Why are you not Catholic? Until the Second Vatican Council the Catholic Church correctly claimed to be the sole religion by which men can be saved, under the terms of its mandate from Jesus Christ as He ascended into heaven.

This is not really an impertinent or strange question. If your ancestors include any from the shores of the Mediterranean as remote as India, or from the entire continent of Europe (except Finland) and its neighboring islands as far out as the Azores and Iceland, the odds overwhelmingly favor their having been Catholic for centuries.

Were they all deluded or stupid? Illiteracy and stupidity are not synonyms. Before the invention of printing literacy was comparatively rare. When Jesus Christ sent forth His Apostles He instructed them to teach and preach His Message, all of it, not to teach us barbarians to read. Nowhere did He command them to write, though several eventually wrote. Literate or not, we were to be informed of His ordinary means of salvation, and the penalty for refusal of His entire Message is damnation, for refusal to believe God, Who is eternal Truth.

In justice, therefore, His entire Message must be available to all generations for all time. Be it one word less than entire, it is not His Message. Where is it available outside the Catholic Church, which has protected, preserved, and preached it for nineteen centuries?

Why should anyone wish to join a pack of perverts? Actually, perverts have joined us wholesale. Former Communist Party official Manning Johnson testified in 1953 before the House Un-American Activities Committee: “Once the tactic of infiltration of religious organizations was set by the Kremlin … the Communists discovered that the destruction of religion could proceed much faster through infiltration of the Church by Communists operating within the Church itself. … it would be necessary to concentrate Communists in the seminaries. … This policy … was successful beyond … expectations.”

In the early 1950s, Mrs. Bella V. Dodd, former high-ranking official of the American Communist Party, testified before the same HUAC: “In the 1930s we put eleven hundred men into the priesthood in order to destroy the Church from within.” and “Right now they are in the highest places in the Church.” She predicted changes so drastic that “you will not recognize the Church.”

Dr. Alice von Hildebrand: “Bella Dodd told my husband and me that when she was an active party member, she had dealt with no fewer than four cardinals within the Vatican ‘who were working for us’.” (Latin Mass Magazine, Summer 2001)

Part of the Message is that toward the end will come an apostasy. To apostatize it is necessary to be Catholic. It would appear that most Catholics have followed those who have infiltrated the Church from the top into a noteworthy apostasy. This apostasy is noteworthy for not only change and omission in the Message but glaringly for its refusal to preach and teach the Message. Jesus Christ will not be with us all days if we will not preach His entire, immutable Message to all, everywhere, at all times. Since the Second Vatican Council what passes for the Catholic Church has stopped preaching in favor of dialogue with false “religions.” We convert individuals in order to save their individual souls. A “religion” has no soul, and cannot be saved. We are to teach, not to discuss, seek new interpretations, accommodate the age, or compromise.

What remains of our shrinking civilization we owe to the Catholic Church and its nineteen centuries’ preservation of the revealed message of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. The chief reason for decay and disappearance of order in the world is the moral abdication of the Catholic Church under control of usurpers who have changed every traditional attitude and practice of the Church beyond recognition, over the last five decades. All who have followed the last five “popes,” attended their false worship, followed their new laws, and been “educated” in their perverted schools have unwittingly left the Catholic Church. The non-Catholic usurpers have presumed on the great Catholic virtue, obedience, largely secured through misunderstanding of papal infallibility.

Religion is defined as man’s relationship to God. Such relationship is necessarily achieved on God’s unchanging terms, communicated by His unchangeable revelation. There can exist, therefore, only one true religion, alone meriting salvation. Apostates characteristically seldom return.

The Church may never recover from this final, almost universal apostasy. Until now, however, it has rebounded more than once from fearful disaster. The Church needs none of us. When North Africa fell we gained the Vikings and Slavs. Latin America replaced England and Scandinavia. The world teems with people to replace us.

The world will not long outlive the Catholic Church, which alone pleases God and renders Him proper worship. The non-Catholics of the world must, in their own interest and defense, become Catholics. True Catholics are traditional Catholics, who adhere to what the Church has taught everywhere at all times. Jesus Christ’s message, being perfect, permits no modification. He has obliged all to believe it all, and to be baptized, in order to be saved, and all who believe not shall be condemned. All who accord partial or selective belief, or advocate opposing belief, disbelieve the Eternal Truth. Not only do they lack faith in God, they hold Him a liar. Nor can they escape by denying His existence.

Laymen lack authority.  We were always taught to bring converts to the priests for instruction. They would guide the prospective Catholic into the Catholic Church. Due, however, to the changes imposed by infiltrating usurpers, we are rapidly losing our legitimate clergy. As things appear, we shall eventually lose them all.

But the Japanese Catholics, without clergy for two and a half centuries, preserved their faith, and were visible enough to persecute. The English, largely deprived of the chance to practice Catholicism for roughly the same length of time, preserved the faith in pockets, under murderous laws which stigmatized the religion to which nearly all had adhered for nine centuries as high treason.

We are not alone. We can lose our ordinary means of salvation (the Lord gives, the Lord takes away), but we remain Catholic members of the Catholic Church, whether or not visible. A major characteristic of our religion is that very thing, the lack of which exposes and condemns the new “Conciliar Church,” the missionary effort.

We can instruct you.  Anyone can baptize you. All he needs is sufficient water to flow, the proper form of words, and the intention to accomplish what the Catholic Church intends by the ceremony, even though he himself believes that nothing is accomplished thereby.

All inquiries welcome.

Hilaire Belloc wrote in his 1929 book Survivals and New Arrivals:

“It has become more and more clear in the last generation, and with particular acceleration since the latest and immense catastrophe of the Great War, that the Faith preserves whatever, outside the Faith, is crumbling: marriage, the family, property, authority, honour to parents, right reason, even the arts. This is a political fact - not a theory. It is a fact as large and as certain as is a neighbouring mountain in a landscape.

“If the influence of the Church declines, civilization will decline with it and all the effects of tradition. It is a commonplace with educated men that the Catholic Church made our civilization, but it is not equally a commonplace - as it ought to be - that on her continued power depends the continuance of our civilization. Our civilization is as much a product of the Catholic Church as the vine is the product of a particular climate. Take the vine to another climate and it will die.”

Religion creates stability. Instability contributes to insanity. Insanity currently rides high, and governs most countries. Our civilization declines because its mother has abdicated. Not only has she stopped civilizing, she has joined the revolution, and leads in mass production of instability and insanity.

St. Paul predicted such a catastrophe in Chapter II, Second Epistle to the Thessalonians. We find another indication in St. Luke’s Gospel, 18:8: “But yet the Son of man, when he cometh, shall he find, think you, faith on earth?”

But the Church insists that Jesus Christ promised His Church that He would be with it all days, to the end of the age. His condition is ignored. He commanded His Apostles to teach all nations all that He had taught them, and placed the ultimate penalty on rejection. The New Church has stopped almost all missionary activity. It thereby forsakes Him. Why should He be with it? A covenant obliges both parties.

God cannot in justice condemn for rejection of falsehood. We must conclude that His Revelation is true, complete, unchangeable. We must, then, accept His entire Revelation on faith in its Divine Revealer. Without faith, says St. Paul (Hebrews 11:6), it is impossible to please God. If, however, we accept all but one or two minor points, and differ ever so little from Divine Revelation, we no longer operate on faith, but on personal judgment. This is the timeless Catholic position. For nineteen centuries we adhered to this to the death.

