Hello, and welcome to part 2 of episode 13 of Foundations Restored.
In this final segment we follow the path of destruction of the Cartesian-Darwinian narrative
in the domain of theology.
We pick up our discussion by recalling that by the 1870s opposition to traditional Catholic
doctrine had arisen and threatened to boost rationalism to victory in the area of biblical
scholarship.
The opposition was grounded in faith and evolution, which was itself an extension of rationalism
and gradualism into the field of biology.
We saw that in 1873 the astute radical critic David Strauss predicted that Darwinism, when
added to the critical methods of rationalist scholars, would defeat Christianity.
Given the stakes, it was clear to the magisterium that the errors of the day needed to be confronted.
The task fell to Pope Leo XIII, who voiced the teaching of the Church regarding sacred
scripture in the 1893 encyclical Providentissimus Deus.
Let's take a closer look.
With this background of the momentum achieved by the negative critics in the late 1800s,
it is now clear why Pope Leo XIII opened the great encyclical Providentissimus Deus with
these words.
We have to meet the rationalists, true children and inheritors of the older heretics who have
rejected even the scraps and remnants of Christian belief.
They deny that there is any such thing as revelation or inspiration or holy scripture
at all.
They see, instead, only the forgeries and falsehoods of men.
Unfortunately, the encyclical had limited impact due to the momentum of rationalism
and evolutionism that had already permeated all domains of knowledge, but especially theology.
And so once more, in the late 1800s, negative biblical scholars were led deeper into error
by rationalist philosophers who had no intention of being obedient to the magisterium and in
many cases despised Christianity.
The issue for philosophers after 1859 was to find meaning in the Cartesian-Darwinian
world in which the Christian faith had been rejected.
As the most influential philosopher writing after the origin of species, Nietzsche declared
in the Gay Science,
You and I, but how have we done this?
How were we able to drink up the sea?
Whither are we moving now?
Do we not feel the breath of empty space?
Has it not become colder?
God is dead, and we have killed him.
How shall we, the murderers of all murderers, comfort ourselves?
What was holiest and most powerful of all has bled to death under our knives.
Must not we ourselves become gods simply to seem worthy of it?
Here the madman fell silent and looked again.
And they too were silent and stared at him in astonishment.
At last he threw his lantern on the ground and it broke and went out.
I come too early, he said.
My time has not come yet.
This tremendous event is still on its way.
It has not yet reached the heirs of man, and yet they have done it themselves.
Believing the Christian god to be a myth, Nietzsche searched for meaning and wrote,
That my life has no aim is evident even from the accidental nature of its origin.
That I can posit an aim for myself is another matter.
He concluded in the Antichrist that life's aim should be the
Accumulation of forces for power.
Where the will to power is lacking, there is decline.
The largest obstacle to such ambitions, he reasoned, was Christianity.
The religion of pity, which crosses the law of development, which is the law of selection.
It preserves what is ripe for destruction.
It defends those who have been disinherited and condemned by life.
One of Nietzsche's great admirers was Adolf Hitler, who acted out the philosophy on the
world stage until his death by suicide in 1945.
Fifty-six years after Nietzsche, the man at war with God had gone insane.
In England, things took a different turn.
As chronicled in the book, The Fabians, after 1859,
Social stresses were accompanied by severe psychological strains.
The new sciences, especially Darwin's evolutionary doctrine, had undermined the evangelical faith
which had energized the Victorian middle classes.
Since revealed religion was no longer credible, they were driven to seek alternative intellectual
systems around which their lives could be structured.
There are many about us, W.H. Malick pointedly remarked in 1878,
though they never confess their pain, whose hearts are aching for the God they no longer believe in.
In the political realm, the search for meaning soon focused on improving the life of the
common man through political reform.
One letter written to the poor in 1883 explained,
We have neglected you, wronged you, sinned against you grievously.
If you will forgive us, we will devote our lives to your service.
The result was the rise of socialism.
Robert H. Bork explains the ongoing link between the loss of faith and the embracing of socialism
in the Western world.
Intellectuals characteristically display a strong desire for meaning in life, and for
them, meaning requires transcendent principles and universalistic ideals.
These qualities were once conferred by religion, but religion is not an option for intellectuals.
The only alternative is the utopian outlook of the left.
