Successors of Saint Peter

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Regarding John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul I, John Paul II, Benedict XVI the following explanation has been provided:

    Since 1958, there is good reason to believe that John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI, should not be considered true popes because, by their words and actions, they have manifested their errors by expressing doctrines contrary to what the Catholic Church has always taught.  In the second half of the Twentieth Century up until today, both Catholics and non-Catholics alike would agree that the Catholic Church has undergone dramatic, and in some cases, unprecedented changes. Because of these changes we have been left with the question, “What has happened to the Catholic Church?” Mass attendance is at an all time low through out many parts of the world, and many Catholics no longer think it necessary to believe in Catholic teachings to be Catholic. The Catholic faith is grounded in Sacred Scripture, tradition, and the Magisterium (teachings of popes and councils).  As Catholics, we believe that the truths of the faith cannot change and that once the Church teaches something to be true it can never be taken away. However, this has now been abandoned for an, at best, watered down and often times wholly different set of beliefs.  

    The Church before Vatican II warned us that the enemies of the Church were not only on the outside but on the inside as well. St. Pius X in Pascendi said, “For as We have said, they put their designs for her ruin into operation not from without but from within; hence, the danger is present almost in the very veins and heart of the Church, whose injury is the more certain, the more intimate is their knowledge of her.” Pope Leo XIII had a vision in 1888 were he saw the devil overtaking the visible positions in the Church around a hundred years time and prescribed the prayer to St. Michael the Archangel to be said after every Mass. In the original version he writes, “These most crafty enemies have filled and inebriated with gall and bitterness the Church, the spouse of the immaculate Lamb, and have laid impious hands on her most sacred possessions. In the Holy Place itself, where has been set up the See of the most holy Peter and the Chair of Truth for the light of the world, they have raised the throne of their abominable impiety, with the iniquitous design that when the Pastor has been struck, the sheep may be scattered.” This tells us that the Church will at least look as though it had been taken over by Her enemies and, therefore, he asked for the prayers of the faithful to guard against this. These prayers were removed in 1970.

    In 1962 John XXIII opened the Second Vatican Council which was to bring ‘springtime’ to the Church. Unfortunately the changes and destruction to the faith that resulted from this period are staggering to say the least. The fruits of the council are clear. Between 1965 and 2002, the number of seminarians dropped from 49,000 to 4,700, a decline of over 90 percent. Two-thirds of the 600 seminaries that were operating in 1965 have now closed. Almost half of all Catholic high schools in the United States have closed since 1965 and the number of teaching nuns has dropped from 104,000 in 1968 to 8,200 today, a decline of 94 percent since the end of Vatican II. Catholic marriages have fallen in number by one-third since 1965, while the annual number of annulments in the U.S. has soared from 338 in 1968 to 50,000 in 2002 (Index of Leading Catholic Indicators compiled by Kenneth C. Jones). Besides these statistics we know from our own experience that the faithful no longer believ in Novenas, Catholic devotions, sacramentals, etc.. Even more frightening, the sacraments, in many "Catholic" minds, like the Holy Eucharist and Confession are no longer believed as a necessary part of our Catholic faith.   

    The changes in Catholic teaching beginning with the Second Vatican Council and changes to how we live our Catholic faith have left us with something completely different; a new church.  These contradictions include a false sense of ecumenism (the belief that other religions are also a means of salvation), errors concerning religious liberty, and modernism (the idea that dogmas can and should change and adapt to fit the changes of society). These errors were introduced by the ambiguous documents of Vatican II and were promulgated most notably by Paul VI, John Paul II and Benedict XVI.

    There have been changes to the sacraments as well, such as the new mass which has removed 70% of the prayers, leaves little or no sense of reverence, and has even changed the words of Our Lord in the English translation.  The new Mass that started being used in 1970 at the request of Paul VI was created with the help of six protestant ministers. There were even two top Cardinals at the time, Cardinal Ottaviani and Cardinal Bacci, who said the new Mass “Represents, both as a whole and in its details, a striking departure from the Catholic theology of the Mass as it was formulated in Session 22 of the Council of Trent.” (Letter from Cardinal A. Ottavianni and Cardinal A. Bacci) The Church has always believed that the Mass is a sacrifice where the priest offers Jesus Christ on the Altar. Now it is considered to be a community meal, where little or no reverence is shown, people receive the Eucharist in the hand from other lay persons. There have also been changes to the other sacraments, most importantly the change to the rite of consecration for bishops, which is now doubtfully valid because the rite itself has been changed completely. Pope Pius XII had set aside specific words that must be used for the sacrament to take place.  However, these were completely changed after Vatican II. Theologians have taught that it does matter what words are used and changing them can effect whether or not the consecration has taken place (Problems with the New Sacraments by Rama Coomaraswamy, M.D.).

