholicity. But it can happen that their priest and bishop have the signs. Example would be St. John Vianney and his parish of Ars. Vianney had all the signs of Catholicity but his Parish, though devout, did not show all the signs.
     So it becomes important for all of us to know the Marks of the true Catholic Church, understand St. Robert Bellarmine’s explanation of each and, then, find out if we, if our parish, if our diocese are Catholics. And we can go as high as finding out if the Pope is  Catholic or not. Since these signs are visible to all and we have had in our history more than 40 fake Catholic popes.

2. Why did we start with these three signs; antiquated, apostolicity, and  possessed with the gift of prophecy?  Because these signs can be detected, not only in the true Christian community, but even in individual true Catholics. The other signs are difficult and tedious to use for analysis but we shall eventually discuss them. For now, we shall begin with the signs that can be applied to communities and to individuals so we can analyze ourselves and some individuals around us like our parish priest and diocesan bishops. At your leisure you can use these signs to analyze practically every body else, your husband, your wife, your children, your neighbor…… because they are visible and natural signs discernible by all men.
                                                                           

3. Let us jump to the 14th Mark of the Church according to Bellarmine.
    He wrote; the fourteeth Mark of the true Church is the unhappy death of those who oppose the true Church; after which God casts them into the fire. “All you nations praise His people, for he avenges the blood of his servants, and brings retribution upon their enemies.” Any one who oppose the Church, in some way, die an unhappy death and is thrown to hell.
   
     The Fathers of the Church has a whole volumn describing the awful death of those who raised their hands against the Church or His Faithful. This is followed by eternal fire. Thus Bellarmine mentioned the miserable death of Pharoah for persecuting the Jews, the image of the early Church. He, also, described the awful deaths of Dathan and Abiron, the first schismatics. Then there was Jezebel, Antiochus and Pilate who killed himself. Bellarmine recalled Herod, Herodias, Nero, Domitian who all met dreadful deaths
     Bellarmine, also,  mentioned Heresiarchs like Simon Magus, Manes, Montanus, Arius, Julian, Valens, Nestorius, the Emperor Anastasius. Martin Luther, Zwingly, Calvin…..who all died dreadfully with Calvin invoking demons, blaspheming and cursing before he died.

4. St. Paul opposed the Church.
    Paul was struck by a lightning that should have killed him and send him to hell. Fortunately, God had other  plans in mind.
    Paul, why does thou persecutest Me? Who are you, Lord? I am Christ whom thou persecutest.’ St. Paul could not persecute Christ because Christ was long dead and arisen already. He was persecuting the true Church, the Christian community. the Mystical Body of Christ. Clearly what you do to the true Christian community you do it to Christ. Imagine with the prevalent ignorance of the signs of the true Church,  more clearly described by St. Robert Bellarmine, everybody could be opposing the Church, destined for an awful death and the eternal fires of hell…..yet believe they are doing God’s work.

    Because of the confederacy of evil mentioned by John Newman, the whole world, pagan, christians and even Catholics are, in some way, opposing the Church. Obamacare in the US is practically abolishing the Catholic Church in the public square. State legislations on same sex marriage, abortion, family planning, euthanasia are all attacks on the Church. And there is the false accusations we read in the news made by gay bishops on good bishops and priest around the world, as in the case of Bishop Livieres and Bishop Thorne.

     Let us take two much publicized examples. The case of the Franciscans of the Immaculate and the Lefebvre group.
      A commissar appointed by Pope Francis who, evidently from the news, did not exhibit any visible sign of Catholicity, begun destroying the Franciscans who were showing at least a few signs of Catholicity,  by closing their convents and seminaries, putting under house arrest their superior and founder, dismissing the Franciscan priest, and threatening whoever benevolent bishop would incardinate them. He was worst than Henry the VIII who at least did not threaten bishops who incardinated priest fleeing irrational wrath.
     Well, the commissar suddenly got sick and died. With the above accomplishments published in his name, with his sudden illness and unexplained death on one side; and the description of the life of the Franciscans published in media on the other side……… it is difficult  not to see  in the commissar’s seemingly untimely death an example of what happens to those who oppose the Church. His Salesian successor better watch out. Being a Salesian,  he knows nothing about Franciscans and could easily oppose the Franciscan way of life. He should better, instead,  contemplate and preach  St. Francis’ treatise ‘On the Love of God’.  Since we live in an era prophesied by Christ as devoid of Charity.
     Here, we have a ridiculous situation where a man who, as seen in media, does not have a single visible sign of the true Church, reforming an order who have more visible signs than he. He ended up deforming the order. The same thing is happening with their sister counterpart. That the Franciscan sisters who know the Catholic counsels of Poverty, Chastity and Obedience are being reformed by a nun whose known quality is addressing the United Nations on ‘sexual aberrations.’ Also, appointed by Pope Francis. Again, some one without any published visible sign of Catholicity judging another who have signs.
     Remember these signs are visible, tangible signs which all men can know. So we should be able to follow this discussion.

     Let us go to the Lefebvre group. They have some visible signs of Catholicity describe by St. Bellarmine. They do not have all. That is why they are considered as schismatics. But they have more visible signs of Catholicity than the Vatican who had declared them schismatics. The last 2014 Bishop’s Synod in the Vatican was more schismatic than the Lefebvre group, as can be seen in almost all the headlines describing that meeting.

5. The total confusion.
     Today, there is near total confusion. If most people do not know the 15 marks of the Church, then most do not know where  the Church is. If most do not know where  the Church is, most do not know who is leading the world?  Guess who? Yes, you are right. The devil. Today, he is totally in charged because the men of the Church had abandoned their role, as prophesied in the first readings these past masses prior to the feast of Mt. Carmel.  Lucifer is the caused of the confusion and we are the confused.
     Today, Popes opposed bishops, bishops opposed Popes, bishops opposed other bishops, bishops gang up on priests. priests opposed lay people and lay people disobey priests…… and all unite together to oppose the true Church of Christ, as John Newman wrote in his ‘confederacy of evil.’   When will these all end? In our dreadful death and our being cast into hell?  Can you blame me in insisting on this topic. And forcing all to answer these questions?
     Yet, the solution to this confusion is so simple. It is in 15 very short phrases described as St. Robert Bellarmine’s ‘de notis Ecclesiae.’ We have tackled four visible signs of the true Church. I have done so because it is my obligation to the One who will judge me, the One who will dictate the way I will die and who has the power to kill both my body and my soul. I have no other reason.

Conclusion.  So whom am I to judge if one is a Catholic or not? I can only judge if I have mastered the 15 marks of the Church by Robert  Bellarmine. If I have not mastered them, or worst, if I do not know them……and as a consequence oppose God’s community….then God will judge me as one destined to an awful death to be cast to eternal flames. And who is to blame? My slothfulness in learning the easy, visible Marks of the true Church..

   

1. How can we know the true Church of Christ and whether we are inside it or not.
    We can know the True Church of Christ in many ways. The Theology of grace tells us that the true Church of Christ is the one where Divine Grace dwells. And the true members of the Church are those with sanctifying grace.
     Also, we can know the True Church of Christ through the three theological virtues. The Church where the three theological virtues of Faith, Hope and Charity exist is the true Church. And those with the theological virtues infused in them are the members of the Church.
     Like wise, the true Church of Christ is a contemplative Church. So those who have reached the heights of contemplation are the true members of the Church.
     These are just a few marks of the true Church. But they are spiritual signs that are not available to others. These spiritual marks can only be discerned by those who are in the same spiritual level. And that would be very few.

     These spiritual signs are the bases for canonization because these are the certain spiritual signs of sanctity which, lately, had been abolished by the Vatican. So that the canonization of saints today are unreliable because it is based on political contingencies and is not  a matter of Faith.
     Of course, if I have the infused knowledge of the above spiritual signs I can say on my own that Pope John Paul II is a saint and that would be a matter of Faith for me because I can see the spiritual marks of the true Church in John Paul II. I can even say that Pope Benedict is a saint though he is still alive because the spiritual marks of holiness is in him and my statement would be a matter of Faith.

     But because the canonization of Pope John XXIII and John Paul II were political exigencies pushed  by personal consideration and, therefore, are  not based on the acceptable signs of the  members of the true Church, then belief in their sanctity is not a matter of Faith. It would be similar to believing that a toothpaste can give you a golden smile. Belief in the two saints does not fall within the definition of Faith; it is just the result of clever advertisement.  But, I repeat, for someone, it could be an act of Faith if he has the spiritual skill to know the above spiritual marks of the Church.
     But let us stop here because spiritual marks are beyond the capability of most men if not of all men. Let us concentrate on the visible Marks of the Church that God, Himself, is using for all men to know the true Church of Christ. Even in this lower category it had been impossible to find these visible signs amongst the Catholics in the world today. Which make us conclude that the Catholic Church had almost disappeared from the face of the earth…..which Christ, Himself, prophesied before His passion.