Once the hardcore varieties of the left were put out of favor by World War II and the Cold War,
the intelligentsia turned to the softer and eclectic socialism of modern liberalism.
The various attitudes expressed in modern liberalism add up to an overarching sentiment
that must, for the time being, make due for a more explicit utopian vision.
Socialism is, of course, the only available secular utopian vision of our time.
In the late 1800s, the new focus of mankind's energies in the political realm reflected
a more general view that knowledge and science were the source of all truth and that science
would lead mankind to new and greater heights now that traditional Christianity had been discarded.
This view is called modernism, and modernism was adopted by many philosophers, including
those behind the emergence of humanism, which was discussed in episode 12.
Since biblical scholars had long followed the path of destruction blazed by the rationalistic
philosophers, it was inevitable that modernism would influence the domain of theology.
This occurred in the Catholic Church primarily through the 1898-1902 writings of Fr. Alfred
Loézzi, who would be excommunicated in 1908.
A formal pupil of the negative French critic, Renaud, Loézzi stated,
The first eleven chapters of Genesis do not contain a reliable account of the beginnings
of mankind.
At the present hour, the Church is an obstacle to the intellectual development of humanity.
To live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.
Such is the law of all real development in humanity.
Such is also the law of religious institutions.
There is no more reason for admitting the immorality of men than that of fleas, ants,
snakes, and donkeys.
All are earth's vermin, proceeding from it, following the progress of evolution.
It is naive and prideful for man to imagine that he is entitled to special attention.
To combat modernism, several unprecedented steps were taken by the Church.
In 1902, Pope Leo XIII created the Pontifical Biblical Commission, the PBC, so that scripture
would be preserved intact and protected from error and rash opinions.
In 1907, Pope Saint Pius X decreed that all are bound to submit to the decisions of the
PBC, current and future, or else be guilty of grave sin.
The PBC was part of the ordinary magisterium until after Vatican II.
Important PBC statements refuting three centuries of rationalistic claims confirmed the mosaic
authorship of the Pentateuch, declared Genesis to be an account of true history, and confirmed
the special creation of man and the formation of the first woman from the first man.
In 1907, modernism was condemned by Pope Saint Pius X in Pascindi Domenici Gregis.
Describing the heresy, he stated that the modernists
lay down the general principle that in a living religion, everything is subject to change.
To the laws of evolution, everything is subject.
Dogma, church, worship, the books we revere as sacred, even faith itself.
Having laid down this law of evolution, the modernists themselves teach us how it works out.
Pope Saint Pius X also warned that
The partisans of error are to be sought not only among the Church's open enemies.
They lie hid in her very bosom.
We allude to many who belong to the Catholic laity
and to many who belong to the priesthood itself,
who, feigning a love for the Church, lacking the firm protection of philosophy and theology,
vaunt themselves as reformers of the Church,
and forming more boldly into line attack, assail all that is most sacred in the work of Christ,
not sparing even the person of the divine Redeemer, whom, with sacrilegious daring,
they reduce to a simple, mere man.
And now, can anybody be surprised that we should define it as the synthesis of all heresies?
Their system means the destruction not of the Catholic religion alone, but of all religion.
Also, in 1907, Pope Saint Pius X issued La mentabile sane,
which condemned 65 modernist errors and warned that in the name of higher knowledge,
modernists are looking for that progress of dogmas,
which is, in reality, nothing but the corruption of dogmas.
Condemned errors included claims that
11. Divine inspiration does not extend to all of sacred scripture
so that it renders its parts, each and every one, free from every error.
57. The Church has shown that she is hostile to the progress of the natural and theological sciences.
58. Truth is no more immutable than man himself, since it evolved with him.
65. Modern Catholicism can be reconciled with true science
only if it is transformed into a non-dogmatic Christianity.
In 1910, Pope Pius X required all clergy and professors in Catholic institutions
to take the oath against modernism, which included the words
I sincerely hold that the doctrine of the faith was handed down to us from the apostles
through the Orthodox Fathers in exactly the same meaning and always in the same purport.
Therefore, I entirely reject the heretical misrepresentation
that dogmas evolve and change from one meaning to another.