How could we be sure? We had St. Peter and his successors in the only remaining Apostolic See. Each successor, or pope, was charged with accepting from his predecessor everything Jesus Christ left us, and passing on the same complete Revelation, neither augmented nor diminished, without change, to his successor. That was his job and his purpose.

He expounded and defined when necessary. He condemned prevalent evil or heresy - the Greek word for choice or selection. We were to accept, not choose. This was stability. This was authority. This was sanity. And all the world - not merely we Catholics - benefited. This was civilization.

In 1958 Pope Pius XII died - and was replaced by an ineligible. To be pope one must be Catholic. John XXIII was the second antipope of that name and number. He had a history of heresy and Freemasonry. He convoked a Council which completely destroyed unity and order in the Catholic Church, with disastrous consequences for our civilization and our world. In his fourth recorded announcement of intention to convoke a Council, he claimed sudden and instantaneous divine inspiration. He let it be known that his Council would re-examine every doctrine of the Church except papal infallibility. For what purpose? Not one was subject to modification. Nothing new is Catholic.

The Council revolted, sixty per cent voting to refuse the agenda. Council rules required two-thirds vote to carry all matters, but had John XXIII sent them home, how would he have drummed up support for his program of change? For this he needed their involvement, and the appearance of divided responsibility. Was there then a plot? What has happened to the Church could not have happened by accident. It was certainly no accident that the only matter available for discussion was the maverick presentation on the liturgy - the Church’s public worship, established by God Himself. John pushed the document, and would have signed it. He had, after all, issued a modified Missal. But he died, to the accompaniment of fulsome masonic elegies, unique in papal history.

Montini, another ineligible, by reason of multiple public heresy, was elected by John’s packed Conclave, and, as Paul VI, re-convoked a Council already on record in heresy. He then signed and promulgated that utterly un-Catholic liturgy document, on which he later mendaciously based replacement of our sacramental system. Our Latin Mass went first, followed the same day by the sacrament of Holy Orders, which, though needed to celebrate Mass, are not required to preside at an assembly. Our Mass is by definition the unbloody re-presentation of Christ’s redemptive, propitiatory sacrifice on Calvary. Also by definition, our sacraments are instituted by Jesus Christ to give grace. All have been replaced by rituals of human origin, incapable of producing grace. Our Church, we are to believe, can correct Jesus Christ, and has done so.

These “corrections” were imposed under obedience upon a clergy and hierarchy which should have known better. In fact, acceptance/obedience violated their ordination and consecration oaths to the doctrine of the Council of Trent and against modernism, just as the imposition itself exceeded the competence and opposed the purpose of the papacy. When we consider in addition that all these oath-breakers were by the same innovations deprived of their ordinary means of grace and ordered into idolatry, we need not be surprised when they fall into other depravity. But Rome, having imposed the climate, now pretends to disapprove its natural results.

We also hear from Rome that divorce should be discouraged in the courts. It should never reach the courts. Marriage is not a civil matter; it existed before governments. According to Church law, everyone sufficiently mature and capable of understanding matrimonial obligations has the right to marry. Natural rights are not conferred by civil government, but fall instead under rights guaranteed by government - many marry in pursuit of happiness.

But the Second Vatican Council in its Gaudium et Spes, The Church in the Modern World, changed matrimonial purposes and priorities. Subsequently we have seen multiplication of almost automatic annulments. These have brought about major instability in the basic unit of society and civilization, the family, and consequent scorn for all religious authority. The New Church has forfeited the right to correct civil government out of its field.

The Second Vatican Council continued to provide heresies for Paul VI to promulgate as Catholic doctrine. For example, paragraph eleven of its Declaration on Religious Freedom reads: “In the end, when He completed on the Cross the work of redemption whereby He achieved salvation and true freedom for man, He also brought His revelation to completion.”

This bald statement is unnecessary in and completely unrelated to context. It is either incredible stupidity or devious purpose, and opposes Catholic doctrine. It contradicts Christ Himself at the Last Supper: “I have yet many things to say to you but you cannot bear them now.” (John 16:12)  It removes from His revelation (1) His resurrection, (2) His explanation of His fulfilment of the prophecies, (3) His establishment of the sacrament of Penance, (4) St. Thomas’ skepticism and its dissipation, (5) John 21:15-17 (Feed My sheep), used to establish the primacy of St. Peter and the papacy, (6) His mandate and mission to His Church, (7) His Ascension, and (8) the descent of the Holy Ghost.

St. Paul wrote in his First Epistle to the Corinthians, 15:14: “And if Christ be not risen again, then is our preaching vain: and your faith is also vain.”

Divine Revelation was complete early in the Second Century, at the death of the last Apostle. Nevertheless the Second Vatican Council’s Declaration on the Relation of the Church to non-Christian Religions opens with the words Nostra Aetate - In our age - and breaks forth into one long paean of praise for every kind of error, even ascribing holiness to these false religions. It waxes lyrical over Islam and post-Christian Judaism - both founded on outright rejection of Christ.

This mindset spells disaster for the missionary effort which Christ commanded. If man-made religions are channels of grace and lead to salvation, who are we to disturb them? If the Apostles had believed such nonsense, who would ever have heard of Christianity? The Age must conform to the Church, not the Church to the Age. In lieu of missionary effort the New Church dialogues with its organized enemies. Did Christ not say: “He that is not with Me is against Me?” (Matt. 12:30)

What is the purpose of dialogue? To find common ground for negotiation. What ground can be common to us and to those who reject Christ’s divinity? Yet it is always the New Church which compromises. The open enemies stubbornly hold their lines. With what result? Continued loss of our religious influence. For whose benefit?

A strong Church would support a strong civilization, which would encounter far fewer problems. We might not need the services of a New World Order - a one-world government. A one-world government needs a one-world religion - a Masonic common denominator to which everyone can supposedly subscribe without sacrifice of belief or principle - a set of compromises achieved by those without authority to compromise what belongs not to them but to God.

The New Church has entrenched itself, and perverts our great virtue of obedience to misrule us.

Among its tools are the national bishops’ conferences, which simulate democracy. Formerly each diocesan bishop was responsible directly to Rome. Now he must waste valuable time on a semi-annual circus whose agenda comes from Rome with predetermined results. No bishop now dares speak out; he must first gain approval of his peers. This is Rome’s provision against the few bishops who may awake to the status quo, or its transient aspect. Rome, of course, appoints bishops in the first place, and seldom for knowledge or piety.

 Another tool is the 1983 Code of Canon Law, a replacement needed to try to justify the Second Vatican Council and its Great Renewal, both of which seriously violated the Law in force when imposed.

A third tool, if anyone reads it, is The Catechism of the Catholic Church, introduced by our Koran-kissing fourth consecutive antipope October 11, 1992. A page and line count develops that of its 599 pages of catechetical text just over 25% is copied from documents of the Second Vatican Council and official pronouncements of its four “papal” authorities and implementors. What can be said for the orthodoxy or necessity for salvation of a catechism one fourth of which was available to no Catholic from A.D. 33 to 1962?

A fourth tool, designed to fragment traditional Catholics, is Ecclesia Dei, the Commission which purports to grant permission for the traditional Mass, which needs no permission. If we are silly enough to have no qualms about the undoubted validity of the new, idolatrous replacement for the Mass, the local bishop may, at his own discretion, assign a priest whose ordination may or may not be valid, to celebrate in one or two parishes on a regular or irregular schedule, not our traditional Mass but John XXIII’s 1962 illegal modification thereof. This Missal retains the first prayer of the Canon, Te igitur, in which all present are united with that heretical, antipapal apostate, una cum famulo tuo Papa nostro Benedicto [Ritus servandus in celebratione missae, VIII - De Canone Missae usque ad Consecrationem, 2, Ubi dicit: una cum famulo tuo Papa nostro N.  (page lxxix)], whatever that means. If we harbor no doubt of the 1969 rite of “mass,” why can we not stomach this idolatrous innovation like everyone else? Why should our wishes overcome the mere wish of Paul VI?

