June 1990 Print

by Fr. Franz Schmidberger

The following article was originally written for a wider, not necessarily Catholic readership. Focusing on crucial aspects of the struggle of the faith in the past, Fr. Schmidberger shows clearly that the present radical apostasy from the faith has a long history.

"Filius hominis veniens, putas, inveniet fidem in terra" (Lk. 18:8)

"When the Son of Man comes, do you think He will find faith on earth?"—these seem strange words in the mouth of Jesus Christ. Since He is true God, His ideas will surely win through in the course of time and His System will triumph. In contrast to our (all too) human expectations, however, they appear to point to a decline in faith over the centuries, if not even to its complete disintegration in the period before His Second Coming.

Are we then to conclude that we are now experiencing the so turbulent times for the Church and the faith that herald and characterize the Lord's Second Coming? No one can answer this question with absolute certainty, but it cannot be denied that the Ship of Peter has been violently tossed about for a quarter of a century, with great waves repeatedly lashing over it so that many a Catholic would have given up the ship for lost if it were not for Christ's promise that the gates of hell shall not prevail.

The crisis of faith has in fact taken on worldwide dimensions since Vatican II and is spreading like a flood, engulfing everything, dragging it along with it and washing it away: the unchangeable teaching, faith and practices of the faithful; the priests' awareness of having a special mission, training and way of life; the rules and lifestyles of the religious; the morals and discipline propagated from the simplest of the faithful right to the top of the hierarchy.

Inward values, spiritual substance, supernatural life, strength of faith and commitment to it can scarcely be captured in numbers and statistics, but a few figures do shed light on how dramatic the situation is.

In Holland, where progressive ideas caught on first, ordinations to the priesthood have declined by 95% since Vatican II; in Austria the equivalent decline is 75%. In France and Germany Mass attendance has gone down by 60% over the same period of time. In the Canadian province of Quebec vocations to female religious fell by 98.5% between 1961 and 1981. In Latin America between forty and sixty million Catholics have, according to the Conference of Latin American Bishops, left the Church to join various sects.

The illusory talk of a "New Pentecost" and the 'Breath of the Holy Spirit'—words on everyone's lips after the Council—has fallen silent. Instead some speak of processes of shrinking to a healthy size, others of a change from an ecclesiocentric to a christocentric approach moving in the direction of theocentricity and finally a soteriology of all religions. The faithful, sober-thinking Catholic, however, recognises in the Council and its aftermath the ultimate consequences of a century-long process of erosion and secularization.

A. The Faith

In order to make our argument clear we have to fall back on a few basic theological concepts, touch briefly on the relationship between Church and Theology, and outline the meaning of faith for Christian life.

Divine faith or the act of faith is the willing acceptance through grace of the whole of divine revelation, that is, the object of faith. The First Vatican Council defined it as a "supernatural virtue through which, inspired and supported by the grace of God, we believe that what He has revealed is true, not because we perceive the inner truth of things with the natural light of reason, but on the authority of the revealing God Himself, who can neither deceive nor be deceived" (DS 3008).

The same council defines the object of faith as "everything contained in the Word of God as handed down in Scripture and Tradition and presented by the Church in either a solemn decision or through common and general teaching as to be believed as revealed by God" (DS 3011). The content of the object of faith concerns more precisely the nature of God, the Incarnation, Salvation and the Church, the aim of creation and man's destiny, and the Last Things, the eschata.

This shows faith to be a supernatural virtue in that, on the one hand, it does not contradict reason but, on the other hand, goes far beyond it. It can be compared to a telescope which allows us to see farther and more sharply and brings things that were hitherto undiscovered or even undiscoverable into sight. "Faith is the certainty of things we hope for," says St. Paul, "the certain evidence of what we do not see" (Hebr 11,1).

It is, then, both light and strength: light in that it allows us to participate in God's understanding, strength in that enables us to move mountains (cf. Mt 17,19), that is, to do what is humanly impossible.

Holy Gospel tells of the faith the Lord demands as a prerequisite for working His miracles, showing it to be the basis and reason for various healings. "Fides tua salvum te fecit—your faith has made you whole," Jesus says to the leper (Lk 17,19). "If you can believe, all things are possible to him that believes" (Mk 9,22). He tells the father of the boy whose dumb spirit He casts out, going on to explain to His disciples, who had been unsuccessful in healing the child, that "This kind of devil can be cast out only by prayer and fasting" (the direct fruits of faith) (Mk 9,28). In Chapter 11 of the Epistle to the Hebrews St. Paul goes through the whole gamut of the Old Testament in order to illustrate the power of faith.