The action of Pope Pius X helped to stem modernism,
but the heresy was not stamped out. It only retreated into the shadows
because biblical criticism was not sufficiently cleansed from the Cartesian-Darwinian narrative.
Rationalist Catholic and Protestant scholars, confident that they knew more than Church authorities,
continued to develop techniques and approaches to study sacred scripture that,
taken to their logical conclusions, were incompatible with fundamental Catholic teaching.
One of the leading scholars of the 20th century was Rudolf Bultmann, who was linked to form criticism,
which involves a determination of the type of literature in the books of scripture.
While form criticism can be useful, Bultmann and others began with the assumption that the
gospel accounts are not historical, but are unreliable composites of many different writings
that reflect the evolution of the early Church. Bultmann resolved that nothing in the Gospels
could be attributed to Jesus with certainty, based on the underlying assumption that human nature is
immune from the interference of supernatural powers, and that man's knowledge and mastery of
the world have advanced to such an extent through science and technology that it is no longer
possible for anyone seriously to hold the New Testament view of the world.
Skepticism was the result. Bultmann's work marked the beginning of what is called the
no-quest period, wherein rationalist scholars concluded that we can never know the Jesus of history.
Closely related is redaction criticism, in which the claimed New Testament writers are often seen
merely as editors or redactors who combined multiple documents. Consequently, the view of
scriptural inerrancy is often sacrificed at the altar of the negative critic's pride and desire
for professional relevance. Luke Timothy Johnson explains how rationalism can easily lead scholars
employing redaction into gross error. In the case of 2 Corinthians, the detection of
seams has led to the hypothesis of as many as five source letters written by Paul,
which were later stitched together by an editor to create our present document.
Not only does 2 Corinthians now show Paul at battle with opponents, but it can reveal the
stages of that conflict. If the sources, which by now have become separate letters, can be arranged
in the proper chronological sequence, we actually have something that looks very much like real
history. But is it genuine history? Of course not. There is no new evidence and there are no controls.
There is only imagination hitched to an obsessive need, somehow, anyhow, to do history.
The same sort of analysis has been applied to the Gospels through redaction criticism.
Following the strong response to modernism, many Catholic scholars looked with envy as their
Protestant counterparts performed biblical criticism with complete freedom and they
looked for the opportunity to break free of the shackles placed upon them by the Magisterium.
Their opening occurred in 1955 as the result of a book review in a scholarly journal that was
attributed to two Pontifical Biblical Commission members, even though the review was only initialed
and the authors were not clearly identified. Although the piece was far from an official statement and while the authorship still remains in question,
Catholic biblical critics seized upon the following wording to declare that they once
more had complete freedom in biblical studies and that the previous PBC decrees were abrogated.
Today we can hardly picture the position of Catholic scholars at the turn of the century
or the dangers that threatened Catholic teaching on scripture or its inspiration on the part of
liberal and rationalistic criticism. Controversies have been peacefully settled and many problems
emerge in an entirely new light so that it is easy enough for us to smile at the narrowness
and constraint which prevailed 50 years ago.
Neo-modernist scholars emerged from the shadows on the eve of Vatican II.
They did not adhere to all modernist errors, but they maintained evolutionary and rationalistic
views impacting their view of sacred scripture and their belief that the Church must evolve to
remain relevant. Consequently, even though Pope Saint John XXIII declared that the greatest
concern of the Ecumenical Council is that the sacred deposit of Christian doctrine should be
guarded, that the Church not depart from the sacred patrimony of truth received from the
Fathers, and that it must cling to all the teachings of the Church in their entirety and
preciseness, especially those of Trent in Vatican I, it was inevitable that Vatican II and the
aftermath would be problematic to the degree that Church leaders were influenced by Neo-modernism.
As it turned out, this influence was dramatic.
Many faithful Catholic priests and scholars who have studied the promulgated documents of Vatican II
have concluded that while the documents do not contain formal error and are of benefit when
interpreted in the light of previous Church teaching, the documents were worded to allow
the Neo-modernists to pursue their agenda after the Council in areas such as the denial of
scriptural inerrancy, the liturgy, papal primacy, and pursuit of Christian unity at the cost of
virtually any sacrifice of Catholic doctrine. While Pope Paul VI at first refused to accept
the existence of such a subversive strategy, when proof was shown to him in November 1964,
he broke down and wept. We now provide some background.