2. Let us return to the three marks of the Church we have just discussed.  These are still the four visible signs we recite in the Nicene Creed every Sunday after the Gospel and Homily; One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic. But we have used St. Robert Bellarmines expanded explanation which consist in 15 marks.

3. St. Robert Bellarmine’s second Mark of the true Church is ANTIQUITY.
     The Catholic Church is the most ancient religion. Just as God existed before the devil, just as the wheat was planted before the cockle. The Catholic Church is older than all the associations of pagans.
      God established His religion and Church with Adam and Eve in the garden of Paradise. That was the only religion and Church at that time. And God’s doctrine already existed early in Paradise. The first antiquated doctrine God gave Adam and Eve was “Don’t ever decide what is right or wrong. I, God, will decided what is right and what is wrong. And you simply obey Me because I, God, know better than you.”
                                                                     

4. The most antiquated doctrine.
     Do My Will and not your will….that was the first teaching of God. It is truly ‘antiquated.’ There were no religions before that time nor many years after that. And that was the first Catholic Doctrine. ‘No one decides what is right or wrong but God alone. Nobody does what he wants but only what God wants because God knows better than we. Any attempt to decide what is right or wrong or if anyone does what he wants in complete disregard with God wants SINS.  This is the first basic Catholic Truth.

5. St. Bellarmine gives six signs of manifest change of religion from the original, and, therefore, is a fake religion. It is not ANTIQUATED is the sign of a false religion. Here are the six mark of a false church.

    Firstly, unlike the true Church that has God, only, as the author, the false church have  humans as authors. It could be Arius, Pelagius, Martin Luther, Soissy, Kasper or Mario Bergoglio.
     Secondly, while the true Church had only ‘antiquated’ doctrines, the false church have some new doctrines that could be just 50 or 200 years old.   For adulterers to be able to receive Holy Communion or for  men to be able to marry each other are doctrines acceptable today though a few hundred years they were taboo even among the pagans.
     Thirdly, while we do not know when Catholic teachings begun,  there is a very specific date when the new doctrine of the false church begun. The Arians began in 324 A.D., the Nestorian in 43, the Lutherans in 1517. Modernism around the 19th century, the hermeneutics of discontinuity was noticed during Vatican II and the Church of Compassion and Mercy is only around 50 years old.
     Fourthly, while we do not know where Paradise, where the Catholic religion began, was,  there is a place where the new doctrine and the new religion began. Arianism begun among the monks of Egypt, Nestorianism in Thrace and Lutheranism in Saxony. Modernism grew in France, the hermeneutics of discontinuity grew at the very halls of the Vatican in Rome and Bologna. And the Church of Compassion and Mercy was raised in Argentina.
     Fifthly, while the true Church of God was opposed by evil forces like the devil and his co-horts, the false churchs  are opposed by Holy Popes and saints. The Arians was opposed by Pope Sylvester and the Council of Nicea, helped by Sts. Athanasius and Hilary. The Nestorians was opposed by Pope Celestine, the Lutherans by Pope Leo X and the Council of Trent. Modernism was opposed by Pope Pius IX and Pius X, the hermeneutics of discontinuity by Pope Benedict XVI and the Church of Compassion by the majority of the Bishop’s Synod of 2014 led by Cardinal Burke.
     Sixthly, while the true Church began scantily and then grew in holy members, the false church also started scantily and then grew in sinful members.  Thus Arianism begun with a few monks and then it grew so rapidly that St. Jerome woke up one day seeing that the world had turned Arian. Modernism started as an underground movement with Soissy and grew taking over the entire of Europe. While the hermeneutics of discontinuity started as a force during Vatican II, went underground at the end of the Council and expanded in full force after the seeming resignation of Pope Benedict, i.e. under the papacy of Pope Francis. Today, a version of the heresy of modernism had been offered in a new package called the Church of Mercy and Compassion headed by the presidents of  the Bishops Conferences of Germany, France Switzerland and the Philippines. And this new sect is swamping the whole world attracting, not only different protestant sects, but also some pagan religions including  the U.N.
     Growth is not necessarily good. It depends on what is growing. Growth in wisdom is good Growth in cancer is bad. Growth in number of souls in grace is good. Growth in number of adulterer and sodomists is very bad.

     St. Robert Bellarmine proved that these six items can be used to expose a heretical religion,  while  the adversaries cannot use them to disprove the authenticity of the true Church. While these six marks can prove that a church is false, these same marks can show that the Catholic Church is the true Church.
 
6. Let us take hold of this mark ANTIQUITY and, right now, test some Catholics around us.
     In doing, so let us maintain as our background the other marks we have discussed; namely, Catholicity, Apostolicity and the gift of prophecy. Since the more marks we see in a Church  the nearer we come to the true Church. Remember we are using the 15 Marks of the Church enumerated by St. Robert which is a mere expansion of the four visible signs of the true Church we recite in the Nicene Creed at every Sunday Mass.

     Let us look at some groups within the Catholic Church that claims they are Catholics but do not have the visible signs ANTIQUITY. They are more dangerous because they put on the paraphernalia of Catholics but have none of the Catholic doctrines. They wear skull caps but have nothing Catholic in their minds. They have pectoral crosses on their chest but have no Charity in their hearts.
     Let us look at ‘modernism.’ Countless cardinals, bishops and priest hold modernist views summarized in the fact that everything earlier than the 1800 are useless and ineffective and, therefore, must be junked. It is based on original sin in that the private self is the deciding source of dogma and morality. It is the classical sin of Adam and  Eve, a rebellion to the command of God instigated by the author of the first rebellion in heaven, Lucifer. All other religions are rebellions against the one  true God.
     An offshoot from the greatest heresy of modernism is the hermeneuutics of discontinuity which essentially holds that anything before Vatican II is old, sick and must be dumped. And anything new, i.e. after Vatican II is new ‘good.’ Vatican II was not part of the new ‘good’. The new ‘good’ starts after the stepping down of Pope Benedict XVI. Here, the old ANTIQUATED old true religion is completely disregarded and substituted with an entirely new man-made church.
     I only met these words hermeneutics of discontinuity in the discussions during Vatican II. It was not introduced by the cardinal bishop of Bologna but a diocesan priest of belonging to the theological school of Bologna. Some Jesuits headed the school like Komonchak, the teacher of  Bishop Tagle, who is also part of the school and wrote one chapter in the book on Vatican II authored by the school. Pope Benedict continually condemned the hermeneutics of discontinuity proposing instead the hermeneutics of continuity which holds that the Catholic Church today is a continuation of the ANTIGUATED Catholic Church of Christ, the apostles and the Fathers of the  Church.
     Another off shoot from modernism and the hermeneutics of discontinuity is the Church of  Compassion and Mercy. This is the title of a book written by Mario Bergoglio as Bishop of Argentina which was inspired by Cardinal Kasper’s book on ‘Mercy’ which in turn was based on the writings of Martin Luther. The new doctrine taught here is the existence of the virtue of mercy divorced from the virtue of Justice. St. Thomas taught that ‘mercy’ is just one of the expression of the Justice of God and, therefore, cannot be separated from Justice. But both Kasper and Bergoglio completely divorced ‘mercy’ from justice.
Today;s mercy is a new teaching different from the ‘ANTIQUATED’ mercy of God.
      So, today, everybody will be saved because God is merciful. Even the atheist Scalpari was not discouraged from remaining an atheist but was even assured that atheist can be saved. together with adulterers who receive Holy Communion without repentance and together with those contracting same sex marriage. So essentially all these three new religions are imitations of  the sin of Adam and Eve, presented as a ‘new’ doctrine that believes one can decide what is right and wrong and choose whatever he wants in complete disregard with what God wants. The personal private judgment has again become the norm of dogma and morality. Well, not really very new but as old as all the previous heresies.

   

1. We have many concerns.
     One may join the discussions going on in Rome.  A hot topic is; whether there is one Pope or two Popes. If there are two Popes that cannot be; which mean one is a Pope and the other one is an anti-pope.  There is, of course, the discussion for the next Bishop’s Synod on the Family where so much conspiracy and secret meetings are taking place. Then there is the latest interest in global warming. What would you think is the most important topic……I think, the utmost important topic is which is the true Church of Christ and whether we are inside our outside that  Church.

2. Why is the topic on the ‘Church’ the most important.
    Even if there are two Popes, even though there is a great schism, even though the next Bishop’s Synod approve bestiality,even though global temperature rise to 200 celsius……if you know the true Church of Christ and you are inside that Church, you have nothing to worry. You will surely attain to eternal life.
     But though you are able to solve the enigma of the two Popes, though you have kept true marriage be between a man and a woman, though you can keep world temperature at a temperate level but if you do not know the true Church of Christ or you are outside that Church, you are in big trouble.
                                                                       

3. How can you find the true Church and the true religion?
     From the beginning God knew that after He has established His Church, the devil will fill the world with fake churches to deceive the people. So from the beginning God gave His Church visible signs by which she can be recognized and He saw to it that all men can know these visible signs using merely philosophy, a human science.
     Philosophy is the science of right reasoning. It is within the human or natural level. So all men can use this science to see the visible signs of the true Church of Christ.

