Benedict XVI Light of the World Exposed by Br. Peter Dimond

George Brenner wrote:
Do you not think our Pope suffers and is trying to overcome evil?

George Brenner wrote:
Do you really believe all the Popes quotes that you cite below, if alive today would not recognize and be subject to the last several Popes?

George Brenner wrote:
With your namesake, Fatima do you think that there is any possibilty that the third secret of Fatima may pertain to this very crisis we find ourselves in?

George Brenner wrote:
Do you not believe that some or many Catholics have gone to Heaven who were members the last sixty years of the Catholic Church?

George Brenner wrote:
Do you believe that you have authority to judge the eternal destination of the departed?

George Brenner wrote:
Are you comfortable in your current stance and ready to meet Jesus for judgement?

George Brenner wrote:
Do you think that it is impossible to be part of the solution by remaining in the Church?

George Brenner wrote:
If our past four Popes have not been true Popes, who will elect a true Pope?

George Brenner wrote:
Do my questions anger you for I can assure you that they are asked out of charity, curiosity and love?

And I applaud your efforts to this end; truly. I admire your perseverance and obvious love for the Church and our Faith.

Unfortunately, as you know, these types of scandalous examples of infidelity to the Faith and to the Church can be multiplied almost without end.

I don’t know how it is that the scandals by Farther Reginald Foster, and others, to include Bishops, “go unanswered and Our Church is not defended from such attacks”.

That’s THE question of the last several decades, is it not? And there are no easy answers.

I didn’t have this at my finger tips (it was on my book shelf), and I just finished scanning several pages into my computer; but the following words of James Larson from his book “The War Against the Papacy” represent a fairly accurate summation of my own feelings about this vale of tears and devastated vineyard we find ourselves in, while a weak and even a seemingly oblivious Vatican does nothing to stop the pain, the scandal and the bleeding. As someone once said, enough about the rights of man, what about the rightsof God?Let me begin with this bit of profound wisdom:For a Catholic, the demands of Supernatural Charity, accoring to the wil of God, can supercede the demand of natural justice and natural reason.

I will have Larson return to this further on, but first, he writes (Note: to facilitate ease of reading, I am not wrapping these extracts with the customary "quote" function):
As I have said before, the most effective chastisement which God can inflict upon man in such a situation is simply to hand him over to his own natural freedom. I believe that that is what Dignitatis Humanae is all about. It is what the New Mass facilitates. And it is what a whole host of other "new" things in the Church is all about—the relaxation of the fasting laws, the permission for altar girls, the indiscriminate promotion of NFP, etc. And, possibly, pre-eminent among these chastisements is the ecumenical movement by
which the Church, and all the faithful, are in effect lowered into the pool of the world's errors and sins. If we had come to the point of living profoundly duplicitous lives; if we had surrendered ourselves to serving the world in all the other aspects of our lives: political, economic, educational, recreational, etc. – then why should we deem it surprising that God should hand us over to Satan in our spiritual lives so that we might "learn not to blaspheme?" (1 Tim 1:20).

"All these things have the effect of promoting natural freedom, and a veiling of the protective cover of Christ's Kingship over our lives. They are, in reality, spiritual democracy. And we have deserved it, and for the most part still do. I believe, in fact, that Mr. XXXXX' superficial view, that full responsibility for everything that is wrong with the Church lies upon John Paul II, is profound testimony to this "desert" on our part.
It is, after all, the dominant view among those who call themselves traditional Catholics. It is in fact this orientation towards blaming Popes, bishops, priests, etc. which prevents us from perceiving the real roots of infidelity in our own duplicity – such double-mindedness being at the root of the present chastisement and chaos in the Church.
"What is necessary in order to understand this crisis is true Christian piety. In one of its roots the word piety connotes "fidelity" in fulfilling ones obligations towards God, and to others in any way responsible for our existence or well-being. In another nuance, it finds roots in the Italian word for "pity" – thus we have the "Pieta" of Michelangelo. And in another root, it means "appeasement" (which, of course, is closely linked to the Catholic idea of reparation and sacrifice). True piety therefore reaches almost infinitely deeper than any strictly human rational analysis into the roots of suffering, confusion, and chaos that is present in the Church. It reaches into the very Heart of Christ, into His Merciful Love, and therefore into the mysterious interplay between chastisement and blessing through which God works to "draw good out of all the evil in the world.