When Vatican II was announced, work was begun on the preparatory documents, or schemas,
that were initial drafts of what were intended to become the Council constitutions and decrees.
Some 871 scholars worked for more than two years to prepare the schemas, which were true to Pope
John's intent to preserve traditional doctrine. During this time, however, a group of bishops and
their theologian advisors, called Pariti, began strategizing to radically change the Council's
direction. This group is commonly called the Northern Alliance or European Alliance because
it consisted largely of bishops and Pariti from Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands,
and Switzerland. While bishops faithful to the stated intent of Vatican II also had Pariti, it
was not until the third session that these bishops became fully aware of the Northern Alliance's aims.
The Northern Alliance successfully placed members in key Council positions, and two weeks into the
first session, it convinced Pope St. John XXIII that the first four preparatory schema should be
rejected. This set the pattern for the entire Council. Who were the Pariti of the Northern
Alliance? We will briefly profile three of these men. Father Karl Rahner was an immensely influential
Catholic scholar who was a Pariti for Cardinal Franz König of Austria during Vatican II.
As did David Strauss a century before, Rahner believed that scripture contains many myths
that must be discarded if religion was to remain meaningful. He wrote,
The theology of the future must be a demythologizing theology. A demythologizing
theology well understood must realize that propositions such as, there are three persons
and one God, God sent his son into the world, we are saved by the blood of Jesus Christ,
are purely and simply incomprehensible for modern man if they remain in the ancient style of
theology and of the proclamation, the point of departure and the arrival point of the Christian
statement. They make the same impression as the pure mythology in a religion of times past.
Father Rahner was a leading dissenter against Humanae Vitae and he openly recommended the
removal of any reference to inerrancy in the Vatican II document Dei Verbum. Such influence
was painfully apparent during the council when on October 2nd, 1964, Cardinal König declared
before the council that sacred scripture contained errors of science and history
even though this statement was a material heresy and his examples have been easily refuted.
Father Hans Kuhn was a Swiss theologian teaching in Germany. As the first session neared its end,
he declared to the press that what had once been the dream of an avant-garde group in the church
had spread and permeated the entire atmosphere of the church due to the council. He would later
write that the meaning of sacred scripture and theological conclusions can never again be based on
Following Vatican II, his unorthodox views increasingly came to light and resulted in an
order to appear in Rome. He refused and in 1979, he was stripped of his authority to teach as a
Catholic. He also refused to teach as a Christian in Rome. He refused to teach as a Christian in
Rome. He refused to teach as a Christian in Rome. He refused to teach as a Christian in Rome.
In 1979, he was stripped of his authority to teach as a Catholic theologian.
Father Edward Schillebeck was a leading theologian for the bishops of the Netherlands and the primary
author of the letter to Pope John XXIII that prompted the rejection of key preparatory schema.
Following Vatican II, Father Schillebeck's views were set forth in what is called the Dutch
Catechism, published in 1965, although the bishops of the Netherlands were instructed by Rome not to
publish the book due to problematic content, the bishops published nevertheless, conceding to add
only a short compendium that was sold separately. The Dutch Catechism sold hundreds of thousands of
copies and was translated into multiple languages. What did the Dutch Catechism contain that was so
jealously guarded by the disobedient bishops of the Netherlands? The book's sleeve declares,
The greatest overall achievement of the Second Vatican Council was its conscious proclamation
of the fact that Christianity is an adult religion that can be adequately understood
and lived by those who have come of age. And exactly what modern insight was the text
referring to? The answer is found in the opening pages. The growing child puts question after
question. The grown man still keeps on putting questions. Who am I? What is man? What is the
meaning of life? Let us proceed with our search. Sometimes the meaning of a phenomenon is revealed
when we examine its beginnings. How did our life begin? Where does it come from? What of the origin
of mankind? Let us look at our past. The skulls and bones that have been found tell us something
that we had not known. Half a million years ago, a more primitive type can be vaguely discerned.
The Australopithecus, an ape-like being. One thing only stands out clearer and clearer.
The marvelous fact that a species of animal mounts a long, slow line of evolution to reach
us. The life in my body comes from the beasts. This is something that many people once found
shocking. Up to very recently, the Bible was regarded too much as a sort of scientific manual.