     Why, then, do men have countless wrong religions? Ronald Knox answered; ‘because of original sin men have the misfortune of always choosing the wrong things. Hilaire Belloc specified the reason; because man does not want to think. Gilbert Chesterton insisted on the idea; that if all men used their heads well, they would all be Catholics. So because of men’s refusal to think, most men are in the wrong religion. And they have no excuse because the science of Philosophy is there to aid anybody who is zealous to learn.

     It is for this same reason that Protestants are in the wrong sect. They use the same Bible as the Catholics. How come Catholic know the true religion and they do not. Again because they read the Bible without thinking.

     But then, how come many Catholics do not know the visible signs of the true Church of Christ and think that they are inside when actually they are outside. For the same reason; they are not using their heads. Man who was created like the image and likeness of God is not using that image and likeness properly.

4. How can we know the true Church and how can we know if we are inside that Church. From the earliest form of writings, Divine Revelation. It is earlier than all the founders of all other religions. Therefore, it cannot come from other religions, but vice versa. All other religions are distortions of the old, original religion.

5. First, know the true religion. Afterwards, find out if you are inside the true religion.
    From the beginning of creation God gave His true religion four signs that gradually became more perfect as the world progressed. Today those signs are summarized in the Nicene Creed. ‘ I believe in One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. Those are the four visible signs of the Catholic Church that can be seen by all men.
     And how can we know if we are inside that Church? By, also, showing those four qualities. There is no other way by which we can know the Church or whether we are inside or outside the Church.

6. Many wrong signs of the true Church.
    Some have the wrong notion that the true Church can be found in groups with huge, big buildings. If so, then the big business commercial buildings are  the true church. More common mistakes among Catholics is the notion that the ones celebrating the Tridentine Mass is the true Church. The Tridentine Mass was never the visible sign of the true Church. Others think that those men wearing purple habit, with skull caps and pectoral crosses are the men of the true religion. Actors and thieves can wear the same things. The presence of statues of saints are not signs of the true Church.
     Perfect knowledge of Sacred Scriptures itself was never the visible sign of the true Church. Because even the devil knows Scriptures perfectly and he is not a member of the Church.
     A sign posted signifying this is the Catholic Church of St. Pancratio is no sign that it is a Catholic Church. The official teaching of the Church is that Christ taught that the visible sign by which His Church can be known are One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic.

7. These four visible signs are the signs of a community and not of an individual.
     So we can use these signs to check if a parish or a diocese is Catholic or not. If a religious community or an organization is Catholic. If a conference of Bishop or major religious superior are Catholic. We can use these signs even on the Vatican to check if it is still Catholic. And we should check. Otherwise we could end up being heretics or schismatics without knowing it and be condemned as such. Though the signs Holy and Apostolic can aptly be applied to individuals. Usually if it can be proven that a group or an individual has one sign, it will be easier to prove that they have the rest of the signs.

8. The crisis of the Church.
     The true Church and her members must automatically show these signs. If the signs are there, no effort have to be exerted to show them. St. Paul wrote describing the Romans, their signs can be known effortless through out the world. There is no need for help from anyone. And there is where the problem lies. That most Catholics, both laymen and bishops have no visible signs, cannot show any of the signs, and even with the help of theologians cannot show the visible signs of the true Church.
     Religious communities and organizations, parishes and dioceses cannot show the signs. In fact, we cannot see the visible signs of the true Church today anywhere.
     Most laymen and members of the priesthood cannot define the four signs though they can, at least,  enumerate them. The worse beings today are not criminals that can only harm the body but bishops who can harm both the body and the soul. “Corruptors of the youth” the prophecies described them because they get the young and increase the evil in them.

1. The TWO evangelizations..
     Both evangelizations were demonstrated by Christ, Himself. The so-called ‘classical’ evangelization was shown by Christ at the beginning of His ministry and is described at the end of the Gospel of St. Matthew. The ‘new’ evangelization was described by St. Mark in the Gospel of the 14th Sunday in ordinary time (Chapter 6).
     The ‘classical’ evangelization consist in three steps; first, ‘ to make disciples of all nations.’ Secondly; ‘to baptize….’ And thirdly, ‘to teach them all My commands and how to observe them.’ In the ‘new’ evangelization the words of the Gospel are; ‘and He could not teach them nor perform miracles because of their unbelief. In the ‘classical’ evangelization’ we preach; in the ‘new’ evangelization we keep quiet in the face of unbelief…..though if we are contemplatives, as Pope Benedict wrote, we will find a few predestined souls straggling in the sidewalks…..to them we may still go and preach. The scenario for this ‘new’ evangelization  is that we are contemplatives; because they alone can  find the few predestined souls apart from the unbelieving crowd.
      The essence of evangelization is identical in both evangelization. The slight difference is that in the ‘classical’ there is much preaching. While in the ‘new’ evangelization’ there is more quiet.  This difference is very clear in the Gospels referred to.

2. Neither evangelization is being observed today.
   The crisis of Faith in the Church was caused by the heresy of nominalism that disabled souls from making the proper disposition necessary for the reception of Faith. The first step in the classical evangelization, ‘to make disciples of all nations,’ which is the life of repentance. This was erased by the heresy. The result was that the second step, baptism, became ineffective and, the third step,  knowledge of the commands of Christ, became impossible.
   From the 14th century, because of the belief that Divine Revelation does not exist in reality and that private revelation is paramount, the Catholic Church slowly turned Protestant and never recovered. The Council of Trent was an attenpt to break the descend of the Catholic Church but it also did not work because it is saints that reform the Church, not ecumenical councils.
                                                                           

   Because the present generation of priests are infected by this heresy which made it impossible for them to know the old ‘classical’ evangelization, it became even more impossible for them to understand the ‘new’ evangelization of Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict……because the ‘new’ evangelization is based on and is an improvement of the classical evangelization. Today, absolutely nobody is talking about the ‘new’ evangelization’ though seminars and Bishop’s Synod pretend to teach the ‘new’ evangelization.’ For example, the Bishop’s Synod of 2012 was about the ‘new’ evangelization. But the Synod intentionally omitted the essence of both the classical and ‘new’ evangelization. So the descend into deeper error continues and is most obvious in the Bishop’s Synod of 2014. And the ‘instrumentum laboris’ in preparation for the Bishop’s Synod of 2015 shows a worsening scenario.
     Neither program of evangelization is being observed today. Catholic evangelization today is purely public relation gimmicks used by politicians and movie stars; kissing all kinds of books and persons, embracing everybody, dressing up in King burgers, riding small cars, offering foot balls to God, blessing coca leaves…..well as St. Matthew wrote; even the pagans can do that. Indeed, as Hilaire Belloc had written earlier, the world had returned into paganism and the men of the Catholic Church is leading this descend..

3. The punishment for sin is to easily descend to a worst sin. St. Thomas of Aquinas.
     All of these crisis in the Church is bound to happen, not because of William of Ockam or Martin Luther. But because it was prophesied in Scriptures. St. Bonaventure and Blessed John Newman had very aptly described what is happening today as early as their times. All knowledgeable Catholics know this. Even Robert Benson, a convert and later on Catholic priests made it into an Apocalyptic novel. There he showed the ‘great apostasy’ mentioned by St. Paul. with an anti-pope, a disgruntled former Catholic priest, leading the apostasy in league with the head of the United States. And the anti-pope’s name was Francis. Pope Francis read this book and commented on it in one of his homilies.

4. The worst sin.
     The continuous descend into evil will result, not so much in the mere  physical possession of Satan but the spiritual possession of Satan as what happened to Judas. Judas was the pre-figure of the priests and bishops of these times refereed to by St. Paul as the ‘great apostasy.’ Being one of the first bishop recruited by Christ, Himself, Judas was spiritually possessed by Satan. And he ended up doing unimaginable evils. That was on Good Friday, the sixth day of the week. And Pope Benedict reminded us that we are in the sixth day; referring to the sixth day in St. Bonaventure’s ‘Theology of History.
     The worst sin committed today by the whole world is prompted by their being spiritually possessed by the devil. It is ordinarily manifested in the killing of one’s neighbor who has done nothing wrong towards ayone. This can be from abortion to terrorism. which is essentially irrational killing of the bodies. Within the Catholic Church this is an attempt to kill the Mystical Body of Christ; the killing of the souls through bishops encouraging others to sin as what happened during the Bishop’s Synod of 2014 up to the rampant corruption of the youth done by  some bishops. This way they kill the soul. To whom much is given the greater is the punishment if the gift is misused.
     . This dual blitzkrieg by both the world and some members of the hierarchy on the Church was described by Blessed John Newman in his book ‘The confederacy of evil.’
     The worst sin was the sin of Judas, deicide. The sin of the confederacy of evil is the killing of the Mystical Body of  Christ, which is deicide, too. “Why are you persecuting Me”  was Christ’s complain when St. Paul was persecuting the Church.

