In last month's first installment, redacted and updated from several years ago, we focused on the Protestant Revolution as the Church's Agony in the Garden for our dear Lord Jesus Christ had to have agonized and still does that so much was discarded and desacralized for the sake of man's stubborn pride. We treated the main aspect of this with the sacking of the Holy Sacrifice by the Protestants, but they also needed a replacement and thus put all their marbles in the Scriptures - Sola Scriptura. In rejecting Catholic Tradition they have brain cramps that it was tradition which accounted for the Word of God being passed down and finally being compiled as the Bible, but not until the fourth century.
But then desperate men do desperate things like altering the God-inspired biblical meanings so expertly and divinely inspired in the translations by St. Jerome and deliberately going against the warning of St. John the Evangelist. Consider that this divine Revelation was passed down through the uninterrupted traditions of the Church until the Protestant Reformation, when certain passages didn't jell with those who thought they had a better idea than what God had inspired. For to change something then Protestants had to admit they were dismissing that which had always been regarded by the Church. For it is the Church, founded by Christ, who has authoritatively and infallibly declared that all the books compiled by St. Jerome belong to the canon of inspired Sacred Scripture. Again the argument then was the same as it is today: to accommodate the present age! Despite the fact that those prevaricators changed 1 and 2 Kings to 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Paralipomenon to 1 and 2 Chronicles, Canticles to Song of Solomon, they also eliminated several books from the Latin vulgate: Tobias, Judith, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch and both Books of the Machabees.
The Revival of the Malicious Machinations Against the Machabees
How convenient to drop those books, especially Machabees. How many realize the Book of Machabees chart the "end of the continual sacrifice" and "the abomination of desolation in the temple" in the Old Covenant foretold in Daniel? It's true, but then Protestants wouldn't know because they don't subscribe to the Bible that was perfectly acceptable to Christians from the fourth until the sixteenth century.
You see, men like Martin Luther and John Calvin and the rest were doing the same thing that the promoters of the new versions today and King Antiochus did in the Old Testament. It was this Judean ruler from Syria who, with the help of his high priests "set up the abominable idol of desolation upon the altar of God, and they built altars throughout all the cities of Juda round about...they sacrificed upon the altar of the idol that was over against the altar of God" (1 Machabees 57, 62). Read that carefully and compare it to the Novus Ordo tables which were set up 'over against the altar of God' until new temples could be built where the altar of God was totally expunged.
Just as this desecration and loss of true purpose didn't happen all at once in the Old Testament, so also it didn't happen overnight in the New Covenant circa the mid 20th century. As we have documented many times on these pages and many columns and articles in The DailyCatholic, especially in the first of these commentaries equating the Church's current predicament with the Sorrowful Mysteries, the erosion began at the Protestant Reformation when those who said they would not serve the Holy Church of Rome did the same as Antiochus, who "entered into the sanctuary, and took away the golden altar, and the candlestick of light, and all the vessels thereof, and the table of proposition, and the pouring vessels, and the vials, and the little mortars of gold, and the veil, and the crowns and the golden ornament that was before the temple: and he broke them all in pieces" (1 Machabees 1: 23). This is exactly what the Protestant sects did in denying the One True Church by changing rubrics and liturgies and forsaking traditions.
The Council of Trent buttressed the Church back up to even greater heights, restoring the purity of the altar as the place of the continual sacrifice and setting in stone forever the truths of the Faith, reaffirming the unchangeable doctrines of the Church founded by Christ. But the iconoclasm had already taken hold and over the centuries false religions cropped up (over 33,000 separate Protestant sects today), keeping some things but discarding many that identified a church as truly 'Catholic.' No matter how many columns sprung up - and the latest toll is 33,000 separate Protestant sects today - trying to choke and smother into oblivion the one solid Pillar, the latter - the Holy Roman Catholic Church - remained sturdy. The aim then, because 'misery loves company' and because the 'Pillar' remained the only obstacle to their total anti-Catholic ideology, was to penetrate the Pillar, and seek to corrode its fittings by casting aspersions on the dogmas and traditions, by condoning beliefs and behaviors that were solidly adverse to what Our Lord preached.