The difficulty was solved by a better understanding of the Bible. And richer and richer finds showed
still more clearly the great drama of the spine that slowly straightened up and the skull that
took on a greater volume as the beast developed into man. All this seems to point to some sort
of answer. Life has a direction and some sort of meaning. But the answer is not a clear one.
The origin of man lies outside our grasp. False ideas have consequences. And in the aftermath
of Vatican II and the publication of the Dutch Catechism, the Catholic faith in the Netherlands
effectively died. The nation that accounted for 11% of all Catholic missionaries prior to World
War II saw church attendance fall from 65% in 1976 to 1.2% by 2006. New ordinations into the
priesthood fell from 420 in 1957 to 0 in 1971, after a year in which 243 priests had left their
vocation and 271 had died. Why did this occur? Very simply, because many priests and laity of
the Netherlands no longer believed the Catholic faith to be true. Tragically, the impact of
Neo-Modernism, which was built upon the lies of Descartes and Darwin, was not restricted to the
Netherlands or confined to the Dutch Catechism. In Creation Rediscovered, Gerald J. Keane explains.
In North America alone, some 10,000 priests and 50,000 nuns left their vocations in the 10 years
between 1966 and 1976, marking an unprecedented collapse of faith within the Catholic Church.
The impact made by Modernism is not hard to discern, and neither is the related origins
confusion. The Modernist cancer still continues to flourish, with strong emphasis on subjective
feelings and experiential catechetics, and it is hard to see how the current descent can be
effectively countered until the credibility of the Genesis account is restored. Meanwhile, the number
of practicing Catholics continues to dwindle, and large numbers of the young are being denied
their right to knowledge of truth about doctrine. In 1984, Cardinal Ratzinger, the future Pope
Benedict XVI, commented about Vatican II. The results of the Council seemed to cruelly
contradict the expectations everybody had. It was expected to produce a leap forward,
but we have been confronted instead with a continuing process of decay that has gone on
largely on the basis of appeals to the Council, and has thus helped to discredit the Council.
It is undeniable that this period has been decidedly unfavorable for the Catholic Church.
Likewise, Pope Paul VI stated in 1972. Satan's smoke has made its way into the temple of God
through some crack. Doubt has entered our consciences, and it entered through windows
that ought to be open to light. People thought that after Vatican II, a day of sunshine would
come for the history of the Church. There came, on the contrary, a day of uncertainty.
There has been the intervention of a hostile power. His name is the Devil.
Any Catholic who reads the well-documented accounts of what occurred at Vatican II
will clearly see that the Council was influenced by bishops and advisers who wanted to force
change upon the Church. And yet, despite the certainty of this influence, no one seems to
be able to stop the decay. The reason is that few have identified the underlying and pre-existing
view which still needs to be adequately denounced. The pre-existing view is that the Council
is the pre-existing and lingering view is the Cartesian-Darwinian narrative, which took the
form of Neo-Modernism after the Modernist condemnation in 1907. And while many well-known
Catholic instructors and apologists who accept Darwinism or other parts of the narrative are
quick to assure audiences that all is well in the Church, the ongoing decay caused by Neo-Modernist
scholars writing after the Council is readily apparent. Father Raymond Brown, whose effect on
Catholic academics in North America has simply been immense, and who has been called the most
renowned American biblical scholar since Vatican II and an outspoken partisan of restricted
inerrancy, has sown numerous seeds of doubt through writings such as the following.
Before his death, did Jesus actually utter the words,
do this in commemoration of me, missing in Matthew's and Mark's account of the Last Supper?
Or is that a post-resurrectional interpretation of the implication of his Last Supper,
based upon the Eucharistic practice of the primitive churches known to Luke,
2219, and Paul, 1 Corinthians 1125? These questions are best answered not by
citing Church doctrine phrased by people who were neither asking nor answering them,
but by studying the Gospels historically and seeking to pierce behind the professions of
the early faith to the circumstances of Jesus's ministry and his worldview.
Here, Brown employs a common Neo-Modernist strategy of asking questions that lead the
reader to embrace a rationalistic position. He is also deliberately vague, using terms such as
post-resurrectional interpretation to hide his clear break from Catholic teaching.