    Because of the errors of modernism, John Paul II and now Benedict XVI have said and done things that clearly go against the faith of the Church.  One of the errors of our day is the idea of the Church of Christ as being something bigger than the Catholic Church and includes not only the Greek Orthodox but protestant faiths as well. For example, Benedict XVI recently sent a letter to the Schismatic Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox church, Alexy II, in which he said, “Gestures and words of renewed brotherhood between pastors of the Lord's flock show that an ever more intense collaboration in truth and charity help increase the spirit of communion that must guide the steps of all the baptized.”  But we know from Pope Leo XIII that, “Bishops are deprived of the right and power of ruling, if they deliberately secede from Peter and his successors; because, by this secession, they are separated from the foundation on which the whole edifice must rest. They are therefore outside the edifice itself; and for this very reason they are separated from the fold, whose leader is the Chief Pastor; they are exiled from the Kingdom, the keys of which were given by Christ to Peter alone.” (Satis Cognitum)

    During the reign of John Paul II he continually met and prayed with non-Catholics, not with a spirit to convert them but to highlight the holiness of all religions and how they are acceptable to God on their own.  Although we are to love all those outside the Catholic faith, we are also bound by true Catholic charity to work for their return to the Church. One of the many prayer meetings of John Paul II was the 1986 (and 2002) ecumenical meeting at Assisi in which 150 religions of the world were invited by him to pray to their false gods for world peace. His actions make it evident that he believes their individual religions are somehow good and praiseworthy because they all a have a sense of “god”.  This idea was condemned by Pope Pius XI as “tantamount to abandoning the religion revealed by God”. Another example of John Paul II’s disregard for the Church’s previous teachings on false religions was when he kissed a copy of the Koran in 1999 at the Vatican.  This is the same Koran that caused hundreds of thousands of saintly martyrs to be put to death because they refused to bow down to it and accept it to be holy.  They died defending the Catholic faith and John Paul II said by his actions that their deaths were in vain.

    Pope Pius XI in 1928 said “the union of Christians can only be promoted by promoting the return to the one true Church of Christ of those who are separated from it.” (Mortalium Animos) This means that we must believe that other Christians must return and accept the Catholic faith.  This is quite different from the modern idea that those outside of communion with the Catholic Church do not need to convert to the faith of Christ to be saved.

    One example of the errors contained in the Second Vatican Council concerns the Church’s teaching on religious liberty: “The right to religious freedom has its foundation in the very dignity of the human person... This right to religious freedom is to be recognized in the constitutional law whereby society is governed. Thus it is to become a civil right." (Declaration on Religious Liberty Dignitatis Humanae, paragraph 2). The previous doctrine, which many popes have often reiterated, is most authoritatively stated in Pope Pius IX's Quanta Cura (1864), this is almost a word for word contrary teaching: "And from this wholly false idea of social organization they do not fear to foster that erroneous opinion, especially fatal to the Catholic Church and the salvation of souls, called by our predecessor, Gregory XVI, insanity, namely that the liberty of conscience and worship is the proper right of every man, and should be proclaimed by law in every correctly established society... Each and every doctrine individually mentioned in this letter, by Our Apostolic authority We reject, proscribe and condemn; and We wish and command that they be considered as absolutely rejected by all the sons of the Church."

    Great saints, doctors of the Church, and celebrated theologians have taught that if a man, even the Roman Pontiff, should fall into error, he is no longer teaching the Catholic Faith and should not be followed. This does not mean that one is allowed to reject the authority of the pope or papal infallibility, but if there is sufficient evidence to show that the pope has fallen into error, we can question whether or not he is truly pope. This has been accepted by many Doctors of the Church as a possibility in line with Catholic teaching.

Cardinal and Doctor of the Church St. Robert Bellarmine who wrote in his Second Book, Chapter 29 of De Romano Pontifice the following:

"Just as it is lawful to resist the Pope that attacks the body, it is also lawful to resist the one who attacks souls or who disturbs civil order, or above all, who attempts to destroy the Church. I say that it is lawful to resist by not doing what he orders and preventing his will from being executed."

Two more Doctors of the Church weighed in on this vital issue. St. Francis de Sales stated in A Catholic Controversy in 1596:

"Now when [the Pope] is explicitly a heretic, he falls ipso facto from his dignity and out of the Church, and the Church must either deprive him, or, as some say, declare him deprived, of his Apostolic See."

In his Verita della Fede, Part III, Chapter VIII: 9-10, St. Alphonsus Liguori left an omen that - we can only believe from what we see today - has emerged:

"If ever a pope, as a private person, should fall into heresy, he would at once fall from the pontificate. If, however, God were to permit a pope to become a notoriously and contumacious heretic, he would by such fact cease to be pope, and the apostolic chair would be vacant."

Don’t forget what Pope Leo XIII taught concerning the Catholic faith, “There can be nothing more dangerous than those heretics who admit nearly the whole cycle of doctrine, and yet by one word, as with a drop of poison, infect the real and simple faith taught by our Lord and handed down by Apostolic tradition” (Satis Cognitum)

During these sad and confusing times it is important for us to remain faithful to the teachings of the Catholic Church as it has always been.  These men have taught and are teaching something that previous popes, councils of the church, Fathers and Doctors of the Church, theologians and our holy saints would have considered against the faith of Christ. Our Lord said, “By their fruits you shall know them” and this should always be our guide when in doubt. Always have hope because in the end we know that the gates of hell will not prevail against the Church, and Our Lady's Immaculate Heart will triumph and all confusion and error will be set aside and the Church will return to Her former beauty.