Most of today’s Catholics don’t know they have been robbed. Of those who know, few realize the extent of the robbery. It surpasses belief. The rot is universal; responsibility lies at the top. To keep the faith we must ignore the usurpers and their misgovernment.

We came close to a like crisis in 1903. Cardinal Mariano Rampolla del Tindaro had obtained 29 of 52 votes for the papacy. Cardinal Puzyna (Cracow) delivered Austria-Hungary’s veto. At the close of World War I, the Tiger of France, the Prime Minister of Great Britain, and the President of the United States, all members of Rampolla’s Masonic Fraternity, dismembered Austria-Hungary in the name of self-determination, which was applied to neither Ireland nor Italy, nor even to the peoples of Austria-Hungary, the putative beneficiaries. So when Angelo Roncalli emerged from the 1958 Conclave, there had been no Catholic government, no Holy Roman Emperor, to veto him.

We had a real crisis in 1130 A.D. with the election of Pietro Pierleone, Anacletus II. In eight years he nearly destroyed the Church. But in the Middle Ages all Western Civilization was Catholic. In 1138 the German Holy Roman Emperor brought an army to Rome and restored order. The Church held the Second Lateran Council and wiped out everything done by Anacletus II, now listed as an antipope. But the Germans are no longer all Catholic, and are not directly concerned with current antipopes.

So what course shall we take? Many leave the problem to God. It is not His problem; it is ours. Historically men solved it. Diagnosis helps. We received this one years ago:

“… the income tax and phunny money ploys of Big Brother were conducted in exactly the same spirit, and often in exactly the same manner, as the Second Vatican Council. Modernism is a philosophical and spiritual disease which also struck root … in the profane sphere. The monetary realists and strict interpretation tax students are set up and used the same way traditionalists are. The same enemy is behind both drives for spiritual and secular idolatry, so why … two methods when one works so admirably? The introduction and acceptance of a counterfeit, when the legal standard has never been abolished lawfully … was performed dozens of times around the world in regard to money; so why not try it with things spiritual? The psychology is the same; and it worked for them, but the U. S. Constitution remains, and so does the Church, however many ignore it or pretend that their conciliar monstrosity is the same thing. There is no need for usurpation of power - just get the counterfeit (money or doctrine or morals) accepted, never mind abolishing the legal and established medium of exchange or dogma. That is the significance of Paul’s ‘wishing.’ He couldn’t use power he never had … but if people want to believe him pope - fine! Same result - universal loss of faith, neglect (or destruction) of the sacraments, and so on …”

We can certainly refuse recognition and obedience to usurpers. We have worldwide communication. Perhaps we can effect a worldwide boycott on contributions and collections. Perhaps parishioners everywhere can participate in class action suits to recover Church property from the apostates in possession. Perhaps we can reacquaint the world with what the clergy has ceased to preach. It is all on record - no thanks to the New Church’s book-burnings.

Are the last five incumbents of the Holy See popes? Whether or not popes, they obviously strayed from the purpose of the office, and exceeded its competence by massive innovation and updating, presented as improvement. They have “corrected” the popes of nineteen centuries, and improved Christ’s eternal Revelation beyond recognition. Do you believe them popes?

The papacy is our standard of unity, the first mark of the Church. We have not been united in doctrine or practise since 1958. If we had a pope we would all agree with him, in perfect unity. On what day of which month have we all ever agreed with Pius XII’s reputed successors? But no bishop will admit the vacancy of the Holy See. Everyone needs a pope with whom to disagree. Not one bishop will argue with us; he would argue with himself forty to eighty years ago.

He would encounter the Vatican Council of 1870, and at least five papal condemnations of the last century.

Vatican I (Dogmatic Const. on the Catholic Faith, 34): …faith is not the same as a philosophical system of teaching that has been worked out and then turned over to the human mind to be further developed, but it has been entrusted as a Divine deposit to the Church for protection and for infallible interpretation. When, therefore, the Church explains the meaning of a dogma this interpretation is to be maintained in all future time, and it can never be deviated from under pretence of a more profound investigation.

Among the sixty-five errors of the modernists condemned by Pope St. Pius X (Lamentabili sane) July 3, 1907:   
“53. The organic institution of the Church is not immutable. Like human society, Christian society is subject to perpetual evolution.        
“54. Dogmas, Sacraments, and hierarchy, both their notion and reality, are only interpretations and evolutions of the Christian intelligence which have increased and perfected by an external series of additions the little germ latent in the Gospel.       
“58. Truth is no more immutable than man himself, since it evolved with him, in him, and through him.        
“59. Christ did not teach a determined body of doctrine applicable to all times and all men, but rather inaugurated a religious movement adapted or to be adapted to different times and places.           
“64. Scientific progress demands that the concepts of Christian doctrine concerning God, creation, revelation, the Person of the Incarnate Word, and Redemption be readjusted.”

For holding any of these five propositions, one is automatically excluded from the Catholic Church.

Every Sunday Catholics must assist at the three principal parts of the Mass - Offertory, Consecration, and Priest’s Communion. So the “Church” provides new worship devoid of these three principal parts. Can Catholics fulfil their obligation? Have the clergy not an obligation in Canon Law to provide the ordinary means of salvation?  Can their failure bind the laity to their idolatrous substitute?

We have been given an infallible test: “By their fruits ye shall know them.” This comes close to a command. We are to apply this test. No one can deny the baneful effects of the Second Vatican Council. But who gave us this disaster? And could genuine popes promulgate obvious heresies in its decrees and documents? So we must look at the Conclaves which produced such fruits. The 1958 Conclave gave us an impossible pope. We know this by his fruits. But he was the fruit of the Conclave, which we must know and evaluate by its fruits. It matters not how this was accomplished, whether by setting aside the election of a proper pope or not. Still less can it matter who was supposedly elected. The glaringly obvious fact is that the Conclave produced an impostor - an antipope who even took the name and number of an antipope. That is all we need on which to proceed to correction - to the recovery of the religion founded by Jesus Christ.

The Catholic Church, so it taught us, is one, holy, Catholic, and Apostolic. Whatever its current replacement is or calls itself, it is none of these. To obtain or retain membership in this sole means of salvation we must be united in belief with Catholics of all times and places in the entire and immutable body of doctrine and law revealed by Jesus Christ to His Apostles, who were constituted Apostles by His mandate to teach all nations. This mandate itself is part of that vital Revelation. The missionary effort, as well as the doctrine, comes under Apostolic. The Conciliar “Church” of the Second Vatican Council of 1962-1965 has extinguished the missionary effort, which is now considered insulting to non-Catholics; it may somehow imply that they are wrong. So they dialogue with each other to determine which of Christ’s doctrines appeal to them, though He has obviously demanded belief in His entire Message. Just as obviously, if we fail to spread His entire Message we fail to comply with His Message, and we are not Catholic either. Formerly we could rely on the clergy for this essential function. But even those who still hold all the doctrine have largely ceased preaching it. If we wish to remain Catholic we must assume this duty. So bear with us if we annoy you. You can’t be worse off; you may as well listen.