5. Because neither the classical nor the ‘new’ evangeliation is being used by priests and bishops today. what are they using to save souls today? Nothing. They are merely using panaceas  and lots of public relation gimmicks to deaden the pains of unbelief. But without Faith in a faithless era because no one knows how to teach how to make an act of  Faith what do we do? The  ‘new’ evangelization of John Paul and Benedict states;  ‘be a contemplative and learn these things directly from God.’

6. How to become a contemplative.
     Two steps. First, is the classical ‘fuga mundo’. Second, to learn from Christ who is meek and humble of heart. This is the Gospel on the feast of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel. It was what Elijah and the Carmelites are doing. The Carmelites are following the example of the prophet Elijah. And like all prophets up to St. John they detached themselves from the world. They flee away from the world and live in deserts, forests, mountain tops and in islands. Someone engaged in the things of the world will find it impossible to be a contemplative.
     And what do they do away from the world? They imitate the meekness of Christ by being meek towards all their companions and they imitate the humility of Christ by being obedient to their superiors. These are the two steps. Of course, upon doing these they will not become instant contemplatives. Their growth in the contemplative life will be a gradual process that completely depends on the grace of God. What happens is that slowly as they live the contemplative life, God begins to teach them many things about Divine Revelation.
     How would they look like if they do the two steps mentioned above? They would live the ‘new’ monasticism described by St.Bonaventure and mentioned by Pope Benedict as the important element of the ‘new’ evangelization.

1. My  love for the Church.
    I am motivated by love for the Church in which my salvation lies. And Charity demands that I share this love with others by, first, teaching others how to enter her (called evengelization), secondly, how to defend her and thirdly, by describing the state of her health. These are obligations of those who have Faith.

2. What if there is growing perception that the Church is sick.
     A doctor is trained by teaching him how a healthy body looks and works. This will be the basis of all his analysis. When he examines  a sick person he, simply, finds what organ is not working well in the person. And then, through medicines, he tries to restore that organ back to health.
     We must work in the same way in the spiritual life. We must know how a spiritually healthy person looks like. If the soul sins, we  find out the vice that had made the soul sick. And then apply the ascetical medication to restore the soul to a virtuous life.
     The description of a healthy soul is found in Divine Revelation with Christ as its exemplar. The different illnesses called vices are, also, found in Divine  Revelation, but its ascetical medication has been detailed in Tradition or the writings of the Fathers of the Church.
     The Church is never sick. But the men of the Church can be sick. This differentiates the cockles from the wheat.
                                                                       

                                                                     
3. What I did for the love of the Church.
     In a project presented by the late  Bishop of Antipolo and approved by the CBCP in Tagaytay, we mailed to all Diocesan priests and bishops a newsletter on the spiritual life based on Scriptures and its interpretation by the Fathers of the Church for more than 30 years free of charge. This blog is an extension of that project except that we have included commentaries on current events happening in the Catholic Church around the world.
    Also, in obedience to Pope John Paul’s II exhortation to the Philippine Bishops to revise the curriculum of seminaries and at the request of the then  Bishop of Naga, head of the committee on seminaries of the CBCP, we offered a curriculum based on the Liturgy that was, also, approved by the CBCP in Tagaytay.
     For the lay men we produced radio programs on the ‘Compendium of Pope Benedict’.. And distributed good spiritual books free of charge to those who asked for them. Add to this the hundreds of retreats we held free of charge in our retreat house for all who asked for it. These are just a few of the better known proofs of our efforts in loving the Church in the Philippines.
    With all these treasures of knowledge possessed by the Church, in our desire to share them with all,  we could not help making conclusion based on these knowledge. We followed the simple philosophical syllogism…….. if the major and minor are true, then the conclusion must be  true.

4. Why I stated that  ‘ Pope Francis is an anti-pope.
     The conclusion is based, first, on the prophecies of Christ ‘on the decay of Faith’ and the’ waxing cold of Charity’ that is prophesied to happen today. This is further confirmed by St. Paul in his letter to the Thessalonians where he prophesied ‘a great apostasy.’ This apostasy can only be led by an anti-pope and embraced by majority of the cardinals, , bishops and priests. Consequently all the lay men will follow suite.
      Secondly, Satan is an intelligent angel. He knows that to destroy the Church he must strike at the top. He has always done it many times before producing 40 anti-popes in the Catholic Church.  We have no reason to think it cannot happen today.
     Thirdly, we have had 40 anti-popes elected before, existing  together with the true Popes. During those times, none of the cardinals, bishops or priest were able to identify which was the true pope and who was the anti-pope. Great saints, alone, identified them and tried to solve the problems. We have the examples of St. Catherine of Sienna, a lay sister and St. Bernard of Clairvaux..
     Fourthly, some saints, like Hildegard of Bingen, raised by Pope Benedict to the honors of being a Doctor of the Church, prophesied in ‘Scivia,’ her visions, that there will be an anti-pope sometime after an attempt on the life of a true Pope.
     Fifthly, the Book of Revelation describes an anti-pope that will join the anti-Christ in destroying the Church. He is called the second beast.

     This above scenario was the primary aim of the whole monastic movement described by St. Bonaventure and included by Pope Benedict as goal of  his ‘new evangelization.’ It is of the utmose importance for Catholics to know; first how to enter the Church. And secondly; who will be his great enemy; the devil, as personified in the anti- Christ and the helper of the anti-Christ, the anti – pope. The anti-Christ is the destroyer of the world; the anti-pope is the destroyer of the Church.
To know who is the anti-pope is a matter of salvation or damnation.

     After going through the five steps mentioned above plus going over the 15 visible signs of the true Catholic Church according to St. Bellarmine,  my conclusion is that we have an anti-pope today. This conclusion is based on the fact that Catholic teaching states that we can have an anti-pope any time, even today. My indiscretion is that I pin pointed who he was. Why he and not somebody else? It was easy to analyze him because of his exposure to media.

    Why I concluded that Pope Francis was ‘anti-pope.’
     He went against the commands of God, like his proposal during the Bishop’s Synod 2014 that were against the commands of God, against the teachings of Christ and against the teachings of the Apostles. For which reason the majority of the cardinals and bishops rejected them. The news described it as the first time a Synod ever rejected a Pope. Why? Because he went against God’s commands. And recently he held a secret meeting with those on his side to push the same rejected proposals in the next 2015 Bishop’s Synod. Discovered by Journalist, their names were published. Now, we know the names of those bishops who plan to continue disobeying God’s commands in the next Synod. Here they can be aptly be described  as anti-Christ, a word I never used.
     Next, add to this the widely published disobediences of Pope Francis to the teachings of past Popes from Pius IX to John Paul and Benedict. . …..I was forced to make the conclusion that because he went against the teachings of past Popes he could be described as an anti-pope….a literal description.
     In the just concluded Roman Forum  at Lake Garda in Northern Italy, the conference urged Pope Francis to follow the Church’s teaching not to befriend the world for to do so is ‘enmity with Christ.’ So Pope Francis is also anti-Church, a description I, also, never used.
     Pope Francis, by his own words and actions went against the teachings of previous Popes and the only word to describe such actions is being an anti-pope.

5. My apology.
     I am not able to apologize for the five steps mentioned above because those are all Catholic teachings; from the prophecy of Christ that this age will be devoid of Faith and Charity, up to the conclusion that we can have an anti-pope any time today or in the near future..
     I am not able to apologize for the news world wide that contributed to this conclusion because they are not under my control like what happened in the Bishop’s Synod 2014 where the Pope was rejected by the majority and the conclusion in the Roman forum at Lake Garda  where he was described as anti-Catholic Church.
     The conclusion that Pope Francis is an anti-pope is not my conclusion but a conclusion based on his very own words and actions. It is a logical conclusion the mind is forced to make for fear of his soul’s very damnation or salvation. He who follows an anti-pope is thrown straight  with him to hell  by Christ, Himself, the Apocalypse notes. My reason for voicing that conclusion is to warn and save as many souls as possible.
     Up to here my Catholic obligation ends. But definitely for having announced who specifically was referred to in the conclusion was careless for which  I deeply apologize.  In front of wives who love their husbands and children who highly respect and look up to their fathers we do not call a man an adulterer even if he is an adulterer a hundred times over. Let the family discover that themselves. As a bishop suggested, I should have kept quiet and let the readers make their own conclusions. That was well said.  My fault is that I degraded a man that many respects and love.

     I apologize for opening my mouth. It is this that have distraught many consciences. I should have not made my final and personal conclusion public.
    For having stated the conclusion that I should have left to each one to make thus disturbing the peace of consciences of some readers I deeply apologize. I have, therefore, under obedience,  deleted all offending posts that contain the entire syllogism and will concentrate on the major and minor part of the syllogism leaving the conclusion to the reader.
   
     I will continue to love the Church upon  which my salvation lies but I will be less aggressive in defending her.

Evangelization leads to FAITH. Evangelization is the process by which an evangelizer who already has Faith leads a soul or souls towards the proper disposition that will make them deserving to receive the supernatural virtue of FAITH.