"It is this "piety" which came into play in my attempted analysis of the events at Assisi. I first of all established quite clearly through the Pope's Wednesday General Audience, held just previous to this event, that Pope John Paul II believes that there is no salvation except through Jesus Christ. He cannot therefore be justly accused of heresy. How then do we account for what I have also called the "nightmare" of Assisi? The whole Pontificate of Pope John Paul II, as I see it, is devoted to the "project" of God's Divine Mercy through Jesus Christ. In the promotion of God's mercy John Paul II looks deeply into the heart and nature of man and sees God's image, and therefore the profound dignity of every man, even the greatest sinner. According to his own writings therefore, he believes that even within the most pagan religions there are "seeds of the Word" – towards the one true God. This is not a new idea confected by Pope John Paul II. Certain early Church Fathers spoke of this concept, and Saint Clement of Alexandria even went so far as to speak of a "dispensation of paganism." At any rate, the Pope believes that the time has come that God wishes us not to try to impose Christ's Kingship from the top, but to draw out, through dialogue and ecumenism, these "seeds of the Word" into the fullness of truth in Christ.

"As I say, I believe I can understand what he is doing. There is no denial of Catholic doctrine in such a position. There is also, certainly, some truth in it. It does not make Pope John Paul II a heretic. But it does make for nightmare. And I think the nightmare is one we deserve,


"We deserve the nightmare because we have possessed the faith of Catholicism, but not its heart. We have “tithed mint and rue and every herb; and passed over judgment, and the charity of God." (Luke 11:42) In other words, besides the spiritual duplicity which sought to have the things of this world more than ever before, there was in pre-Conciliar Catholicism something akin to the religion of the Pharisees. The Pharisees possessed God's promise and covenant, possessed God's law, possessed the Promised Land, and possessed the true religious worship. And they used these possessions to deny God's love and mercy not only towards other human beings, but even so as to destroy in themselves and many others the very love man owes to God – thus causing Christ to say through his Prophet: "I saw no one to comfort me."

"[…] It is my belief, therefore, that the chastisement which we are experiencing, especially in this country and in the West generally, is the fruit of our having possessed the faith of Catholicism, but not its heart. We have become "as fat as butter" while two-thirds of the world goes to bed hungry every night. We have self-righteously dismissed all pagan people because "all the gods of the pagans are devils" while failing to realize that in the depths of the hearts of many of these same pagans are the hearts of children crying out implicitly, if not actually, for Jesus Christ. We gave our pittance to the missions and our hundred dollar bills to the purchase of new TV's, cars, boats and motors, snowmobiles, and degrees from secular and atheistic institutions,

"I believe that Assisi was a nightmare because it was an expression of false philosophical approaches (as examined in the final section of this book), and that it involves an extraordinarily naïve approach to dialoguing with error, superstition, and evil. Despite all this, I also believe that it involves the heart of a Catholic Pope who suffers deeply for the salvation of others in his desire to bring God's mercy to all men. Yet, it is also true that the whole concept of mercy can be abused. His writings reveal that he sees himself as ruling through serving, and that this serving is at the very heart of his concept of mercy. But it is equally true that in order to truly serve, a Pope must rule. And this I cannot see that he has effectively done. He has been merciful, and even rewarding, to Cardinal Law, but through his failure to govern, he has done little to prevent a wholegeneration (or two) of Catholic children from being spiritually, and in many cases physically, raped by those who are ministering in the name of the Church. I understand, in fact, that in his latest book Pope John Paul II also expresses personal misgivings about his government of the Church.

"And this is why I, and I think many others who are caught in the web of these extremes, feel as though "My heart is become like wax melting in the midst of my bowels." On the one hand, we have no idea how to convince Pope John Paul II that the cause of Divine Mercy may be best served through a return to the traditional concept of the Social Kingship of Jesus Christ, to the Traditional Mass, and through a radically new commitment to the spirituality and passion of which this Mass is the perfect expression in prayer. On the other hand, we see a deeply fractured and divided traditionalist movement, divided for the most part because of a multitude of errors concerning the Papacy, these errors being rooted in a profoundly superficial understanding of the relationship of Christ to His Mystical Body the Church. I further believe that it is this division from the Papacy which is depriving the Church of that suffering and reparative charity which is necessary for its reform. Archbishop Lefebvre, for instance, called PopeJohn Paul 11 an "anti-Christ, and yet stated that he prayed for him at every Mass. How can there be anything of the power of reparation and reform in a prayer rooted in such a judgment, and in such duplicity.