Look at the bright side! Since the practice of Catholicism has become virtually impossible, you can convert without the necessity of fulfilling many of the obligations of the world’s strictest moral code. (If we were not absolutely convinced, we could not live with its restraints. We might, as do some, kill rather than convert opponents.) If we can’t find a confessor or a Mass, who can fault us for not using them? And who will know we are Catholic unless we tell them? Of course, we favor telling them.

Let us remove personality from the argument, in order that all will more readily appreciate the message. Laymen lack ecclesiastical authority, though we are bound to know, profess, and propagate our religion. As our first pope wrote (I Peter 3:15): “But sanctify the Lord Christ in your hearts, being ready always to satisfy every one that asketh you a reason of that hope which is in you.” So ask!

We need not understand everything we believe. The human mind has limits. But nothing that Christ and His Church teach contradicts reason, least of all the omnipotence of God. Truth is not subject to human reason. Contrary truths cannot exist. Scientific “truths” often depend on deeper investigation.

To whom was the birth of Jesus Christ revealed? To the priests in the Temple? Or to some shepherds? To whom did Jesus preach? To those in charge at the Temple? Or to the poor, wherever He found them?

To whom did He entrust His Message? To the chief priests, the scribes, the rulers, the figures of  authority? Or to timorous, comparatively uneducated men, of a despised race (including a tax-collector!), from a remote and troubled backwater of the Empire? And these few established His Church throughout the known world. Has Christ not shown that the power lay not in the messengers but in the Message?

And we, unlike our apostate clergy, hierarchy, and “pope,” provide the same powerful Message. None of us would dare accommodate it to the times. Nor did His Apostles.

They evangelized the known world, from Britain to India, most of which knew three Apostles at most. Yet the identical doctrine was received everywhere, throughout times when literacy was at a premium, without the shadow of equivalent of our mass media.

The message was spread with authority: Accept this Divine Revelation or take the fearful consequences. This is an integral part of the message, and requires a teaching authority. There is only one Divine Revelation, to preach which is required one sole teaching authority - one Catholic Church to last as long as it continues to propagate the same Divine Revelation. Certainly no other organization, religious or not, can fulfill this requirement. We are presented this Divine Revelation to accept for our salvation or to reject for our damnation. To increase, decrease, select, modify, or re-interpret is to reject. It is one, complete, immutable, eternal message. Immutability is essential to true religion.

“You are free to believe what you wish,” we hear. No we are not!

“You don’t want some one telling you what to believe.” We certainly do! We demand credible authority. We very much doubt our independent judgment in a matter of such grave consequences. And we know of only one credible authority. Can we bet our salvation on Billy Graham, Oral Roberts, or Pat Robertson, even if they agreed? What about Luther, Cranmer, and Calvin? Where were they when Divine Revelation was completed nearly fourteen centuries earlier? Was no one saved before they appeared? And who now holds their unchanged selective Catholicism?

God lives in eternity, which is NOW - without beginning, without end. Time itself is His creation. It is impossible that He be subject to His own creation. He has, so to speak, no time to change His mind. His revealed truth is always now. He revealed it in stages to His creatures, whom he created in His own time. What He wishes to reveal was complete at the death of the last Apostle, St. John.

He, the Supreme and only necessary, non-contingent Being, revealed that He created all things, visible and invisible, including the otherwise unthinkable order in the universe, from nothing, by the power of His Will. Was there somewhere, at some time, some man who could have done this? Or some one who could have organized or devised means, plans, methods, or had time enough available for this? Or whose mind could comprehend the problems, not least of which would be the raw material? Or whose strength could equal the task?

He revealed that He is one God in Three Divine Persons. Yet literally billions of men refuse or deny this. They seriously believe that anything which they cannot understand (such as electrical or nuclear energy?), with their comparatively infinitesimal minds, cannot exist.

The Second Divine Person of the Most Holy Trinity redeemed mankind from the supernatural effects of original sin and established the perfect religion (defined as man’s relationship to God), as only a Divine Person could. Yet millions have seriously tried to improve, update, modify, interpret, or select from this monumental work, which has outlasted all human institutions in history, despite the incompetence of its human representatives and the efficiency of its persecutors, the latest of whom have recognized a human right to religious freedom - i. e., we may disbelieve God!

We cite two books from the New Testament, which we accept on the authority of the Catholic Church as the inspired word of God - part of the aforesaid revelation:

St. Matthew’s Gospel 28:19 -20. Going therefore, teach ye all nations: baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you.

St. Mark’s Gospel 16:15-16. And he said to them: Go ye into the whole world and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved: but he that believeth not shall be condemned.

Evidently religious freedom is not a divine right. A religion which recognizes such a right is not a divine institution. The new “Catholic Church” recognizes this right as divine, and urges that it become a civil right. But it grants no such right to the traditional Catholic.

Please note the difference between redemption and salvation. Christ has redeemed all men, as only He could, from original sin and its consequences. To be saved, man must consciously cooperate with the graces He has made available through His Church.

Our Divine Redeemer placed another condition for salvation (Matthew 18:3): …. amen I say to you, unless you be converted, and become as little children, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.

Little children learn, largely by instruction and example; they do not question. Many years pass before they become adults capable of providing instruction and example to their own children. They thus become, so to speak, equals of their parents. But we are all God’s children, without the slightest chance to acquire an adult-to-adult relationship with Him. None of His creatures can, by definition, teach or advise Him or become His equal. Especially can we not restrict or regulate Him. He teaches and rules us. He has chosen as His medium the Catholic Church which He founded. Included in His revelation we find a clear prophecy that His Church, too, will virtually succumb to apostasy - which we may avoid by holding to tradition (cf. II Thess. ii, 14). Did he not ask (Luke 18:8): But yet the Son of man, when he cometh, shall he find, think you, faith on earth?

Could the phrasing of this question not imply that He will shut down the process when it has forgotten its purpose?

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We hope that we have captured your interest. Now we shall target particular positions. It is said that on religion there are only two logical positions, Catholicism and atheism. You either believe God or you deny that He exists. If you are an atheist, or even an agnostic, please read on. If you believe in God, even vaguely, you may well skip to the next line of asterisks. (*)

Not all non-Catholics believe in God. Most Catholic laymen have not wasted time arguing His existence. We quote Walter Farrell O.P., A Companion to the Summa, Volume I, pp. 29 sqq., edited:

Not all have the appetite for fighting, or time and ability to finish the fight. Salvation depends on winning the battle. Therefore infallible authority has emerged to protect those shunted out of the battle by force of circumstances. By that authority, one who cannot follow the intricacies of proof, through inability or lack of leisure time, knows beyond question that human reason, by its own power, can certainly know the existence of God. Authority is necessary, not because its truth is beyond reason, but because everyone must know of God’s existence for his individual life. He who has grasped the proof needs no authority.

Proof requires thinking, which requires preliminary notions, such as the abstract notion of potentiality and actuality. A block of marble has the potential to be sculpted into an actual statue, the aptitude for receiving this further perfection, the quality to be changed. We call this process “becoming,” “change,” or sometimes “development” - the motion from potentiality to actuality, from the capability of receiving perfection to the perfection received. The process involves: (1) a starting point prior to the change and containing the potentiality, a thing which exists and has the capacity for becoming something else, for receiving an added perfection; (2) the reality of the process of change which proceeds from the potential to the actual; (3) the product of the change, the actual needed perfection. We must hold fast to the fact of a distinct difference between the potentiality and its realization. Otherwise we are forced into denial of  both, or denial of change. In either case we hold that a motion from nowhere goes nowhere, or that contradictories are identical, that no distinction exists between the undeveloped and the developed, between marble blocks and statues.