What are the effects of Faith in the soul? Here are just a few. The forgiveness of all past sins and the prevention of future sins. This is based on the fact that virtues and vices cannot co-exists. They are exclusive of one another. To commit sin one has to abandon his virtues. The very abandonment of virtue is already sin.

Another effect of Faith is that the soul knows God’s Will all the time thus  he is referred to as a ‘righteous’ person. His will is united to God and, therefore, he has a good will. On the other hand if the soul has no faith, keeping in mind what St. Paul said that everything not of faith is sin, then everything he does is sin.

Faith is what leads us to wisdom, happiness and holiness. If we study the 12 steps in the Act of Faith according to St. Thomas, and the steps in the last post taken from St. Augustine and Blessed John Newman… we can easily know if we have Faith or not. We can even know if others have Faith or not because these signs are visible signs. In fact these signs are similar to the classical four visible signs of the Catholic Church: one, holy, catholic and apostolic. We can even know the degree of our Faith. These are all the things the Holy Father wants us to know during this year of Faith.

Let us review the two human acts that makeup  the beginnings of the ‘Act of Faith’  This is knowledge of the proposition and the ASSENT of the intellect to the same proposition derived from Divine Revelation.

We begin with the human act of the mind in possessing a proposition from God,….like ‘there is a God.’ That is a proposition  or a statement of truth or a truth from God…but let us call it a proposition, in short.  This proposition first exists in the mind through our common sense where all men know that there are creatures and, therefore, there must be a Creator who we can call God. Then our conscience works and expands that knowledge into the fact that this God must be just and, therefore, ‘He rewards the good and punishes the evil.’ And conscience continues to find out what are the good things that God rewards and what are the evil He punishes. And conscience will discover that it will commit a lot of mistakes due to fallen nature. But conscience, also, tells him that this good God would try to get in contact with man to make Himself known. And conscience will guide the mind to examining the Old Testament (this is to describe the whole process in summary form.) Conscience will further conclude that God could find it impossible to communicate with man and so would send His Son to become man to communicate in an easier way with man. This will logically guide the mind to the New Testament.

Using his common sense, his conscience and, now, his logical mind, the soul begins to study Divine Revelation as found in the New Testament, finds it impossible to believe but finds it believable. So the mind seeing the message of Divine Revelation  believable convinces the will that it would be good to believe this truth. When the will consents to the assent of the mind that is the Act of Faith.

Faith being an act of assent of the mind to a propositions and the affective consent of the will to the assent of the mind to the proposition is the uniting force of the Catholic Church. The members of the Catholic Church is described as having one heart (will) and one mind (intellect). Members think the same thing and in the same way.

The signs of Faith are obvious so that we know exactly when the apostles reached Faith. We, also, know when St. Augustine and Blessed John Newman reached Faith. In the last post we enumerated the four steps that made up the proper disposition for us to receive the gift of Faith and they are visible human acts. They are so visible that St. Augustine and Blessed Newman could write down when it exactly happened.  The Liturgy of the Mass describes the signs of Faith during the 35 Sundays in ordinary time. Keeping these in mind any soul can know if he has Faith or not….which is the goal of this ‘Year of Faith.’ And any Bishop, priest, nun or layman can know if they have Faith or not. And this is what the Holy Father wants us to find out this year. He does not want us to presume we have Faith because if we make a mistake the consequence would be the lost of our souls.

If we have Faith we can lead others to ‘Porta Fidei’ that is why Faith is the solution to all the problems of the world. While the absence of Faith is the cause of all the problems in the world.

Let us apply the above signs to the discussions during Vatican II.  The then Cardinal Ratzinger, writing in ‘The Highlights of Vatican II’ which contains a summary of the proceedings after each of the four assembly meetings, described the discussions as a ‘forest in complete disarray.’  He even observed that the discussions did not observe the doctrinal boundaries already made by the Council of Trent and Vatican I. Sort of everyone went overboard. The propositions being presented were not according to the propositions of the Catholic Church as proposed by her spokesman the Pope. Since the documents of Vatican II were not complete and not very clear everybody should have waited for the official interpretation of the Catholic Church through her spokesman the Pope because these documents are supernatural truths that has to be interpreted by the Catholic Church. As the Holy Father Pope Benedict  interprets the documents of Vatican II he had noticed pelagian tendencies both in Gaudium et spes and ‘On religious Liberty.’

The fact that the proposition being presented during discussions were different from the proposition already possessed by the Catholic Church, like on Divine Revelation, basing it in the above first step in the Act of Faith shows the words of document to be devoid of Faith.

Let us not go further than this first step, i.e. having the right proposition in our mind. The cause of the crisis of Faith is having a defective, a wrong and even just having no proposition in mind.

Let us go to a more recent event:  the ‘New Evengelization’  that leads to ‘Porta Fidei.’ The proposition God has proposed through our common sense, through our consciences, and through the  Catholic Church through her official spokesman the Pope is this:  the ‘New Evangelization’ that leads to ‘Porta Fidei’ consists in living a life of conversion. And in the process ‘conversion’ is the most important.’ Let us see if the 58 proposals during the last Bishop’s Synod is the same proposition as that of the Pope’s. The proposals of the Bishop’s Synod is based on the unimportance of ‘conversion’ (as expressed in the Lineamenta) and, therefore, they can proceed in aiming at supernatural ends, like ecumenism, using human means.

Those two proposals are not the same. And though personally the bishops could have great Faith that can move mountains, the wordings of the document show they is no faith because their proposition is different from God’s proposition as expressed by the Catholic Church through the Pope. The document shows the absence of the first necessary step in the Act of Faith. We do not have to be theologians to see that. We only have to know how to read documents and a little thinking to see the non-compliance.

With the Year of Faith we are also celebrating a commemoration of Vatican II where the Pope is telling us to learn the true interpretation of the Documents. We need Faith to interpret Vatican II correctly and this needs compliance of the proposition in our minds with the propositions of Vatican II as interpreted by the Catholic Church through the Pope. We are also commemorating the publishing of the Catechism. The Catechism, specially the Compendium of Pope Benedict as official spokesman of the Catholic Church contains precisely the proper propositions that should exist in our minds.

Getting the propositions right in our mind is difficult enough and takes a long time. The inability to get it right is the biggest obstacle to this first step in the Act of Faith. Giving an assent to these propositions is also very difficult but easier than the previous step. Pope Benedict, quoting St. Bonaventure,  hinted that to make it a little easy for us, we should do these two activities within a good monastery with a superior who has a perfect Faith……and has, also, the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. Maybe this last part is hardest to find.

We have just described the need for the mind to have the right propositions as God has revealed them……and for the will to give its affective consent (still part of the assent of the cognitive faculty) ……for the mind to give its full assent to these truths as believable even if the mind does not understand them fully. Only after that can the will give its full consent to the truth of the proposition finding it good for the soul to believe. Then God grants the soul the gift of Faith.

The Proper Disposition for the Reception of the Virtue of FAITH.

The first thing a Pope does during  his Pontificate is to remind the faithful on how to attain eternal life.  Pope Benedict did this in his first three encyclicals where he reminded us of the importance of the three theological virtues, namely Charity in ‘Deus Caritas Est’, Hope in ‘Spe Salvi’ and in ‘Caritas in Veritate,’ where he partly described Faith. During this ‘Year of Faith’ he expressed plans to write an encyclical  fully describing  the virtue of Faith (which at this moment has not yet been released).

Let us go directly to the crux of the ‘New Evangelization’ that leads to ‘Porta Fidei’ i.e. …the act preceeding the ‘Act of Faith’……or the proper disposition necessary before God gives us the virtue of Faith. This is the act of ‘conversion.’ The Holy Father insisted that this is the important element of Evangelization in an address to priests and deacons. And this was further emphasized by the International Theological Commission, now a Pontifical commission that advises the Magisterium.

Picture a soul with the proper disposition and is about to receive the grace of Faith from God. How would he look? Let us describe it in its essentials and in summary form and leave the other details for later

The ‘proper disposition’ consists of three steps. These steps are purely natural human acts done by every man when he acts. Man does it when he eats pizza. He has no reason why he cannot do it when he makes an ‘Act of Faith.’

The first step: is for the mind, a faculty of the soul, to have two kinds of knowledge. On one side he must have a natural, human knowledge of the WHAT and HOW of the Commandments of God (as commanded by God in the Old Testament and by Christ in the New Testament). On the other side he must have a knowledge of himself, whether he had obeyed or disobeyed those commands.

From where should he learn the WHAT and HOW of the commandments of God? From the Catholic Church! Not from books like the Bible, not from theology, not from theological schools….but from the Catholic Church through her spokesman, the Holy Father, the Pope! When Christ came to earth to teach man the way to eternal life He established a Church with a spokesman. He did not write a book nor did He establish a seminary nor a theological school. When Christ wanted to begin teaching man the way to Eternal Life He established His Church  to preach to all nations. He did not send printed bibles. So the first step towards the proper disposition to receive the theological virtue of Faith is to have a knowledge of God’s commands as taught by the Catholic Church through her spokesman the Pope.  This is the knowledge we must have on one side of our mind. This knowledge is naturally given by God to all men and can be refined further by the use of common sense and conscience. All of these are still in the natural level.