An Attempt At Understanding

"So what is happening in the interior of Pope John Paul 11 that enables him to do what he does? Holy Scripture tells us, of course, that no man can understand another's heart. But there are qualities and realities built into both the nature of supernatural Revelation and man's response to it in faith that might at least give us a handle on how this strange and heart-rending state of affairs has come to pass. And it is precisely this "handle" which we are so much in need of in order to retain some sort of Catholic sanity in the midst of this confusion. We need, in other words, an explanation of how PopeJohn Paul II can do these things while still possessing the never-failing faith" guaranteed by Christ to all Popes.

The key to this explanation lies, I believe, in understanding the difference, and even conflict, which can exist between faith and personal philosophy.

{ END OF EXTRACT}


and now, back to this wisdom:


James Larson writes:

"For a Catholic, the demands of supernatural charity, according to the Will of God, can supersede the demands of natural justice and natural reason

"This "charity through obedience" is not an option. It is a demand of our faith. The dogma of the Papal Primacy locks us into a sacrificially obedient love towards the Papacy in much the same way as marriage locks spouses into a sacrificial relationship to one another and to the sacrament which they have received. We have previously quoted St. Gregory's statement, "Divine Justice provides shepherds according to the just desserts of the faithful." We may now look at this statement in a deeper light. Bad shepherds are not just a punishment. They are a wound in our own Body which requires the reparative grace of our suffering charity. They are a specific call from God for an increase in this charity.

"… If there is anything that appears most striking about the Church at this moment in history, it is its apparent weakness. The Church seems drained of power. Priests have no power to resist the temptations of the world. The Pope seems to have no power over bishops, clergy, or religious. The Catholic man or woman in the world has no power to defend his or her faith against either militant secularism or Fundamentalism. Catholic works without a Catholic Heart is impossible. Faith without works is dead. We have become impotent because we have become independent. We must pray for the grace to return to the "first love" and "first works" which is the Cross of Christ, and, the power that overcomes the world.

"There are millions of people who assisted at the Traditional Latin Mass during all the years of their childhood, and yet effectively lost their Catholic Faith during a few years subsequent to Vatican Council II. Retention of the Faith is not primarily dependent on "having” the Old Mass. It is primarily dependent upon being faithful to God's grace – believing in His Truth, being obedient to His commands and precepts, and possessingthat sacrificial love for Christ and His Mystical Body which we have already examined. We cannot communicate this love, which is necessary for salvation, to our children if we are in rebellion agaqinst the Holy Father.

"It is therefore absolutely essential for our children to see and sense in us this love for the Pope and the Church. It must be a deeply personal love; and since the Church is now in terrible agony, it must be a deeply suffering love. Our children can certainly sense if this love is insincere. If we pray for the Pope during Mass, and afterwards gossip about what we think are his latest sins, then our children will discover our hypocrisy and be drained of their faith –that faith which, according to St. Paul, is dead without charity.

"There is no doubt that our responsibilities as parents are increased in times such as these. If we assist at a Mass where there is irreverence or where our children might hear something that is not in accord with the faith, we must spend additional time explaining to them what is right and true, Even more important, we must spend additional time praying for these people and in reparation for such offenses committed against God. We must impart to our children a vision of the Church as the Mystical Body of Christ – pure and unstained in its invisible nature – wounded, scourged, and defiled in its visible nature, even by those who are its members. We may have to travel many miles on Sunday to find a Mass offered in a manner more in keeping with God's Will. We have to shelter our children – surround them with friends, books, entertainment, and (most important) schooling, which are in accord with our faith. All this, hopefully, will be communicated to our children as a love and passion for Christ and His Church.

"In this sense we are blessed. The pre-Vatican II parent felt little of the holy terror of the world which we feel. Father and Mother trusted the bishop, trusted the pastor and sister, slowly amalgamated their faith to American pluralism, and watched their children slip away.

"We are blessed if we and our children learn from all this how to love as Christ loved us.

"And now we follow thee with all our heart, and we fear thee, and seek thy face. Put us not to confusion, but deal with us according to thy meekness, and according to the multitude of thy mercies." (Dan 3:41-42)"

END