The particular value of clarity in this notion of change is that it demonstrates the utter necessity of explaining every realized potentiality, every perfection, by an explanation external to the realized potentiality itself. It emphasizes the truth that a developed perfection is not its own explanation, it has not developed itself, nor is it explained by the potentiality which it perfected.

Another value, for our purpose of proving the existence of God, is had from the difference this process of becoming or change brings out between the action of God and of creatures. On this basis of becoming we argue from effects to causes in created causes and effects. Where the cause is divine, the fundamental question remains the same, explanation of a perfection not self-explanatory, that has not produced itself. The transition here is not from potentiality to its actualization but from non-being to being.

There are only two possibilities for proof of the existence of anything: the direct proof offered by sense experience, and inferential or a posteriori proof. If all other possibilities can be ruled out, inferential or a posteriori proof gives complete certitude. No other proof of existence is possible, no a priori proof is valid, because existence in no way enters into the very nature of created things; we cannot argue from the nature of things to their existence, as we can argue from the nature of man to the spirituality of his soul.

Existence enters into the very nature of God, but cannot be presupposed in proof of His existence.

We have no direct sense knowledge of God’s existence. We are reduced, therefore to inferential or a posteriori proof, proof of cause from its effects.

The first proof proceeds from the fact of motion. Since nothing that is moved moves or changes itself, the unquestionable fact of movement or change in the world about us forces us to conclude to the existence of a first mover who is not himself moved.

This proof merits explanation: “Nothing moves or changes itself” means only that a thing cannot be, relative to the same goal, merely moveable and already moved, merely changeable and already changed; for the starting point and the goal of the process of becoming are necessarily different. The mere aptitude for receiving motion is not its own completion. The common sense fundamental behind this phrase, then, is simply that what is not possessed cannot be bestowed; and the very notion of potentiality is the absence of perfection that is not possessed but so far is not, for, unless we maintain that contraries are identical, a potentiality is not its own actualization.

This argument goes beyond the cause of change to the cause of that which is changed, beyond the cause of becoming to the cause of being. For the immediate cause of change alone is itself in process of becoming by its very causality; the mover of a potentially moveable thing is himself moved by the very movement by which he moves this thing, he becomes something other than he was. Unless we come to a cause which produces that which is subject to change, to a cause that does not itself become something other than it was, the process of becoming or change cannot start.

The term “mover” is used of the first and of secondary movers only in a proportional sense; for the first mover is the cause of being and is himself unchanged, while secondary movers are causes of change and are themselves changed in their action. It is to this unique first mover that the argument concludes.

A not uncommon supposition is that since this particular movement is caused by another, this latter by another, and so on, there is no need for further explanation since it is taken for granted that the world is eternal. Since, then, you can never reach the end of a chain of movers, there is no mystery about the present movement. The fallacy lies in the fact that without a beginning the whole process could not start; no one of these previous movers is sufficient explanation of itself and its effect on others, yet a sufficient explanation must be found if the fact of movement is to be intelligible, if we are not to have something coming from nothing. The haze of distance or the weight of time do not obliterate the necessity of explanation any more than they offer a positive explanation. To be satisfied with this is to be satisfied with the removal of the question to more obscure quarters, comforted by its consequent vagueness. Plainly, unless we come to a mover that is in no way dependent we have not explained the existence of the movers who are undoubtedly dependent either for their actual movement or for the power to move; where the effects are patently present the cause ultimately explaining them is not to be denied.

Two things are to be particularly noted about this first proof of the existence of God: the narrowness of the conclusion and the independence of the argument from the elements of time. The argument adheres rigidly to the limits of its premises: it concludes to a first mover unmoved - and to nothing more. Nothing more can be concluded from the sensible fact of motion with which the argument started. Because there is movement, there is a cause of cosmic movement which is itself unmoved. The argument is not a sputtering flame to be extinguished by the simple expedient of blanketing it with centuries. There is no question here of movement beginning in time. It is not a question of present reality demanding a cause in the past. It is simply a question of the universe as given, movement or change as experienced, and the conclusion that such a movement or change is unintelligible without a first mover communicating movement to all things. Time makes no difference. If the eternity of the world were to be proved tomorrow beyond all doubt, this proof would be in no way affected; the fact of change is there, the effect is with us, its cause cannot be denied.

The background for the other four proofs is exactly the same as for this first one. Keeping the preliminary notions, explained above, well in mind and holding to the detailed explanation of this first proof, the others can be seen readily. The point at issue is always the same: the existence of perfection that did not previously exist.

The second proof proceeds from causality or the activity of things. Here it is a question of the existence of an efficient cause, the external agent by whose operation a thing exists, the question of the hen that laid an egg, the thunderbolt which struck a man dead, the storm that battered a ship into helplessness. The starting point is again the sensible world. We see in that sensible world an order of efficient causes dependent one on the other for their causality - the powder which propels the shell, which in turn crashes into a storage tank of gasoline, and this throwing out a sheet of flame in the heart of a city, and so on. We find nothing that is the cause of itself. Precisely because of this impossibility of a cause causing itself, the efficient causes of the sensible world force the conclusion that a first efficient cause exists which is itself uncaused.

It is impossible for a cause to cause itself for the same fundamental reason as exposed in the first argument, namely, because the starting point and the goal of change, the potentiality and its realization, cannot be identical. Otherwise we are identifying opposites, saying that the potentiality is the actuality. Here again, the argument is really stronger than it looks; for the only alternative is not merely identifying opposites; it is identifying non-reality with reality, non-being with being, for the transition is not from potentiality to actuality but from the purely privative condition of nothingness to existence. We must note again that the term “cause” is used not identically but proportionally of the first and secondary causes.

Against this argument may be offered the difficulty of living causes where the dependence is not immediately obvious. But no one living cause explains the efficacy of the species to which it belongs and from which it derives its power to cause. Yet that efficacy must have its explanation. Infinite regress gets us nowhere: without the first uncaused cause there will be no effects produced by any cause no matter how many eons are placed between the beginning of things and the world of today. It is not a question of time, nor is the question made more difficult by adding a few million years to the world’s age. Attention must again be called to the strict adherence of the conclusion to the evidence in hand: the argument concludes to the existence of a cause that is itself uncaused, nothing more. Either of these two arguments suffices to demonstrate the existence of God; their effectiveness is not a matter of accumulative evidence. They are merely different angles of focus on the same spectacle of divinity, rising from different starting points in the sensible world.

The third proof proceeds from our experience of the contingency or defectibility of things: If any beings exist whose essence is not one with their existence (that is, which are contingent), then a being exists whose essence is its existence (that is, an absolutely necessary being on whom the others are contingent). We see things that can have or lose existence, that begin and cease to exist, that are born and die. If all things were of this nature, if existence is not essentially natural to anything, then nothing would ever exist; which is patently false in view of the existing world. If things are capable of beginning to exist or of ceasing to exist, then, since they do in fact exist and cease to exist, that capability is fulfilled, that potentiality is realized, and a potentiality cannot realize itself. Much less can nothingness produce that which is the subject of realized potentialities.

No physically necessary being explains its own necessity but receives it (an actualized potentiality). So the necessity of the species is not explained by the species itself; “a multitude of contingent things do not make a necessary thing any more than a multitude of idiots make one intelligent man.” This necessity must be explained by a necessary being that does not receive necessity, but that is its necessity. Again time makes no difference. An infinite chain of beings that receive their necessity, or of beings which are not necessary, neither complicates nor explains the difficulty; it merely tries to dodge the problem by hiding under accumulations of immediate causes or of years.