But to be clear, Brown is suggesting that Jesus's command instituting the Holy Eucharist
was not an historical reality, but was created by Luke and Paul and merely reflected the symbolic
practice of the early church. Then imitating the deist John Tolland, Brown dismisses the early
church and the church fathers. Another example of Neo-Modernist influence on mainstream catechesis
is found in the much-publicized youth catechism called UCAT, which contains the following question
and answer. Question. How can sacred scripture be truth if not everything in it is right?
Answer. The Bible is not meant to convey precise historical information or scientific findings to
us. Moreover, the authors were children of their time. They shared the cultural ideas of the world
around them and often were also dominated by its errors. Here again, we see the Neo-Modernist
strategy of leading readers toward a heretical position without directly expressing the heresy
of limited inerrancy. Another example comes from a statement of the U.S. Conference of Catholic
Bishops that leverages the Abbot translation of Dei Verbum, even though this translation has long
been recognized as misleading. Vatican II says that the books of scripture must be acknowledged
as teaching firmly, faithfully, and without error that truth which God wanted put into the sacred
writings for the sake of our salvation. Dei Verbum 11. What is important is the qualification
of that truth with for the sake of our salvation. Finally, consider the following passages taken
from the 1990 Jerome Biblical Commentary. Did Jesus indicate how he understood his
possible death? Here especially one must beware of prophecies after the fact,
retrojected into the life of Jesus. There is no reason to think that Jesus expected a violent
end from the beginning of his ministry. The Last Supper was a pledge that, despite the apparent
failure of his mission, God would vindicate Jesus even beyond death and bring him and his followers
to the eschatological banquet. Also disputed is whether the Barabbas incident and the supposed
custom underlying it are historical or the creation of Christian tradition. The edifying
repentance of the good thief is probably Lucan redaction. The words from the cross, including
the so-called cry of dereliction, may come from later Christian interpretation of Christ's death.
The placing of Jesus' mother and the beloved disciple at the cross may be Johannine symbolism.
The account of setting a guard at the sealed tomb must be judged at later creation of Jewish
Christian debates. To be clear, phrases such as prophecies after the fact, the creation of
Christian tradition, and Lucan redaction all suggest that the gospel narratives are not
historically accurate or trustworthy, let alone inerrant. The ongoing effects of negative criticism
were acknowledged by Cardinal Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI, who observed that some
methods of higher criticism, quote, treat the biblical text itself as an entirely worldly
reality according to natural scientific methods, unquote. He wrote that what is needed is a
critical look at the exegetical landscape. Scientific exegesis must recognize the philosophical
element present in a great number of its ground rules, and it must then reconsider the results
which are based on these rules. In 1993, Pope John Paul II spoke highly of the contribution that
historical criticism can make upon the release of the PBC document, the interpretation of the Bible
in the Church. However, the PBC document itself cautions that the historical critical method
must be conscious of its limits, as well as of the dangers to which it is exposed,
and must be free of a rationalism which is opposed to the faith or based on an atheistic
materialism. In the introduction, Cardinal Ratzinger also spoke of, quote-unquote,
hidden dangers of the historical method, which reinforced Pope John Paul II's statement
that the Church is not afraid of scientific criticism. She distrusts only preconceived
opinions that claim to be based on science, but which in reality cause science to depart
from its domain. Unfortunately, the ongoing doubt caused by the Cartesian-Darwinian narrative
means that much of biblical scholarship will continue to be destructive.
More generally, any domain of knowledge that adopts the false and rationalistic presuppositions
of the Cartesian-Darwinian narrative slips onto a death spiral. In secular philosophy,
the death occurred once modernism was widely seen as a failure due to the casualties of war
during the 20th century. In its place came postmodernism, the view that there is no truth
and that every view is equally valid and must be tolerated. Only intolerance cannot be tolerated.
If there is no truth, then there is no use searching for it, using one's reason.
And this view marks the effective death of secular philosophy.
In the domain of theology, neo-modernism is also a death sentence, and the evidence is there for
all to see. Tens of millions of former believers now live as practical atheists as Catholic churches
are being torn down or sold and converted into pubs and mosques. For those who remain in the
Catholic Church, there has emerged the view that God is so loving and merciful as to be indifferent
to sin, that all behaviors once viewed as immoral must be re-evaluated, including the meaning of
marriage. After all, so neo-modernists in the Church explain, the institution of marriage was
based on a crude understanding of Genesis' true history, a view no longer accepted by the mature
and well-educated who have reasoned through the implications of Darwin and Descartes.