Unfortunately we are not interested in what the Pope says.  We are interested in what the world has to say or what theology schools have to say.  The lack of this first step is the main reason for the crisis of Faith.

From where should we learn the state of our soul; a knowledge on what commandments of God had we obeyed and disobeyed?  From oneself!  We should enter into ourselves, into our minds and free wills, and into our memories and see what are our thoughts, what are our loves and what we often remember. And compare these with the knowledge we have acquired from the Church through her spokesman, the Pope. Unfortunately we would rather go outside of ourselves and think of the defects of others rather than of our own defects.

The inability to do this first step is a sure sign that there is no Faith.

The second step: is for the mind to check if both informations are right. The soul must check if his knowledge of the WHAT and HOW of the commandments of God are right. And the soul must check if his knowledge of himself is right.

How do we check if we got the ‘WHAT are the commandments’ from the Church through its spokesman, the Pope right? By checking it with Divine Revelations as found in Sacred Scriptures. Notice that when Christ came to teach man the way to Eternal Life He first established a Church to teach man. But later on inspired  writers to write Scriptures so we can use it TO CHECK if we understood the spokesman of the Catholic Church right. We do not use Scriptures to check if what the Pope said is right. NO! We use Scriptures to check if our understanding of the Holy Father, the spokesman of the Catholic Church, is right. Unfortunately we don’t check the things that enter our minds. Almost everybody in the world, including Catholics, never check if they have joined the true religion.  John Newman did and discovered he was in wrong religion and converted to Catholicism.

And how do we check if our knowledge of the ‘HOW to obey the commandments’ are right? We check if we understood it right from the writings of the Fathers of the Church, from the Liturgy of the Church and from the Magisterium of the Church. Unfortunately we often do not check if we are doing the HOW right. We do not even try to know the HOW,  like HOW should we really pray according to God’s command.

After the second step, the soul can now say ‘I know and understand in the human level what is needed to have Eternal Life.’  And ‘ I know and understand in the human level what will prevent me from attaining Eternal Life. These two knowledge are  necessary for the soul to make a choice which is pre-requisite for the attainment of the virtue of Faith.

The third step: is the process of making a choice between the two ways of lives represented by the two kinds of knowledge. This is a crisis for the soul, painful and unforgettable and sometimes a step that takes longer than the previous two steps. It is so traumatic most souls are able to remember and describe it years after the experience. The soul will keep on alternating from one side then choosing the other side. Often the soul tries to choose a little from both sides. This was evident in the experience of St. Augustine and Blessed John Newman. At this time actual grace is needed to swing the soul to the right side, the service of God. What makes the choice difficult is the fact that the choice must be exclusive of one another. You can choose only one side to the total exclusion of the other. Christ said: you are either for Me or against Me.

The fourth step: is when the soul decides.  If the soul decides to choose the life in complete obedience to the commands of God which he has fully understood in the natural way as learned from the Church through her spokesman the Pope,  after checking if he got it right from Divine Revelations and the writings of the Fathers………….the soul must now decide to completely renounce the world, his love ones and all the desires of his heart.

The steps above which makes up the proper disposition prior to receiving the grace of Faith from God is called ‘conversion,’ the first step in Pope Benedict’s ‘New Evangelization.’ This topic was deliberately omitted as unnecessary in the Bishop’s Synod. The omission go against the ‘first step’ in the proper disposition to receive Faith. Though the Synod briefly mentioned it in Proposition 22  it was not explained. Maybe a bishop raised an objection to its omission but isn’t the failure to discuss a topic mentioned by the Pope as crux to evangelization a sign of no Faith in most of the participants? What if this serious omission is propagated to the entire Catholic world? It is a serious disobedience to the Apostolic Commission given by Christ to the Apostles.

When the decision is made in the fourth step  God gives grace to the soul   for the forgiveness of his sins and grants him the supernatural virtue of Faith. What the soul only understood in the natural level he will now understand in the supernatural level and in its depths. A knowledge that only God can teach him.

In this ‘Year of Faith’  the Holy Father wants us to check  if we have the proper disposition to receive the virtue of Faith. Have you received from God the theological virtue of Faith? This is the question. In the just concluded Bishop’s Synod, the documents, proposals and video interviews showed that everybody worked on the assumption that they all had Faith and that the business of the Synod is just to try to find out how to share this Faith with others. That was not the question. The question is: Those of you who are attending the Synod have you checked if you have Faith?  Have you checked it with the four steps given above by the Pope quoting St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas and Blessed John Newman? Apparently, the 58 proposals completely missed the question.

The Holy Father had expressed in his ‘Ratzinger Report’, and with John Paul II  in ‘Veritatis Splendor’, in his ‘Year of the Jubilee of St. Paul, in his ‘Year of the priests.’ and now in his ‘New Evangelization’ towards ‘Porta Fidei…………that most priests have no Faith and consequently all the faithful under them. Would it not be the highest form of Charity for someone to take note of this and inform everyone? After all the eternal salvation of priests and of countless souls are at stake…and also the eternal salvation of the one who noticed the error and says nothing.

The  Elements of the ‘Act of Faith.’

The most important theological virtue that leads us to eternal life is NOT Faith but Charity. “Even if you have Faith that can move mountains but do not have Charity….your Faith is useless.” One cannot have Charity without Faith and we cannot Hope to have eternal life if we do not have Faith. So Hope and Charity are founded on Faith. And the Holy Father knows it is hopeless for us to reach Charity and Hope unless we first have Faith. Thus the ‘Year of Faith.’

But most PRESUME they have Faith just because they are baptized, just because they are ordained priest, just because they are consecrated bishops, just because they belong to well-known international ecclesial communities and just because they are holding a bible. This shows ignorance of ‘Act of Faith’ that is a sure sign of the absence of Faith.

During this ‘Year of Faith’ the Holy Father wants all of us, without exception to find out if we have the virtue of Faith. If we analyze the 58 proposals made by the Bishop’s Synod in Rome which will be the schema to be applied on the whole Catholic World this year, the proposals presume that all Bishops and priests have Faith and are just supposed to share it with others.  In Philosophy we call it ‘deny the supposition’. The Pope did not say share your Faith with others. He said check first if you have Faith because the probability is great that you, whoever you are, does not have Faith…..many do not have the signs of Faith taught in the Liturgy..

All the problems of the Catholic Church is because of the absence of Faith. The problem of priests all around the world is due to absence of Faith. That problem could have been easily solved by simply sending them to a few chosen monasteries to make their neglected  personal ‘Act of Faith.’ And the whole world could have been made better because of the Faith of believers. But the whole world is now in complete deterioration because the Catholics whose Faith should have conquered the world have no Faith. It boils down to ‘the inability to make the Act of Faith’. All the other problems as enumerated in the 58 proposals are just ramification caused by the absence of Faith. And none of those proposals can be acted upon unless we first receive the gift of Faith from God. And this is the rationale for the ‘Year of Faith.’

Let us again further describe the proper disposition needed for God to give us the virtue of Faith. This proper disposition is the end-goal of ‘conversion,’ which the Holy Father had  described as the first step in evangelization without which the next steps, entrance into the kingdom of God, encounter with Jesus and the Holy Spirit and Eternal Life, are impossible.

Let us look at the picture of a person about to receive the grace of Faith from God. Let us look at his proper disposition that will make him deserving to receive the virtue of Faith from God. He has two images before his mind. On one side is the teachings of the Catholic way of life and on the other side is one’s own personal life. The two images are contradictory to each other. The image of the Catholic way of life might not be perfect or complete. But the person  has no doubt that that is the way of life taught by Christ as explained by the Catholic Church. On the other hand the personal way of life though  not described completely  is clearly seen as disobedience to the Catholic way of life. This view is similar to St. Augustine’s City of God and City of man. This is the most neglected element in the ‘Act of Faith’….. the choice in the midst of a conflict.

The knowledge of the Catholic way of life must be a natural but complete understanding of the commandments of Christ as given by the Lord in the New Testament and as explained by the Catholic Church through her Vicar the Pope. One’s personal way of life, on the other hand,  is a description of the disobediences of the soul against the Catholic way of life.

So the soul, still without Faith is standing in front of these two choices between  two ways of lives.  At this point a severe crisis will take place. The soul will be torn to pieces as he chooses between the two,  on one side,  the service of God that leads to Eternal Life but at the price of completely giving up one’s personal way of life of disobedience.  Making the choice can tear apart a soul as described in the lives of St. Augustine and Blessed John Newman. But it is only in making the choice in favor of the Catholic way of life that the soul will have the proper disposition to be worthy to receive the supernatural virtue of Faith together with everything that comes with it.