The fourth proof argues from the perfection of things. The argument proceeds from the world of reality, not necessarily of sense experience or impressions. The real world includes things we understand as well as things we feel, love, justice, friendship, things we can never grow in the garden or meet on the street but which are decided realities.

We speak here of only the absolute perfections that carry the note of perfection in themselves, not the relative which are perfections only because of their order to something else. Examples of absolute perfections are animality, rationality, life, existence. These can be roughly classified by stressing the point that they are in themselves either strictly limited or completely limitless.

As examples of strictly limited, we may mention animality or humanity. A man is no less an animal than a lion; nor has a sickly boy less humanity than a strapping giant. These things imply definitely fixed limits. They either are or are not fully possessed; there is no question of having a little or a great deal of them. To exceed or to fall away from their fixed limits means the complete loss of that perfection. Of the limitless perfections are life, goodness, existence, and so on. If there are limits to these perfections in this or that individual or species, the limitation comes not from the perfection itself. We note the source of limitation when we speak of human life and animal life, though it never occurs to us to speak of human rationality or animal animality.

Proof of God’s existence proceeds precisely from unlimited perfections. Characteristically these perfections are possessed by different kinds of being in an analogous, not an identical, way. We speak of a good stone, a good fruit, a good horse, or a good professor according as each has its due perfection. The professor’s goodness is not the same as the fruit’s goodness. There is proportionality, not identity. These perfections are realizable in degrees; thus a man may be bad, of mediocre virtue, of more than average virtue, and ultimately a saint.

In the world about us we see these perfections existing in things that are more or less good, more or less true, and so on; we see life within human limits, animal limits, plant limits. Now these limited degrees of limitless perfections can be explained only by the existence of something to which these perfections pertain in their fullness, something which does not possess this or that degree of goodness, truth, life, but which is, by its very nature, limitless goodness, limitless truth, limitless life.

Certainly these limited degrees of limitless perfections are not explained by the natures which possess them. For what flows from the essential principles of a nature is had in its fullness; humanity is not something a man achieves after a long struggle. Moreover, perfections which flow from nature do not vary: the spoiled lapdog is not less animal as the days pass, the puppy does not grow into his animality. Yet in the world about us these limitless perfections of goodness, life, and the rest are not had in their fullness and they vary with an infinite variety.

The explanation, then, must be sought outside the natures which possess a limited edition of a limitless virtue, that is, in some extrinsic source which has the perfection perfectly. Otherwise we meet the fundamental obstacle erected by an identification of contraries, of a potentiality bringing about its own realization, indeed of the absence of perfection bringing about the presence of perfection. These limited editions of limitless virtues are received virtues; they are explicable only by some being who has not received them but to whom they belong, in their limitlessness, by the very nature of that being. Nor is this a jump from the ideal to the real order. It is not a matter of having an ideal rule by which we may measure these perfections; but of having a real, existing cause by whose action these realities have been brought into being.

The fifth proof proceeds from an ordered multiplicity to an ordering unity. The order of the world, which is at the starting point of this proof, furnished one of the most constant evidences of the existence of God to men through the ages. It appealed to Greek poets and philosophers; in unphilosophic form it was preserved in the Sacred Writings of the Hebrews; primitive peoples appealed to it in their origin myths. It has been not only one of the most ancient of the proofs but one of the most popular. It has been accepted as genuine by the uneducated who were unable to follow its philosophical implications; and, at the same time, was the only proof given a measure of respect by Immanuel Kant.

The fifth proof proceeds as the other four, demanding no more, resting on just as solid a foundation. It begins with observed facts and employs the same fundamental principle that opposites are not identical. The quest to explain order leads to a supreme intelligence.

All about us we see things devoid of intelligence acting for an end, as is evident from their always, or generally, acting in the same orderly way to obtain the best result. Evidently these actions are placed, not by accident, but on purpose. As things devoid of intelligence do not act for an end unless they be directed by some intelligence, we must conclude that a supreme intelligence exists which directs all natural things to their end. And this supreme intelligence we call God.

Now that there are no more atheists among you, we return, let us fondly hope, to illogical readers.

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Jesus Christ commanded His Apostles to preach His message, not their own, not even their own interpretations. He obliged us all to accept, not to modify, the Church which He founded. Catholics accept his entire Revelation, complete at the death of St. John, the last Apostle. The Church is often accused of introducing additional doctrines, at various Councils and/or by numerous popes. There is a difference between holding a doctrine and defining the same doctrine. The earliest definitions were Creeds, which contained major essential beliefs. Everyone held the rest implicitly. There was simply no point in defining doctrines universally held at all times. Definitions became necessary only when universally held doctrines were denied, misinterpreted, added to, or questioned, usually by an innovative priest or bishop of the Church, who would use his pulpit and position to create a schism. But even these schisms served to date Catholic doctrines. We find agreement between schismatics and Catholics on the great bulk of doctrine. We know when the schismatics left us. We know they would never accept Church authority after leaving. So the doctrines on which we and they agree were held by both at the time they left us. And not too many intended to leave us. But the Church in self-defense defined the heretofore undefined, original, true doctrine, condemned the heresy (choice), and let the heretics (choosers) choose also to accept the divine authority or leave. It is hardly surprising that the Council of Trent, in the wake of the Protestant Revolt, was most prolific in definitions.

Let us now examine what we shall term paradoctrine, the myriad private revelations, many of which show every sign of lunacy or absurdity. We have no intention of saddling you with any of them. We have everything needed for salvation from the original Deposit of Faith, complete at the death of the last Apostle, St. John. There have been reports of private revelations over the centuries. If belief in these were required for salvation, many of our poor deprived ancestors never had a chance.

Private revelations, even if undoubtedly true, can bind no one except those who directly receive them. But, we are told, the Church approves them. Church approval is based on non-contradiction of Catholic dogma and morals in the message, not on the truth, credibility, or authenticity of its content. Nor can it be argued that certain catastrophic events cannot have happened because the seer(s) would have told us. It simply does not follow that a seer sees or hears anything outside the particular subject of the private revelation, especially if the undisclosed condition or fact is ascertainable by natural means, such as inquiry or observation.

Some private revelations are so obviously false that their pilgrims and devotees must deliberately deceive themselves. How, for instance, can one seriously accept that the Blessed Virgin told a seer that a third party, sacramentally married for decades, with several grown children, should divorce her husband? What was his offense? Failure to believe and financially to support the Medjugorje visionaries. A South American seer has heard from Jesus that He will soon return and tell us the truth. When Paul VI asked the Jesuits how to convince people to accept all his innovations, they recommended multiple private revelations.

In our time, when what appears as God’s Holy Church has removed all our certainties, we tend piously to follow any “supernatural” pipeline from heaven back to stability, and to thank God for granting new hopes never previously needed. A drowning man will grasp at straws.

We have been asked for our authority. Whenever a theologian issues a dogmatic or moral treatise he must submit it to the Church for approval from the official censor (Nihil obstat = Nothing impedes), and for permission to publish (Imprimatur = let it be printed), from the local Ordinary (diocesan bishop). We have no mission from the Church.

But we cannot find a recognizable authority to which we may submit our treatise. We could easily recognize proper authority by its traditional aspect and by its pursuit of the missionary effort. [Art thou he that art to come, or look we for another? And Jesus making answer said to them: … the poor have the gospel preached to them. (Matthew 11:2-5.)]