In place of traditional doctrine and the call for a life of holiness and sacrifice
has come a near total focus on social justice. While living the Catholic faith does, indeed,
entail an obligation to assist the poor and the downtrodden, the near exclusive focus on social
justice in many quarters is a clear indication that, as with the English in Darwin's time, many
clergy and lay Catholics are trying to fill the void left by a God they no longer believe in.
This trend is not sustainable. It is not a positive development and, indeed, it signals an
unprecedented collapse of the Catholic faith. Current conditions will never lead to a renewed
Catholic faith at the global level, no matter how many times the words,
a new springtime, are repeated. Little wonder, then, that the Gospel of Saint Luke asks,
but yet, when the Son of Man cometh, shall he find, think you, faith on earth?
We cannot fail to mention the impact of neo-modernism on the clergy sex abuse scandal
that appears to be widespread and extend well into the Catholic hierarchy.
While many in the Catholic media have downplayed the crisis in the wake of the 2018 Pennsylvania
Attorney General report, it is clear that the crisis is real and that our duty as Catholics
is to honestly answer the question, how could this have happened? How could a culture of sex
abuse at the hands of priests, many of whom are homosexual, have arisen in the first place,
and why was the culture of abuse protected by many in authority? I believe that the abuse scandal
can only be adequately explained by understanding the crisis of faith among even the clergy that
resulted from the Cartesian-Darwinian narrative, the modernist heresy, and now neo-modernism.
If this seems far-fetched, imagine yourself as a young Catholic man who feels called to the
priesthood, only to go off to a Catholic seminary and learn that modern methods of historical
criticism and the evolutionary view of the world have apparently showed the orthodox teachings of
the church to be untrue. With this new view, everything goes. Scriptural inerrancy, the
teachings of the fathers, even magisterial pronouncements that cannot survive the scalpel
of the negative higher critics. Faced with these cold, hard facts, the seminary student has a
choice to make. Many leave the priesthood, and who could blame them? After all, why devote one's life
to a faith that apparently is not true? Others resolve to remain in the priesthood, hoping that
their faith can survive, or that at least faith in something worthy of one's devotion emerges.
What often emerges from the continued studies is the mindset that the Catholic church must
continue to evolve and change its teachings so that it can be relevant in the modern world
and appeal to those outside the church. For those seminary students who accept this
characteristic modernistic viewpoint, the loss of the true Catholic faith has additional
consequences, as many no longer have the spiritual strength to withstand temptation
and sins of the flesh. Within the confines of some seminaries, these sins of the flesh are
tolerated, and a culture of acceptance permeates priestly formation. Since immoral sexual practices
are often addictive, these sins may accompany the priest to parish assignments where scandals arise
but are normally silenced through payouts to victims. When a case of abuse does come to light,
the laity and general population are so shocked that they fail to reflect on what could have led
to such a culture among clergy, and so the underlying cause of neo-modernism and the
Cardesian-Darwinian narrative is never considered. As a socio-economist who studies population trends,
it seems obvious that the dramatic reduction in the number of practicing Catholics since
World War II will continue as long as the neo-modernist influence remains in the church.
How it must grieve and anger our Lord to see the current condition of His bride,
and yet very few Catholics seem interested in finding the underlying cause of the current
crisis. The roots of the crisis are Darwinism and what was likely a demonic dream experienced by
Descartes in 1619 that gave birth to the lie that God does not intervene in the world. Catholic
philosopher Jacques Maritain comes to a similar conclusion regarding the origin of Descartes'
philosophy. The most deep-seated characteristic of the Cartesian reform is, more than anything else
in my opinion, one of disjunction and rupture. St. Thomas brings together, Descartes cleaves and
separates, and this in the most violently dogmatic way. What was it that gave Descartes the strength
to break with an age-long tradition? In other words, what was the central intuition which must
have contained all the energies of the Cartesian revolution? The notes made by the philosopher in
his youth enable us to answer that question. This vital and spiritual germ was the revelation of the
admirable science that Descartes received at the age of 23 during that famous dream of the 10th of
November 1619, the dream he regarded as being entirely supernatural and which decided his
philosophical vocation. It is very embarrassing for modern rationalism to have been born in a
dream, and at that, in a dream which a genius that had for several days past been exciting enthusiasm
in him had predicted to the philosopher before he had retired to his bed. However, that is the fact.
