1. The principles governing dogma and morality.
The dogmatic and moral teachings of the Catholic Church are like jigsaw puzzles. Puzzles are designed in such a way that each piece interlock with one another. If we hang it holding one end of the corner, the pieces cling together and does not separate into parts. It remains a whole. The better puzzles are all like this. But if we leave out one part and hold the whole puzzle up holding one corner, the whole thing separates and crumbles to pieces. And so, as long as one single piece of the puzzle had not been put in place, we cannot lift the whole puzzle because it will disintegrate into many parts.
The same can be said about the dogmas and morals of the Catholic Church. In theology, the so called ‘unity of dogmas’ consist in that the dogmas of the Church must be presented complete, otherwise it’s complete picture which consist in ‘Knowing God’ cannot be known. Thus the person cannot make a mature ‘Act of Faith,’ this Act consisting in believing ALL the dogmas of the Catholic Church.
The same can be said about the Morals of the Catholic Church. We must know all the commands of Christ as presented in the New Testament. This is to know the ‘Act of Loving God.’ Take away one command and we will not know how to ‘Love God,’ which is the virtue of Charity.
Both Faith and Charity are needed to attain eternal life. Faith consists in knowing the complete dogmas of the Catholic Church; and Charity consists in knowing and doing all the commandments of Christ in the New Testament.
Thus the formula for evangelisation expressed in the Apostolic Commission as found in the last chapter of the Gospel of Matthew is ; ‘Go to all nations, baptising them….teaching them ‘ALL THAT I HAVE COMMANDED YOU.’ Note that salvation is in fulfilling the Morals of the Catholic Church; it is not enough to know the Dogmas. The greatest command is; ‘To love God.’…..i.e. morals. Not to know God…i.e., dogma. Though both are needed; but the emphasis on morals is clear. “If you love Me, keep My commandments.” He did not say keep My dogmas. Again, both are needed because a strong moral life is based on a strong dogmatic foundation.
When Pope Benedict XVI instituted the ‘Year of the Priests’ he commanded all priests to return to the seminary and review THEIR MORAL THEOLOGY. Not their dogmatic theology. Sadly nobody returned to the seminary to review their Moral theology. Proof? Ask your priest friends if they did. And from their answer you will see why we are in trouble.
2. Now, lets go to the moral principle of St. James 2:9.
Disbelief to one dogma is disbelief to all the dogmas. And disobedience to one moral command is disobedience to all moral commands.
This is the reminder we hear at the beginning of every class in dogma and morals.
This verse is always quoted before lessons on the 10 commandments of God, like in the Compendium of the Catechism according to Pope Benedict XVI. This is a rule of morality almost no one knows. From Pope Francis down to the cardinals, bishops, priest and practically all lay Catholics. And their confessions clearly show this ignorance. Nobody ever confesses; ‘I disobeyed all the 10 commandments of God.’ And yet, that is what one does when he disobeys just one command of God as St. James wrote.
The complete verse is; ‘But if you have respect to persons, you commit sin, being reproved by the law as transgressors.’
‘And whosoever shall keep the whole law, but offend in one point, is become guilty of all.’
‘For he that said; thou shalt not commit adultery said also; thou shalt not kill. Now if thou do not commit adultery but shall kill,
thou art become a transgressor of the law.’
The emphasis is not on the law but on the affront on the giver of the law. You have insulted the giver of the law; and that is equivalent to contempt for all His laws.
3. Everybody seems to be ignorant of this moral axiom. It is very clear. Anyone who commits a mortal sin is considered as having committed all mortal sins. Because all sins are interconnected as all virtues are interconnected. All sins come from Pride; while all virtues come from Charity. So disobedience to one command is an act of pride and, therefore, is tantamount to disobedience to all the commands. While perfect obedience to one command is tantamount to obedience to all the commands of Christ.
For this reason, those living the spiritual life are encouraged to concentrate in doing each act as perfectly as possible because perfect obedience to one command is considered obedience to all the commands of Christ.
4. When we say perfect obedience to one command, we mean perfectly obedient to the way Christ gave the command. We cannot modify any command according to our whims.
An example is this; to obey the command ‘pray unceasingly’ means pray unceasingly with perfect humility. The perfection is, first, in the humility and, afterwards, in obeying exactly Christ’s instructions on how to pray.
5. The beginning of the verse from James is significant; ‘if you do or say things due to human respect,’ i.e. to please others, this is a sin. Human respect is the reason for all P.R. which seems to be the main motivation of all of Pope Francis’ behaviour, having hired an expensive PR group to advise the Vatican. Christ had said ‘pleasers of men cannot be pleasers of God.’
6. The ramifications. The arms of the octopus. Lets look at an actual situation of an error in dogma and an error in morals.