If such an organization were visibly in action there would be little need for our effort. Shall we refrain from propagating the Gospel because those who were sent to spread it have disobediently refused their commission? […. Master, we saw one casting out devils in thy name, who followeth not us (who was not sent): and we forbade him. But Jesus said: Do not forbid  him. For there is no man that doth a miracle in my name and can soon speak ill of me. For he that is not against you is for you. (Mark 9:37-39)]

Were we to cite or quote the source of every dogmatic or moral argument we use, the footnotes would exceed our argument. They would, however, show that all our sources bear official approval of the Church prior to 1958. We need invent nothing. It has all been taught for centuries. If we knew nothing of it we could not pass it on. If no Catholic passes it on, an essential characteristic of the Church is gone.

Convinced as we are that Catholicism is essential to salvation, we are obliged to present this ultimate necessity to everyone. It would be criminal to keep this to ourselves. Hell is forever, and we wish this horror for no one. Please consider that:

God created all things, large and small, living and lifeless, spiritual and corporeal, visible and invisible, natural, preternatural, and supernatural, from nothing to perfection. Nothing exists that He did not create. He is the only necessary Being. It follows that nothing and no one can be His equal; no creature can attain equality with the Source of its existence¾obviously contingent upon its own creation. There can be only one God, and no creature, however capable or intelligent, can comprehend Him, establish rules for Him, or set limits for Him. He is the Author of all limits, rules, laws, and life. He wields absolute power over all creation. He does and permits nothing without purpose, which often we cannot know or understand.

So why did this utterly happy, self-sufficient Being create such a sorry lot as us?

To know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to share His utter happiness in heaven.

Knowing God is not the same as defining Him. The two do not stand or fall together. By identifying the two, the Agnostic confounds inability to define with total inability to know—distinct problems to be treated separately, since knowledge may fall short of definition and be knowledge still. The process of knowing God thus becomes a process of correcting our human concepts. The correction consists in raising to infinite, unlimited significance the objective perfections discernible in men and things. This is accomplished in turn by denying the limiting modes and imperfect features distinctive of created reality, in order to replace these by the thought of the All-perfect, in the plenitude of whose Being one undivided reality corresponds to our numerous, distinct, partial concepts. In the light of this applied corrective we are enabled to attribute to God the perfections manifested in intelligence, will, power, personality, without making the objective content of our idea of God merely the human magnified, or a bundle of negations. The extreme of Anthropomorphism, or of defining God in terms of man magnified, is thus avoided, and the opposite extreme of Agnosticism discounted. Necessity compels us to think God under the relative, dependent features of our experience. But no necessity of thought compels us to make the accidental features of our knowledge the very essence of His being. The function of denial, which the Agnostic overlooks, is a corrective, not purely negative, function; and our idea of God, inadequate and solely proportional as it is, is nevertheless positive, true, and valid according to the laws which govern all our knowing.

We can neither love nor serve what we know not. We can certainly know God’s existence by His visible creation, which has no other possible or credible origin, as we have shown. We can love God as our Creator, as we love our parents and more remote ancestors, without whom we would not exist. But serve? Have we not free will? Is there no great urge to serve what we see as our own interests?

Surely we can know Him, as much as He and our spiritual capacity permit, through His own Revelation. He has therein disclosed that He is One God in Three Divine Persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, equally eternal and eternally equal in all things. Before He revealed this no man could have imagined it. So in the revealing itself, He proved it, and demanded belief as a condition of sharing His utter happiness in heaven.

Genesis relates that God said (1:26): “Let us make man to our image and likeness: and let him have dominion over the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the air, and the beasts, and the whole earth, and every creeping creature that moveth upon the earth.” [Let us make man to our image... This image of God in man, is not in the body, but in the soul; which is a spiritual substance, endued with understanding and free will. God speaketh here in the plural number, to insinuate the plurality of persons in the Deity. - Challoner Bible comment]

Why did God wait till fulfillment of the prophecies of the Redeemer to reveal the Holy Trinity? It is not for us to question His motives. But did not the fulfillment constitute part of the proof? Did the elite of the Jews not reject both this fulfillment and the ultimate proof that Christ rose from the dead by His own divine power? Might not their ancestors have rejected the same Revelation of the Holy Trinity at any stage of their history? We have all met men who cheerfully admit that they know all there is to know, and conclude that anything beyond their own comprehension cannot exist. So God conceivably put off  their test in charity until necessary. But we can be sure that He had better reasons, due, perhaps, to His eternal knowledge of all creation in all stages, and to His flawless judgment. We can be sure also that we cannot tell Him what kind of God we can accept. With the free will with which He has endowed us we must choose whether to serve Him or not. He has told us “He that is not with Me is against Me.” (Matthew 12:30; Luke 11:23) And  “If you love me, keep my commandments.” (John 14:15) And “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart and with thy whole soul and with thy whole mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. And the second is like to this: Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments dependeth the whole law and the prophets.” (Matthew 22:37-40) And “Be not afraid of them who kill the body and after that have no more that they can do.” But “Fear ye him who, after he hath killed, hath power to cast into hell. Yea, I say to you: Fear him.” (Luke 12:5)   

History has no better attested fact than the coming of Christ, which all prior generations awaited and prophesied, and all since have celebrated as fulfillment of prophesy and basis for our civilization, and even our calendar. His coming had a purpose, Redemption, and a lasting effect. Neither could have been accomplished by a being only human, or redemption would have been achieved at some time over the millennia since the fall of Adam. Even a cursory reading of the Old Testament will demonstrate the universal longing. Redemption itself proves the Fall. Without Original Sin why would mankind need Redemption?

Redemption comes through the infinite merits of Jesus Christ Who died for us all. “Greater love than this no man hath,” He said (John 15:13-14), that a man lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends, if you do the things that I command you.” No man! Man is a finite being. All our perfections are limited, even our love for our children. We cannot even begin to imagine God’s infinite love for His creatures, especially His rational creatures made in His own image.

“For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour, Who will have all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” (I Timothy 2:3-4) What keeps us from the embrace of this boundless love? Our mindless preference for our own free will when and where it opposes God’s unquestionable limitless benevolence and eternal truth.

The Catholic attitude to God’s message is summed up in the prayer: “I believe in Thee, O my God, because Thou art the Eternal Truth.” All mankind has been redeemed by Christ’s sacrificial death on Calvary. But universal salvation is condemned as heresy. “…he that believeth not shall be condemned.” - (Mark 16:16)

Belief is neither blind nor sufficient. St. Peter wrote in his First Epistle: “But sanctify the Lord Christ in your hearts, being ready always to satisfy every one that asketh you a reason of that hope which is in you.” (3:15) and: “… if you invoke as Father him who, without respect of persons, judgeth according to every one’s work: converse in fear during the time of your sojourning here.” (1:17)

St. James’ Epistle reads: “But be ye doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. For if a man be a hearer of the word and not a doer, he shall be compared to a man beholding his own countenance in a glass. For he beheld himself and went his way and presently forgot what manner of man he was. But he that hath looked into the perfect law of liberty and hath continued therein, not becoming a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work: this man shall be blessed in his deed.” (1:22-25) and “So faith also, if it have not works, is dead in itself. But some man will say: Thou hast faith, and I have works.  Shew me thy faith without works; and I will shew thee, by works, my faith. Thou believest that there is one God. Thou dost well: the devils also believe and tremble. But wilt thou know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead? Was not Abraham our father justified by works, offering up Isaac his son upon the altar? Seest thou that faith did cooperate with his works and by works faith was made perfect? And the scripture was fulfilled, saying: Abraham believed God, and it was reputed to him to justice, and he was called the friend of God. Do you see that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only? And in like manner also Rahab the harlot, was not she justified by works, receiving the messengers and sending them out another way? For even as the body without the spirit is dead: so also faith without works is dead.” (2:17-27)

We must put our money where our mouth is. Who rewards a disobedient servant? So how shall we obey? How shall we know our obligations? By asking God’s constituted authority - His One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic Church, which has recorded all.