Their logic: by infiltrating the Church's ranks they might possibly implode her. It was the only way to gain entrance since no avalanche of barrages cast upon it for nearly 2000 years had been successful. Therefore, in order to effect this, the enemies of Holy Mother Church had to have operatives on the inside. Pope Leo XIII and especially Pope Saint Pius X did all they could to safeguard the Church from these 'fifth columnists' with such strong defenses as the Prayer to Saint Michael and the Oath Against Modernism, plus the unyielding encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis
But after St. Pius' death they made their move. Slowly but surely they bore into the Pillar, drilling liberal thoughts into young minds, permeating seminaries and universities. Errors spawned more errors. Men like Popes Pius XI and Pius XII tried to stave off their advances, but the die was cast. It was only a matter of time before the Pillar was compromised.
The Scourging at the Pillar
This permeation of modernism and error reached its saturation with the enablement of the liberal/progressive element by Angelo Roncalli/John XXIII when he ordered schemas be sent to not only all the bishops but to countless other 'consultors' who used this door to squeeze in and plant themselves squarely inside the Pillar. The Trojan Horse had been fashioned in the Rhineland regions of the progressive movement. Vatican II ennobled them to make their voices heard and become the 'new' thought. The modernists rose to positions where they preached that the Catholic Church had grown out of touch.
The truth is that holy Mother Church had not lost touch; rather the world had lost touch with common sense and wisdom. But the squeaky wheel gets the grease and the progressives were greasing the Pillar with a thick waxy substance of ambiguity, relativism and rationalism with a huge gob of compromise mixed in with outright heresy where one didn't recognize the surface of the Pillar.
With this transformation carried out through the 'window' of Vatican II, it was virtually easy for them to tie, through intimidation, and then scourge, through persecution and sabotage, the Mystical Body of Christ at the Pillar.
This then is the enactment of the second Sorrowful Mystery because it can be seen, in retrospect, how modernists came to power within, inflicting scars galore, stripping the mantle of sacrality by admitting into powerful decision making positions - periti - those who would rake the doctrines by introducing 'new' ideas that favored a humanistic agenda that could evolve through Modernistic, Hegelian manner to rewrite Catholicism to placate the world, not God.
An example of this corrosion, this laceration of the Pillar was the pompous scuttlebutt over The Solemn Prayers prayed on Good Friday. Already altered from it's divine purpose by Roncalli and further placated by Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II, it still wasn't enough for those belonging to the "Synagogue of satan." Blame it on Roncalli, Vatican II and the ridiculous heretical reforms that Wojtyla enabled as part of the pact of protecting his own agenda fashioned at Vatican II, that has encouraged one of the master baiters of orthodoxy, one Fr. Joseph Ratzinger, alias Benedict XVI , to stage a reformation of the reform in not only one-upping his conciliar predecessor, but in synthesizing ad nauseam his heretical Hegelian theories that take the entity he's in charge of to lengths and limits even the Protestants never dreamed of. Remember it was Ratzinger who was in the inner circle and one of the founding members of the confounding Consilio, a program and publication to assure that all his cohorts had forged would be carried out in increments so that when heresy became evident, Catholics would be so dumbed down and intimidated by political correctness that they would cower.
So far, sadly, their plot has been successful because so few understand the Faith and the role of the Church Militant.
The Good Friday Prayer for the Jews is only part of the innovations of the fallout of the Motu Mess Trap the hell-bent Hegelian Ratzweiler laid for those so duped by a few words of orthodoxy while ignoring the volumes of heretical words and actions he is famous for. Despite the infrangible truths echoed by true reliable Popes, most specifically Pope Leo XIII in Satis Cognitum where he asserts that if one deviated even one iota from Catholic truth, he would no longer be Catholic, it makes it an open and shut case on Ratzinger, Wojtyla, Montini and Roncalli, not to mention countless prelates (potentates if 'consecrated' after 1968) and priests (presbyters if 'ordained' after 1968) and those laity who know better but are so engulfed in papolotry that they'll backtrack and contradict themselves to save face. Yes, even those who should know better, those who had been his fiercest critics when he wore the red hat, have now, so sadly and tragically, thrown caution to the wind, mounting an unexplicatory heated campaign against those who can clearly see the reality of His Holiness Leo's words and the infallible decree of Pope Paul IV's during the formation of the Catholic Counter-Reformation with Cum Ex Apostolatus Officio. Griff Ruby offers an excellent polemic in defense of that bull, the greatest of obstacles to anti-sedevacantists in The Learning Curve, Interrupted.
