Many Catholics studying the current crisis in the Church have become numb to the definition of Pope Saint Pius X that modernism is “the synthesis of all heresies.” Some may think “synthesis of all heresies” is an amorphous problem of general doctrinal malaise. Others might classify it as a paranoid papal prophesy that never really materialized for the good-willed but jumpy Pope.
But what has been astonishing to me lately is that I keep seeing that I learned everything, yes, quite literally everything, while growing up in Catholic grade school, high school and even seminary—wrong. I don’t mean just liturgical issues. I mean the seemingly-smaller issues of Catholic doctrine are all turning out to be the exact opposite of what I was taught for over 30 years of my education:
| # | Modernist ‘Catholicism’ | Apostolic Catholicism |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | We don’t know when Jesus was born. | Jesus was born on the 25th of December in 1 B.C. |
| 2 | Jesus is a human person with a divine nature. | Jesus is a divine person with a divine nature and a human nature. |
| 3 | Jesus was born in a normal way to the Blessed Virgin Mary. | Jesus’ birth to the Blessed Virgin Mary was miraculous. |
| 4 | Following your conscience is enough for pagans to be saved. | “Baptism…now saves you.”—1 Pt 3:21 and “Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.”—John 3:5 |
| 5 | Morality is primarily determined by the subjective intention of an act. | Morality is primarily determined by the object (deed) itself of an act. |
| 6 | Mortal sin is primarily determined by plausible deniability in knowledge. | Mortal sin is primarily determined by objective actions because the law is written on the heart of man (cf Rom 1.) |
| 7 | Marriage and celibacy constitute equal callings to holiness. | Marriage is holy but celibacy is holier (cf. 1 Cor 7) unless one would “burn” in lust while approaching celibacy. |
| 8 | The miracles of the Old Testament are legends. | The Miracles of the Old Testament and New Testament are both real. |
| 9 | The death penalty is a sin against being pro-life. | The death penalty is necessary to a society ordered by God (Rom 13.) |
| 10 | Hell is a possibility, but we don’t know if anyone is there. All “relatively-good” Catholics will go to heaven. | The Council of Trent infallibly states that there are both demons and men in hell. Just one unconfessed mortal sin on your soul at death will lead to hell. |
| 11 | Most people go to Purgatory. | Most people go to hell. |
| 12 | Evolution can be reconciled with Catholicism. | Evolution can be reconciled with neither true science nor true religion. |
| 13 | Catholics can learn truths from other religions. | The “gods” of the nations are demons (Ps 94/95.) |
| 14 | Catholics can pray at Protestant communities. | Heretical worship is not pleasing to God. |
| 15 | Annulments are infallible and efficacious acts of the Church. | Annulments are only best-guesses of fallible tribunals. |
| 16 | All Catholics are welcome to the Eucharist. | All Catholics are welcome to the Confessional Box. |
| 17 | Freedom of religion is a good thing. | Christ is the King of every nation where error has no rights. (Those in error have human rights, but error itself has no rights.) |
| 18 | Liturgy can change via form on large aspects overnight. | Liturgy can only change via small externals over centuries. |
| 19 | Fridays should be meatless in Lent. | Fridays should be meatless all year. (See #14) |
| 20 | I Go to Mass to receive the True Presence of Jesus at all costs. | I Go to Mass for the Sacrifice of Jesus re-presented on Calvary (whether or not I am prepared to receive Holy Communion.) |
| 21 | St. Cyril of Jerusalem promoted Holy Communion in the hand. | None of the Church Fathers promoted Holy Communion in the hand, not even St. Cyril of Jerusalem. |
| 22 | The Bible was written by holy men of God. | The Bible was written by God Himself in dictating to holy men. |
| 23 | Ex-Cathedra statements are the only infallible statements of the Catholic Church. | Every word of the Old Testament and New Testament is infallible, as well as most statements in Councils and all Ex-Cathedra statements. (See Providentissimus Deus by Leo XIII for this and the one above.) |
| 24 | The only requirement of marital chastity is a natural completion of the act towards the end. | Every marital act must be chaste, from start to finish. |
| 25 | Husband and wife must be “mutually submissive” (Eph 5:21.) | While the term “mutually submissive” is true, it must always be interpreted in light of the other three times that St. Paul says that wives must be submissive to their husbands (Eph 5:22, 1 Cor 11:3 and Col 3:18) |
| 26 | Loving one’s neighbor means open borders to immigrants. | St. Thomas Aquinas teaches on immigration: “Foreigners…were not at once admitted to citizenship, just as it was law with some nations that no one was deemed a citizen except after two or three generations.”—ST I-II 105.3 |