I believe it is to these brave men and women that Pope Paul VI referred when he predicted in 1976
that in the future the Catholic Church would be reduced to, quote, a handful of defeated men, unquote.
And so the issue facing every viewer is whether you, like those associated with the Kolbe Center
and Restoring Truth Ministries, believe that the Catholic faith is still worth fighting for.
Will you stand for truth, or will you walk away from this desperate struggle, resolving that it
is not your fight and that the opposition is too entrenched to be overcome? Restoring truth and
allowing the full light to emanate from the true Catholic doctrine of origins and God's inerrant
word will not be easy, but it has never been more important because Neo-Modernism is so ingrained
and the days have grown so dark. What type of dedication will be required to restore the truth?
Relying on the words of Saint John Chrysostom, Pope Leo XIII gave us the answer in Providentissimus Deus.
We must use every endeavor that the Word of God may dwell in us abundantly, and not merely for
one kind of fight must we be prepared. For the contest is many-sided, and the enemy is of every
sort. And they do not all use the same weapons, nor make their onset in the same way. The man who
has to contend against all should be acquainted with the engines and the arts of all. He should
be at once archer and slinger, commandant and officer, general and private soldier, foot soldier
and horseman, skilled in sea fight and in siege. For unless he knows of every trick and turn of war,
the devil is well able, if only a single door be left open,
to get in his fierce bands and carry off the sheep.
We invite each viewer to reflect upon and to further study the foundational cause
of what has gone wrong in the Church through the use of the series Study Guide
and its recommended readings. We ask you to prayerfully consider the role that God would
have you play in the restoration of truth. While none of us can restore the truth on our own,
each of us can start by taking responsibility for our families and by walking through the doors
that God will open. Many Catholics devoted to the restoration of truth can have a significant impact
by leveraging this DVD series as outlined in the series introduction. We now invite you to commit
to this restoration as we close with the Prayer of the Night for Truth, written as the author
came to understand the underlying cause of the current Catholic crisis and realized that God
is calling every Catholic to defend the Catholic faith whole and entire against the lies of Descartes
and Darwin that continue to fuel Neo-Modernism and what Bellah called the final advance against the Church.
The Prayer of the Nights for Truth
Heavenly Father, I know not where you would lead me
nor which truths you would have me defend in the war of worldviews.
I know not how you could use me, a follower of Christ who has so many limitations.
I only know that I am grieved by the deception of the young and innocent
and that my soul compels me to engage in the struggle for truth. I can remain silent no longer.
Help me to advance in Christian maturity and to become a contender for the faith.
Help me to realize the importance of taking no part in the worthless deeds of darkness,
but to rebuke and expose them instead. May I become disciplined enough to train for battle
and to be skilled at more than one kind of fight. For, indeed, the contest is many-sided
and the enemy is of every sort, and not all use the same weapons nor make their
onset in the same way. Help me to become acquainted with deceptive science,
philosophy, and historical methods that have become the modern weapons of the enemy.
Help me to learn the tricks and turns of this war, so that I may have an answer ready for the
opposition and for those seeking truth, such that no doors are left open for the father of lies to
enter and carry off the sheep. Help me to persevere in this struggle of worldviews,
so that I may lead many to truth in the time that remains.
Help me to especially become a protector of the young and innocent. May I balance this noble
cause with other responsibilities and worthy commitments, and identify those activities that
are not pleasing to you and on which time is wasted. I pray for the strength to avoid compromise
and temptation, and I pray that when I fail, the Holy Spirit impresses upon me the need to repent,
so that I may be worthy of the sacred name, Christian.
Help me to press onward to the finish line, and persevere when I experience the fellowship of
sharing in Christ's sufferings, such that when I have breathed my last, I may feel my Savior's
embrace and hear the words,
Well done, good and faithful servant. You shall remain with me forevermore.
In Jesus' name I pray, through the immaculate heart of Mary. Amen.
you
so
you