It is so obvious. Yet, our friends in the Resist and Recognize Camp have selective hearing for fear they'll lose their precious base of readers and benefactors in the same manner the Society of St. Pius X continues to act as the proverbial chameleon saying one thing one day and conveying something totally different the next. No wonder there is so much confusion and insurrection within the SSPX in following the tactics of Bishop Bernard Fellay in what can best be described as "Fellay's Follies." Hmmm, sounds a lot like a larger organization, a new religion if you will that emerged from Vatican II. You know the one, the one that verifies Christ's assertion in St. Matthew 7: 15 about how a bad tree cannot produce good fruit and that we shall know them by their fruits.
If, over these past 50-plus years that hasn't become evident yet, then it's time to take your head out of the sand and realize how the lashes have stung deeply as more scourgers have gathered around the Pillar and proceeded to further decimate the Mystical Body unmercifully with the whips of worldliness. Though they tried to extemporize the flagellation as nothing more than a few flesh wounds, it truly went much deeper as the precious Blood sorrowfully and scandalously blanketed the secular stone floor of neoism and, for souls, is much more vivid than the scenes portrayed in the masterful The Passion of The Christ.
And so, thanks to the first of the dreaded phrases that has haunted holy Mother Church for well over half a century - 'aggiorimento' - we can look back on this saturation of 'new' ideology and realize the very same thing that happened to the people of Judas Machabeus a century and a half before the birth of the Savior, has happened today. Consider 1 Machabees 1: 40,
"And the inhabitants of Jerusalem fled away by reason of them, and the city was made the habitation of strangers, and she became a stranger to her own seed, and her children forsook her."
Want more? How about the following verses through verse 49:
"Her sanctuary was desolate like a wilderness, her festival days were turned into mourning, her sabbaths into reproach, her honors were brought to nothing. Her dishonor was increased according to her glory, and her excellency was turned into mourning. And king Antiochus wrote to all his kingdom, that all the people should be one: and every one should leave his own law. And all nations consented, according to the word of king Antiochus. And many of Israel consented to his service, and they sacrificed to idols, and profaned the sabbath. And the king sent letters by the hands of messengers to Jerusalem and to all the cities of Juda; that they should follow the law of the nations of the earth. And should forbid holocausts and sacrifices, and atonements to be made in the temple of God. And should prohibit the sabbath, and the festival days to be celebrated. And he commanded the holy places to be profaned, and the holy people of Israel."
If all of this sounds eerily familiar, then you realize the decimation and devastation caused by the reforms of Vatican II that created the counterfeit church of conciliarism. Look who are the ones who have called for 'all the people should be one.' The post-conciliar antipopes - from Roncalli to Ratzinger. Wojtyla's two venues in Assisi was definite proof of this where crucifixes and those 'festival days to be celebrated' were forbidden for one reason - so as not to 'offend' non-Catholics! Yet they were allowed to 'sacrifice to idols' from Buddha to Hindus to Muslim to what-not! And what Ratzinger has carried on by calling a Buddhist mountain "sacred", by participating in Jewish and Muslim ceremonies, something condemned by holy Mother Church in Pope Pius XI's encyclical Mortalium Animos
Tell me I am wrong. Tell me we are not living in these times the very same persecution, loss of faith, and deprivation of the continual sacrifice which Judas Macchabeus' people endured in the Old. Those who do not learn from history are destined to repeat it. It's all playing out according to the book.