What will happen if a Pope commits an error in dogma? St. James wrote; all his dogmatic pronouncements will be erroneous. Let’s take an example. If a Pope says at the beginning of his papacy that ‘to love’ one does not need dogmas, he had commited an error in that he demolished the whole structure of the theological virtues that is the backbone of the Catholic teaching. From here it will be impossible for him to say anything right. All his pronouncements from here on up to the present will be dogmatic errors.
He will begin to teach that you can ‘love’ without Faith and Hope; which is impossible. He will say that you can ‘love’ even while in the state of mortal sin. He will say that you can be an atheist and still go to heaven. He will say that heretics and schismatics are children of God and will apologise for having corrected them; that would be two errors put together. And he will say that he cannot imagine a God having the heart to put anyone in hell. Then why did God create hell?
Not only will he show irrationality in his thinking. He, also, shows lack of imagination. That is what happens when one does not have Faith because he had sinned against Faith by committing sin against the dogmas of the Church.
St. Paul’s ‘whatever is not of Faith is sin,’ means when a person makes a pronouncement not based on the dogmas of the Catholic Faith, his pronouncement will surely be erroneous. Why?
Because the teachings of the Catholic Church are in the supernatural level. And Faith is needed to understand the supernatural truths. If one remains in the natural level, pronouncements will be ‘of the flesh,’ and not of the spirit. And whatever is not for Christ is against Christ. If he makes a statement against one dogma, all his statements that will follow will be wrong.
Now, let us see the consequence when one sins against morals. If while he was still a bishop he has committed the sin of scandal, which is one of the more serious sin, like allowing those living in mortal sin to receive Holy Communion, he will surely commit the next sins, like allowing all adulterers not only to receive Communion but for adulterers to remarry each other. And after committing the sins of abandoning their former partners, after abandoning their former children, after committing fornication with a new partner, and after invalidly marrying their new partner…..they can commit another sin of sacrilege adding it to their former several mortal sins.
Not only will that bishop multiply his own mortal sins. He will drag other souls by multiplying their own mortal sins. And what if he makes his disobedience to the commands of Christ into an ‘Apostolic Exhortation.’
If ever the Malthusian theory works, it is not in the field of population. It is in the field of sins against dogma and morals. What a Pope says rushes down to the cardinals, bishops, priest, laymen and their children with the speed of lightning. There is no stopping to it. The punishment for unrepentant sins is for the soul to fall and fall and fall into the next sin.
The devil knows this. Everybody know this. Everybody knows we have to get to the top to destroy the whole. Crush the head of the snake and you destroy the whole. The devil knows this. The Virgin Mary also know this. And so the battle is who will reach the head first.
For many years the head, the Papacy, had been protected; and even now. But the devil had introduced a new weapon. He does not try to control the head, the Pope, because he knows he cannot. But he knows he can deceive the world by putting up a anti-pope. In the history of the Church, the bishops and cardinals never knew which was the true Pope in such situation. Never. It took saints to know the difference. And the devil tried this more than forty times, with Felix in the 1400 as his last known attempt. He knows it worked in destroying many souls. Why should he not try it again.
7. Preparation for the final battle.
Lucifer knows that if he is able to remove the dogmatic and moral guides of the Catholic Church, the world would have absolutely no way of finding out which is the true Church. Not knowing the true Church, the whole would not know what are the true dogma and moral teachings of Christ. Without dogmas and morals the whole world would be wallowing in sin, which is the situation right now.
8. The result
Imagine men in the world, from the Pope down to the smallest kid, spreading sin geometrically like the Malthusian theory. Why, we should have reached the guilt of the world as of during the time of Noah. Should it not be time for God to shut the door of the Ark. Christ had warned us in the Gospel that He would take away the vineyard, which is the Church, from unfaithful workers. Don’t you think He had already done so.
A world filled with sin, there will be no grace to overcome the devils, no knowledge that can teach repentance, Faith, Hope and Charity, no visible sign by which we can find the true Church.
9. The first deluge.
During the first deluge, God shut the door. Those outside could not enter. During these Easter Sundays, it is said that the disciples were together and the door was shut. That figure is the image of the Catholic Church during these times. The Catholic Church was a community living together behind shut doors, St. Thomas of Aquinas wrote. And Christ as on that day appeared in the middle of the night, the exact time He will return to finally judge the world.
And what is our problem? As we have repeated in many past posts; using the four visible signs of the true Church mentioned in the Nicene Creed and using the 15 visible Marks of St. Robert Bellarmine, SJ and Doctor of the Church, WE CANNOT FIND ANY OF THESE MARKS…..in the parishes, in the Diocese….they are not in religious orders or lay institutes….not in families…..and not in the Bishop’s Synod nor in the Vatican. We have challenged everyone to show us just one group who has these signs. It seems that the door had been shut and we have been left outside.
These visible signs cannot be found because the world is filled with sin. But where is the Church? The Gospel of Pentecost gave the answer. “They are in community praying behind shut doors awaiting the coming of Christ through the closed doors. Pope Francis’ open doors and open walls will only invite the bad spirits.