HERESY (The Catholic Encyclopedia,, Vol. VII, 257): “It cannot be pleaded in attenuation of the guilt of heresy that heretics do not deny the faith which to them appears necessary to salvation, but only such articles as they consider not to belong to the original deposit. ..... two of the most evident truths of the depositum fidei are the unity of the Church and the institution of a teaching authority to maintain that unity. That unity exists in the Catholic Church, and is preserved by the function of her teaching body: these are two facts which anyone can verify for himself. In the constitution of the Church there is no room for private judgment sorting essentials from non-essentials: any such selection disturbs the unity, and challenges the divine authority of the Church; it strikes at the very source of faith. The guilt of heresy is measured not so much by its subject-matter as by its formal principle, which is the same in all heresies: revolt against a Divinely constituted authority.”

ERROR (The Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. V, page 525): ..... one way or another the product of ignorance. Besides the lack of information it implies, it adds the positive element of a mental judgment, by which something false is held to be true, or something true avouched to be false. The subject matter ..... is either the law itself (one is astray in affirming or denying the existence of a law, or ..... the inclusion of some individual case under its operation) or a fact, or circumstance of fact (one labors under an equal misapprehension, but with regard to a fact or aspect of a fact). .....

When an agent deliberately omits means calculated to dispel his error, or purposely fosters it, it is called affected error. ..... not so styled to indicate that it is simulated, but rather to point out that the erroneous tenet has been studiously aimed at. When the error is the offspring of sheer unrelieved negligence, it is termed crass. ..... [minimally edited]

INADMISSIBILITY OF THEORETICAL DOGMATIC TOLERATION

(Vol XIV, pp. 765-6): Such toleration implies indifference towards truth and, in principle, a countenancing of error; hence it is clear that intolerance towards error as such is among the self-evident duties of every man who recognizes ethical obligations. Inasmuch as this dogmatic intolerance is a prominent characteristic of the Catholic Church, and is stigmatized by the modern spirit as obstinacy and even as intolerable arrogance, its objective justification must now be established. We will begin with the incontestable claim of truth to universal recognition and exclusive legitimacy. Just as the knowableness of truth is the fundamental presupposition of every investigator, so also are its final attainment and possession his goal. Error itself, as the opposite of truth is intelligible only when there is an unchangeable norm of cognition by which the thinking mind is ruled. .....

Nowhere is dogmatic intolerance so necessary a rule of life as in the domain of religious belief, since for each individual his eternal salvation is at stake. Just as there can be no alternative multiplication tables, so there can be but a single true religion, which, by the very fact of its existence, protests against all other religions as false. But the love of truth requires each man to stand forth as the incorruptible advocate of truth and of truth alone. While abstract truth, both profane and religious, asserts itself victoriously through its impersonal evidence against all opposition, its human advocate, involved in personal contest with adversaries of flesh and blood like himself, must have recourse to words and writing. Hence the sharp, yet almost impersonal clash between opposing views of life, each of which ..... is thoroughly convinced that it alone is right. But the very devotion to truth which supports these convictions determines the kind of polemics which each believes himself called on to conduct. He whose sole concern is for truth itself, will never besmirch his escutcheon by lying or calumny and will refrain from all personal invective. Conscious that the truth for which he fights or in good faith believes he fights is, by reason of its innate nobility, incompatible with any blemish or stain, he will never claim license to abuse. ..... He may, however, by a fair counter-stroke parry an unjust, malicious, and insulting attack, since his adversary has no right to employ invective, to falsify history, to practise sordid proselytism, etc., and may, therefore, be driven without pity from his false position. These principles apply universally and for all men .....

If, therefore, the Catholic Church also claims the right of dogmatic intolerance with regard to her teaching, it is unjust to reproach her for exercising this right. With the imperturbable conviction that she was founded by the God-man Jesus Christ as the “pillar and ground of truth” (I Tim., iii, 15) and endowed with full power to teach, to rule, and to sanctify, she regards dogmatic intolerance not alone as her incontestable right, but also as a sacred duty. If Christian truth like every other truth is incapable of double dealing, it must be as intolerant as the multiplication table or geometry. The Church, therefore, demands, in virtue of her Divine commission to teach, the unconditional acceptance of all the truths of salvation which she preaches and proposes for belief, proclaiming to the world with her Divine Founder the stern warning: “He that believeth and is baptized, shall be saved : but he that believeth not shall be condemned” (Mark xvi, 16). If, by conceding a convenient right of opinion or a falsely understood freedom of faith, she were to leave everyone at liberty to accept or reject her dogmas, her constitution, and her sacraments, as the existing differences of religions compel the modern state to do, she would not only fail in her Divine mission, but she would end her own life in voluntary suicide. As the true God can tolerate no strange gods, the true Church of Christ can tolerate no strange Churches beside herself, or, what amounts to the same, she can recognize none as theoretically justified. And it is just in this exclusiveness that lies her unique strength, the stirring power of her propaganda, the unfailing vigor of her progress. A strictly logical consequence of this fundamental idea is the ecclesiastical dogma that outside the Church there is no salvation. Scarcely any article of faith gives such offense ..... occasions so many misunderstandings ..... owing to its supposed hardness and uncharitableness. Yet this proposition is necessarily and indissolubly connected with the principle of the exclusive legitimacy of truth and with the ethical commandment of love for truth. Since Christ Himself did not leave men free to choose whether they would belong to the Church or not, it is clear that the idea of the Christian Church includes as an essential element its necessity for salvation. In her doctrine the Church must maintain that intolerance which the Divine Founder Himself proclaimed: “And if he will not hear the Church, let him be to thee as the heathen and the publican” (Matt., xviii, 17). This explains the intense aversion which the Church has displayed to heresy, the diametrical opposite to revealed truth (cf. I Tim., i, 19; II Tim., ii, 25; Tit., iii, 10 sq.; II Thess. ii, 11). ..... Döllinger writes .....: “The Apostles knew no tolerance, no leniency towards heresies. Paul inflicted formal excommunication on Hymenaeus and Alexander. And such an expulsion from the Church was always to be inflicted. The Apostles considered false doctrine as destructive as a wicked example. With weighty emphasis Paul declares (Gal., i, 8): ‘But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach a gospel to you besides that which we have preached to you, let him be anathema.’ Even the gentle John forbids the community to offer hospitality to heretics coming to it, or even to salute them” (Christentum und Kirche, Ratisbon, 1860, pp. 236 sq.) [minimally edited].

We can instruct you? Yes, but it would take all our time for years.

All the instruction ever needed is already in print. Let us recommend

The Belief of Catholics, by Ronald Knox (for brevity)

The Catholic Controversy, by St. Francis de Sales (as included after Father Patrick Danehy’s treatment of Penance.)

Compendium of Catechetical Instruction,  
edited (1928) by Rt. Rev. Msgr. John Hagan, Rector, Irish College, Rome (four volumes)

A Companion to the Summa, Walter Farrell O.P. (four volumes)

Baltimore Catechism No. 2 or 3 (before 1958)

Radio Replies, Rumble & Carty. (three volumes)

Orthodoxy and The Everlasting Man, by G. K. Chesterton; (for enjoyment)

 

Be absolutely sure to avoid the Dutch and French Catechisms,

The Decrees & Documents of the Second Vatican Council,

all Papal Encyclicals since 1958, and

the new (1992) Catechism of the Catholic Church.