Ashes to Ashes
And where is 'Papa' Roncalli who unleashed and empowered and allowed the aberrations that have been allowed to perpetuate? Lying beneath a ton of wax, a very questionable process that would foist on the faithful that his body is incorrupt. Just more of the flagellation at the Pillar. Where are the rest of the periti from the international gathering that hoodwinked the world from 1962 to 1965? Those who are not in high positions - the highest positions of power within the counterfeit church of conciliarism, are deep in the ground - mere ashes. The lifeless bodies of others were made instant ashes through the compromise of cremation - another aberration that was allowed into the conciliar mindset. The bottom line is no one will get out of this world alive. Only One ever did, and He had to die first. The path to Calvary passed through the room of the pillar where Christ was strapped and lashed with the cruel, crude thorns of iron at the end of the roughly fashioned whips. Those wielding the straps had little mercy for the One they were scourging. Yet that same Victim had nothing but love for His persecutors, even to forgiving them from the Cross.
And how did they express their gratitude? By ignoring His teachings and stubbornly binding His Mystical Body to the Pillar and whipping Him anew. Don't they understand that the words pronounced on Ash Wednesday apply to them as well? Do they not realize that all the power and influence they seek to gain in temporal goals mean nothing in the final scene? God cares naught for titles or worldly achievements, only for those who remained loyal to His Commandments and His holy Church - His spotless Mystical Bride. She has been so defiled by those out to scourge her, and yet, unlike her attackers, she will emerge undefiled in the heavenly court for the "gates of hell shall not prevail against it" (Matthew 16: 18). Those who have perpetrated this scourging with the first lashes applied on January 25, 1959 - and the repeated flogging since then - must not be sensitive to how they harm Him so with their aberrant attitude that contradicts what His Bride has always taught.
While the Mystical Body of Christ may be scourged - some thinking beyond recognition - the soot and spiritual squalor piling up on the Pillar will someday be whisked away as merely useless ashes. The Lenten message of Ash Wednesday is a perfect and necessary reminder of this, as Genesis 3: 19 affirms, "into dust thou shalt return." So it's 'dust or bust' time! We need to dust off our souls and cling with Christ's Mystical Body to the Pillar of grace. The only way to do that is to adhere to the Truths and Traditions of holy Mother Church without exception, with no concession whatsoever to the counterfeit church of conciliarism.
I would respectfully recommend to those in the Resist and Recognize camps to dust off the cobwebs of common sense and adhere to the teachings contained in the Sacred Deposit of the Faith; if we don't realize the wisdom and sanctity of those whose infallible teachings preceded Vatican II and the Scourging at the Pillar, then we're definitely in danger - big trouble! We all need to see that no matter how much we might have played an unwitting part in aiding and abetting the scourging to this point, no matter how much we may have stunk up our own lives to this point, like the Grotto at Lourdes our souls can be transformed into a refreshing, neverending fonts of graces if we do not turn our backs on the truth. The longer we hesitate, the longer we wait for the "pope" to do something, for God to make it all okay without our responsibility as members of the Church Militant, the more the poison will penetrate. Just remember His Holiness Leo's words in Satis Cognitum:
"The Church, founded on these principles and mindful of her office, has done nothing with greater zeal and endeavour than she has displayed in guarding the integrity of the faith. Hence she regarded as rebels and expelled from the ranks of her children all who held beliefs on any point of doctrine different from her own. The Arians, the Montanists, the Novatians, the Quartodecimans, the Eutychians, did not certainly reject all Catholic doctrine: they abandoned only a certain portion of it. Still who does not know that they were declared heretics and banished from the bosom of the Church? In like manner were condemned all authors of heretical tenets who followed them in subsequent ages. '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'."
Realize that the longer the poison of Modernism, ecumenism, universal salvation, scandal, sexual-mores-gone-awry, humanism and Hegelianism is allowed to fester, the more flecks of finite, faulty fungus will just attach itself to the barnacles of banality and produce more putrid, deadly parasites that eat away at the foundations of the Pillar! It's the deadly fetid, rancid bacteria that kills souls. You know the stench of the species: The kind of rot that smells to high Heaven!
The Kind of Rot That Stinks to High Heaven! 