St. Augustine described this as a ‘total horizontal change of direction in life’  made possible only by the grace of God. The life of the soul becomes totally unrecognizable because of the the change. Note that the soul progresses in his knowledge toward  making the choice. Everything after the choice is the work of the grace of Faith that comes from God. It is reaching that crossroad that is the goal of the ‘Year of Faith.’ And the way before we can reach that crossroad is so rough as described by St. Augustine and Blessed John Newman it would  be almost impossible for many because of the state of the world today. Just because it is very rough shall we just sit down and endanger the eternal salvation of our souls?

The crisis of St. Augustine was that he had come to love the Catholic way of life and he wanted to choose that way of life. If he chose that way of life he would have received the gift of Faith from God. But he could not give up his personal way of life which was in disobedience to the commandments in the Catholic way of life. And this conflict prevented him from making the ‘Act of Faith.’ He had to struggle in giving up his personal way of life to have the strength to choose the Catholic way of life. In the case of Blessed John Cardinal Newman the giving up of his personal way of life was easy though he also found it difficult but what prevented him from having the proper disposition to deserve to receive the virtue of Faith from God is the many non-Catholic doctrines that he had accumulated during his being Anglican, Anglo-Anglican, Evangelical, Libertarian, and via media. This made some of his well learned  Anglican doctrines heretical thus he could not make the  proper choice prior to conversion. His knowledge of Catholic doctrines were defective.  He was faced with two defective choices. Fortunately, Pussey and Froude led him gently to the true Catholic Faith…he made the right choice, the Catholic Church, after correcting his erroneous doctrines around 1840….the day he ‘deconverted’ from Anglicanism and converted to the Church of Rome.The mind must be well-informed by these two choices and the free will must make the choice of one and completely abandoning the other. Thus when St. Augustine and Blessed John Newman made their ‘Act of Faith’  they also made their vow of chastity.

Where is the Catholic Church?

St. Thomas of Aquinas reminded us the importance of having the final goal in mind before we begin a journey. On the ‘New Evangelization’ Pope Benedict was very clear in his schema on what is our proximate goal and what is our final goal. The proximate goal of  Evangelization is Faith or entrance into the Kingdom of God (or the Catholic Church) while our final or ultimate goal is Eternal Life.

In this Year of Faith, the Pope wants us all to concentrate on our proximate goal –  Faith …..or entrance into the Catholic Church. Where is the Catholic Church and how does she look.

The Holy Father had already expressed many times the problem of the Catholic Church today.  In his popular book ‘Ratzinger Report’  he described it as ‘a crisis of Faith.’ This does not consist in the lost of Faith but in the total inability of most souls  to make the ‘Act of Faith’. We have described the ‘Act of Faith’ in a previous posts and we saw that it truly is impossible for many to make the ‘Act of Faith’….. though we had postponed giving the reasons why.

Basing it on the reasons already hinted  by Pope Benedict and further elaborated by theologians like Fr. Pinckners, the cause of this universal inability to make an ‘Act of Faith’ is due to an error in teaching Catholic
doctrine in seminaries that probably happened as early as the 16th century. Its domino effect through the centuries up to the present is devastating to the Catholic Church. Cardinal Ratzinger described it as  “wrong method and wrong contents” in Evangelization. That is like saying everything went wrong.

This is how it happened. There are two levels of knowledge available to men; natural and supernatural. Natural knowledge is what man can ordinarily learn and what man can ordinarily teach. Supernatural knowledge is what man cannot ordinarily learn and what man cannot ordinarily teach to men. The latter can only be taught by God and it comes along with the grace that God gives man.  All the teachings of the Catholic Church are supernatural knowledge…..though it is built on natural knowledge.

How can natural man learn supernatural knowledge? By ASCENDING the steps beginning from natural knowledge and going up to the supernatural knowledge. This process of ASCENDING from the natural to the supernatural  is called CONVERSION. And this process of conversion is taught to men through ‘evangelization.’  ‘Conversion’ and ‘Evangelization ‘ is what Jesus Christ commanded in His Apostolic Commission when He said: “Go to all nations, Baptizing them….and teaching them all that I have commanded and how to obey them.”  ‘Conversion’ and  ‘Evangelization ‘ is WHAT to  “teach all.”  Notice that WHAT to ‘teach all ‘ are commandments and NOT  doctrines. We learned the same thing when the young rich man went to Christ and wanted to have eternal life. Christ said: “Go home, sell all your things and give it to the poor.”  Notice again that Christ did not give him doctrines. Christ gave him ‘commandments.’ The grievous error in seminary courses from the 16th century up to the present is that they are not teaching ‘how to ascend from the natural to the supernatural.’ In effect they are not teaching conversion of life.  They are not evangelizing the seminarians according to the teaching of Christ as shown in the Apostolic Commission and in the advice given to the young rich man.

So what happened to those studying for the priesthood from that time up to now? St. Augustine says that Scriptures has two levels of interpretation. Scriptures has words with dictionary meanings like if I say ‘This is a word,’ every human can understand that in the natural level. But if Scriptures says : ‘This is the WORD,’ those words still has  a dictionary meaning BUT it also has a deep, hidden, supernatural meaning, i.e. that this is the second person of the Blessed Trinity. Ordinarily those in the natural level can understand the dictionary meaning of the words of Scriptures. But only those in the supernatural level, those with Faith,  can understand the deeper, hidden and supernatural meaning of Scriptures.

Seminarians in seminaries, because they were not taught how to ASCEND from the natural to the supernatural,  learned only the dictionary meaning of the words of Scriptures  but did not learn the deeper, hidden and supernatural meaning of the teachings of the Catholic Church as found in Scriptures.  Remember that they learned the meaning of the words of the Doctrines but not the meaning of the Doctrines. In short, they learned Scriptures like Protestants. Having failed to ASCEND they failed to make the Act of Faith.  Imagine the domino effect that would have from the 16th century up to the present. We can almost conclude that no graduate from those seminaries who would later become priests and bishops, and no future pupil of those priests would have Faith.  All the problems of the past Popes was not the ‘lost of Faith’ but that many priest never even made the ‘Act of Faith.’  This was evident from the Pontificate of Pope Pius IX up to the present . And Pope Paul VI in an Advent homily described this situation as ‘total ignorance of Christ.’ And that precisely is how Pope Benedict is describing the present state of the Church. The consequence is that the world has lost contact with the face of the Catholic Church. Of course she is still in the world but many bishops and priest, do not know her and could not show her in their lives to the world. The world  could not find the Catholic Church anywhere.

Unable to rise from the natural to the supernatural level (which is the level of Faith) some priests and Bishops showed ignorance of supernatural doctrines of Scriptures.  And since the documents of an Ecumenical Council are also in the supernatural level because it is inspired by the Holy Spirit, they continued to know the Dictionary meaning of the documents but not the deep, hidden and supernatural interpretation of the same documents.    Some bishops and priests, impatient to wait for the Holy Spirit to interpret Vatican II,  gave merely the natural- dictionary interpretations of the documents of Vatican II thus establishing a ‘ new’ man-made catholic church.  All of the books written immediately after Vatican II are of this kind. The Holy Father had been condemning this tendency in many of his exhortations but it had persisted up to the concluded Bishop’s Synod and its tentacles can be found in the 58 proposals of the Synod. Theologian-Bishops had been preaching this new man-made catholic church both during the Synod and now in their dioceses and even dared described it as the goal of the ‘New Evangelization’ of Pope Benedict.  Fortunately, the CDF had recently declared this erroneous interpretation of Vatican II as ‘HERETICAL.’  Every description of this church shows it is man-made. This tendency was rampant even during the Council’s discussions specially between the Germans and the French fathers where the then Bishop Ratzinger took a middle ground. Seeing how the document on ‘ecclesiology’ had a difficult time being formed the Pope decided to clarify today the image of the Catholic Church..…the proximate goal of evangelization. 

To understand the  image – picture of the Catholic Church painted by  Pope Benedict we must know why he mentions St. Augustine, St. Bonaventure, Blessed John Cardinal Newman……and surprisingly St. Thomas of Aquinas. Let us leave for a while the important topics of the ‘ACT of Faith’, the elements of conversion and  the necessity for the evangelizer to be a contemplative.  We will return  to them shortly. In the last posts we discussed the proximate goal of the ‘New Evangelization’ which is entrance into the Catholic Church and we begun discussing how the  Catholic Church looks TODAY.

One of the papal audience was held in St. Peter’s square and not in the Pope Paul VI auditorium where it was usually held. And Pope Benedict XVI said it was because he wanted to point to two statues on top of Bernini’s collonades. These are the statues of St. Bonaventure and St. Thomas of Aquinas.  We saw that Pope Benedict quoted these two saints in describing the Catholic Church today. St. Bonaventure described her as an ‘ecclesia contemplativa’ (from St. Bonaventure’s ‘Theology of History’) while St. Thomas described her as a Church that has perfected the theological virtues of Faith, Hope and Charity and the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit (from St. Thomas’ commentary on the Gospel of St. John).  And we briefly expanded those description. The two saints described the Catholic Church not during their times but TODAY  in exactly the same way but in two different angles.