| 27 | The rich should give to the Church and the poor only when the giver can feels like it—and the recipient deserves it. | “A person’s superfluous income, that is, income which he does not need to sustain life fittingly and with dignity, is not left wholly to his own free determination… the rich are bound by a very grave precept to practice almsgiving, beneficence, and munificence.”—Pope Pius XI Quadragesimo Anno #50. |
| 28 | Female modesty is based primarily on the intention of her heart. | Female modesty has objective guidelines from Rome. |
| 29 | Aborted and miscarried babies go to heaven. | Aborted and miscarried babies go to limbo (a place of bliss where they are ministered to by the angels, but these children are deprived of the beatific vision.) |
| 30 | Suicide is a mortal sin only if there’s no psychological issues. | Suicide is a mortal sin on the same level of gravity as homicide. |
| 31 | A Pope can change dogma at will. | A Pope can not change dogma; he can only expound upon the Deposit of the Faith. |
| 32 | All sins are equally offensive to God. | 1 John 5 demarcates between venial sin and mortal sin. The Magisterium further specifies that a limited amount of mortal sins actually cry out to heaven for vengeance (eg sodomy) |
| 33 | We are all equal in heaven. | For the elect, there are very different levels of glory in heaven. (1 Cor 15) |
| 34 | My guardian angel was given to me to obey me. | My guardian angel was given to me that I might obey my angel. |
| 35 | The priesthood is primarily to bring the lay people the sacraments. | The priesthood glorifies God by living the three munera: teach, sanctify and govern. (Sanctify refers to the sacraments.) |
| 36 | The end justifies the means, especially for pastoral reasons: A bishop or priest may need to lie to the laity for the good of the diocese. Similarly, Catholic parents can go to their child’s wedding outside the Catholic Church “so as to not close any doors.” | The end does not justify the means in moral theology. An act must have a good object (deed), a good intention and good circumstances to be a good act. If one of these is missing, it is an immoral act. |
| 37 | Celibacy may be the cause of the scandals in the Church. | 80% of all child-molesting priests identify as homosexual. Only 3% of all priests are child-molestors. This is lower than any profession in the United States. This means: Chaste, heterosexual priests are the safest people in the Catholic Church to have around children. (See #6) |
| 38 | All souls will live forever in heaven. | Not only will the saved get their bodies back in union with their souls in heaven, but those condemned will get their bodies back in hell to be tortured forever both in spirit and in body. (Jn 5:29) |
| 39 | The greatest commandment is to love your neighbor. | “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment”—Jesus in Mt 22:37-38 |
| 40 | If a bishop is pro-life, he is very orthodox. | Many pagan tribes in the jungles would never kill an unborn child. A bishop should not be considered orthodox unless he adheres to the above 39 points which 99% of the clergy (except heretics) held from 100 AD to 1900AD. |
You might prefer many of the above points of Modernist “Catholicism” to Apostolic Catholicism. That is to be expected, as we all have a temptation to want Jesus without the cross. But Modernist “Catholicism” is really only Protestantism that has infiltrated the Church to the point that 99% of every Catholic (clergy and lay) in the West believes it. But it is not a religion that will last. Msgr. Bux said a few years ago in Rome: “The Church cannot change the faith and at the same time ask believers to remain faithful to it.”
The recent pagan idolatry accepted by the clergy of Rome shows how far we have gone. The frog is now fully boiled, to borrow from an overused analogy. So, we must get back to the small things to help us understand how the whole frog got boiled. As Jesus said, “One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much.”—Lk 16:10. What is the solution? One solution is to start reading books published before 1950. At least, get rid of any modernism in your reading lists. It’s not about being a paranoid heresy-hunter. Real Catholicism is not that hard to find. But we also have to be vigilant to not drink that 1% of poison that always seems to come in an otherwise healthy glass of orange juice that appears to be Catholicism in 2019. For me, it’s just easier to read books published before 1950.
If you think the last sentence sounds like paranoia on my part, just take a test of the above 40 points of orthodoxy and let me how many of heretical points of modernism above you hold to. Furthermore, just like my 15 Mortal Sins blog post, I’ll happily walk onto any street-corner, parish hall or YouTube channel with any layman, canonist, priest, bishop or Cardinal who would like to publicly debate me on any of the 40 above doctrinal topics actually being part of the Magisterium.