Now let us add a third description of the Catholic Church using  Pope John Paul II’s words. Pope John Paul II had earlier described the face of the Catholic Church as ‘Marian’ as he was highly influenced by St. Grignon de Montfort in his youth. Then later declared Our Lady of Guadalupe as the patroness of the ‘New Evangelization’ together with St. Therese of Lisieux. Why did he chose these two? First, Our Lady of Guadalupe is a representation of the Woman of the Apocalypse which is the Catholic Church. Now notice where she was at first.  She was in the WORLD where she could lower her nets and get both the bad and good fishes.   Now see where she was transfered. God gave her two wings and brought her to the desert where He had prepared a ‘special place for her’ where only good fishes can be caught. Let us stop there for a moment and note that the Catholic Church was once upon a time in the world getting both good and bad fishes. Then God transfered her to a ‘special place’ where she could harvest only good fishes. And this is in the desert. This coincides with the commentary of St. Thomas of Aquinas on the Gospel of John.  The fact that the Woman flew with two wings given by God to the desert coincides with St. Bonaventure’s comment on the ‘ecclesia contemplativa’ which he described. Note, also, that the Apocalypse is written by St. John and he was only continuing his unfinished fourth Gospel. Here we have St. Bonaventure, St. Thomas of Aquinas and the imagery of Our Lady of Guadalupe as portrayed in the Apocalypse describing the Catholic Church of today.

Since the Woman in the Apocalypse, a figure of the Catholic Church, was tranferred to another place ‘out of the world,’  there are two things we must learn; first how does that Church look today in that ‘special place prepared by God’  and where is ‘that place?’ And secondly; what is the ‘new way’ that leads to her ‘new’ location.

It is the same identical Catholic Church. But She has a ‘new’  look…She has virtues in their perfection and personified by Mary. She is NOW in a ‘new’ place specially prepared by God. And there is a ‘new’ way of going to her shown by the two ‘giant wings given to Her by God to transport her to the new place…..these make up the ‘New Evangelization’ that Pope Benedict is teaching us. It is indeed ‘NEW.’   If the Bishop’s Synod deputized to teach the whole Catholic world, does not adjust their 58 proposals according to the Pope’s ‘New  Evangelization’,  we might end up entering a man-made catholic church.

‘New Evangelization’ is, indeed, ‘NEW’ because it is entrance into a New, Grown, Mature Church.

The Catholic Church is a living institution. It is like a child that grows up. When a child becomes a grown mature man, he is still the same child. But he is quite different from when he was a child.  The Church was once upon a time  a child..  But now she is a grown up, a young girl. Let us compare again the Church to a classroom. There was a time when the classroom was for kindergarten children. But now the Church is a classroom  for spiritually young adults. A soul that is about to begin his entrance into the Catholic Church must first enter the classroom for kindergarten souls.  And a soul that has been studying for a long time should be in the classroom for young adults. Let us take another similitude.  Christ came to heal and save souls. A soul seeking healing and salvation should first go to a hospital room… the Church. When he has stayed long enough in his hospital room he should be better after a time and should be ready to be discharged. No one within the Church ever gets worst. As Pope Benedict says quoting St. Bonaventure, the ‘Seraphic Doctor.’: the Church has 7 stages of growth. She grows forward and never regress backward. So she is more perfect now than before. And her knowledge of God’s teaching are deeper now than before. In fact, by now the Catholic Church should have reached the heights of her perfection, a perfection that she had never experienced before. Most souls never saw the way the catholic Church look today. And most do not know how to enter this perfected Church today. This is the reason for the ‘New Evangelization’…an invitation to unchartered territory. It is new to us all. It was never been taught in seminaries or school of theology. Only the Pope with the advice of St. Bonaventure and Blessed John Cardinal Newman seems to have an inkling on how she looks and how join her. The results of the Bishop’s Synod shows that they had no idea what the Pope is talking about. They discussed many things, in fact too many things. But did not discuss the ‘new evangelization’ that leads to Faith (the entrance to the kingdom of God that has a new face) which the Holy Father mentioned in his 2000 AD address to catechists.

Let us now present some problems which Pope Benedict is trying to solve. What if a soul wanted to enter the Church as a kindergarten pupil but the only available classroom is for young adults? What if a  patient is very serious and needs a ‘trauma emergency room’ but the only room available are rooms for those who are already well and ready for discharge? What if the applicants to the Catholic Church are young rich men but the Church only accepts those who go home sell all their things, give them to the poor and follow Christ?

These questions can be answered if we know the background of the Holy Father’s instructions with regard to the ‘new evangelization’ that leads to ‘porta fidei.’ As a young priest Pope Benedict’s thesis was on the ‘Theology of History according to St. Bonaventure.’ St. Bonaventure is the ‘Seraphic Doctor,’ and he described the history of the Catholic Church as she progresses to perfection in six stages as related to the 7 days of creation, the sixth day being the day of Sabbath.  The Holy Father believes that the Catholic Church have reached the sixth day, her mature state.  That she is the ‘ecclesia contemplativa’. From her birth on Pentecost day, the Catholic Church had grown and become as perfect as her founder and have become a contemplative Church. The Catholic Church was never stagnant in her growth. She continuously  grow spiritually towards her goal of perfection.  Her members TODAY, according to the Seraphic Doctor,  should be contemplatives, meaning they have the four moral virtues (prudence, justice, temperance and fortitude),  they have the three theological virtues (the virtues of Faith, Hope and Charity) and they are  perfected by the gifts of the Holy Spirit (wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety and fear of the Lord). That is asking too much from a soul but that is the description of the members of the Church TODAY, described by St. Bonaventure as ‘Ecclesia Contemplativa.”  Only God can do this and at this age God has done it. Except nobody knows where it is. Only those with Faith can find her that is why the Pope had called the ‘Year of Faith’  to enable us to  find the Church and be a part of it.

For this reason the Holy Father had been repeating that Evangelizers should be contemplatives because they must recruit members for a contemplative Church. But none of the seminaries both diocesan and religious train contemplatives. Which is understandable because only God can make contemplatives. And this is the reason why one of the Patroness of the New Evangelization is St. Therese of Lisieux because she was a contemplative by the work of God and not by the work of her order or convent.

This image of the Catholic Church as ‘Ecclesia contemplativa’ was also confirmed by  St. Thomas of Aquinas in his commentary on the last chapter of the Gospel of St. John where he mentioned that this is the last chapter of the last Gospel because this is the last image of the Catholic Church on earth. It was the last boat trip of the apostles in Lake Tiberias. The 7 apostles were in their boat fishing (The Church) and were now approaching the shore (Heaven) where Christ was waiting.  The Catholic Church was now approaching her final destination… eternal life with Christ standing on the shore. St. Thomas described the Church as having become perfect and where her evangelizers are perfect and where her doctrines are now perfectly understood. Note that there were only 7 apostles indicating the perfection of the evangelizers. Note that they were told where exactly to lower their net, which is possible only to contemplatives (unlike in the other boat trip where they were told to lower their net anywhere.)   They were told to lower their net in a place where they only caught good fishes, only perfect fishes. The Church is perfect, the members inside are perfect symbolized by the number of fishes 153, and the 7 evangelizing apostles were the symbol of perfection.

Where is that ‘ecclesia contemplativa?’ It is here now…. the perfected Church, with contemplative members and contemplative evangelizers? They can be found in the supernatural level. Those who have remained in the natural level  will never find them. Pope Benedict gave us the strategy. To find and enter this Church we must first rise from the natural and go up to the supernatural level. This is done by a life of conversion (which both Pope Benedict and the International theological Commission had emphasized.) If we finish our conversion we shall receive the gift of Faith which is entrance into the Catholic Church……where at the beginning we would probably have imperfect Faith. But it is only when we have the beginnings of this theological virtue of Faith can God, Himself, guide us towards the perfection of Faith (which is the contemplative life), then lead us towards the perfection of Hope and Charity together with which God will grant us the 7 gifts of the Holy Spirit thus perfecting  and making us amongst the 153 fishes that were hauled into the perfect Church to be brought to Christ in heaven.

This ‘ecclesia contemplative’ is a NEW, mature image of a Church that was once upon a time a child. Most would not recognize her. And the way to enter her is a NEW way which is a perfection of the old way of entering her….shown to us  by the first apostles but much watered down through the centuries.  This is the ‘New Evangelization’ that leads to ‘Porta Fidei’ a NEW EVANGELIZATION that leads to a ‘Contemplative Church’ which most of us had never seen and which most of us have never been. Our Holy Father has to lead the way and he is doing so. But most of us like children led by our parents in a shopping Mall are infinitely distracted by the hundreds of shops catering to worldly concerns.

In the next post we shall describe this Church as described by the Seraphic Doctor and as quoted by Pope Benedict and we shall describe the process of evangelization as described by Blessed John Cardinal Newman and as quoted by Pope Benedict. …two favorite authors of the Holy Father.