By Faith, Abel offered to God a sacrifice exceeding that of Cain. By Faith, Henoch was translated so that he should not see death. By Faith, Noe received news of things that were not yet seen. By Faith, Abraham was moved to obey the call and go into a land that he was to receive as an inheritance. By Faith, he (Abraham) abode in the Promised Land as a stranger. By Faith, Sara, despite her advanced age, received strength to conceive because she believed Him faithful who had promised. By Faith, Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac, accounting that God has the power even to raise from the dead; thereupon he was given him back as a parable. By Faith, the walls of Jericho fell after they had been gone round for seven days. And what more shall I say? I lack the time to tell of Gedeon, Barac, Samson, Jephthe, David, Samuel and the prophets. Through their faith they conquered kingdoms, saw justice done, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, recovered strength from weakness, became heroes in battle and put foreign armies to flight. And others suffered mockery and beatings, indeed even chains and prison. They were stoned, tortured, cut asunder, put to death by the sword. They wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins, being in want, distressed and afflicted. And all of these have earned a glorious testimony through faith. And therefore we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses. (Hebr 11,4 - 12,1).

He concludes this list of witnesses to the power of faith with the exhortation, "Let us look up to Jesus, the author and finisher of faith" (Hebr 12,2).

Without the integral Catholic faith neither (supernatural) hope nor (natural) charity is possible. One cannot hope for what one does not know; one cannot love what one does not hope for, long for, strive for. Faith forms the foundations of the spiritual house, hope the walls, and charity the roof topping and crowning it. To be sure, purely human virtues, moral acts, kindness, loyalty and courage are possible without faith, but in the order of salvation it is only faith animated by love that counts: "But without faith it is impossible to please God" (Hebr 11,6). These words seem to echo the command Christ gave his disciples when He sent them on their mission: "Go into the whole world and preach the gospel to every creature" (Mk 16,15). Thus the Church has good reason to judge sins against the faith—be they in the form of unbelief, superstition, schism, heresy or apostacy—as far more serious than sins in the fields of morals and discipline.

Faith is always understood as the faith of the Church, certainly not as a matter of individual feeling. What God reveals is laid down infallibly by the Church's magisterium under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. This means that the theologian is existentially bound to the magisterium and that his research has to be conducted within the framework of aiming at a better understanding of divine revelation so as to show, on the basis of the Church's perennial teaching, the connection between the individual truths contained in it. St. Anselm sums up the theologian's task as "fides quaerens intellectum." If he understands his task in this way, the theologian renders a humble service so that his selfless work bears fruit for the Church itself and for the lives of the faithful.

If, however the theologian forsakes the faith as the foundation of his research, he ceases to serve God and instead turns into a rationalist and skeptic, thus becoming an enemy of the Church and destroyer of the work of the Holy Spirit. This truism seems to have been forgotten by the 163 German-speaking theologians who embarked on a collision course with the teaching and pastoral authority of the Church when they issued their "Cologne Declaration" in January 1989.

Faith in turn quite naturally brings forth Christian cultures and civilisations by taking on a visible form, by being, as it were, made flesh. This is a requirement of human nature, which consists of both body and soul; it is made necessary by the fact that man perceives through his senses; finally it is demanded by the Incarnation itself. Our churches, cathedrals, wayside shrines and places of pilgrimage, our legislation (inspired as it is by the Decalogue and Canon Law), our religious orders, our denominational schools, our Catholic kindergartens and works of Christian charity—all of these are faith made flesh, representing a kind of theophany in which God appears on earth. All these shrines and institutions uphold, protect, defend and pass on belief in God Incarnate, bearing witness from the largest cathedral down to the humblest wayside shrine to the faith of our forefathers.

The most sublime expression of faith is, however, the divine liturgy, at the centre of which is the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Its prayers, symbols and gestures, its sacrificial rite and accompanying song give expression to the priestly soul of Christ. The aim of worship, thanksgiving, petition and expiation expressed in it sums up the relationship between God and man.

Such a liturgy shapes the soul of the disciple according to the image of the master, nourishing faith, hope and charity in the believer with the ultimate aim of making a saint of him. Here the virtues of the Crucified Christ are carried into human society: loving self-giving to the Father, selfless service of one's fellow man, obedience towards divinely instituted authority, patience in trial, joy in suffering. As the Early Church already recognised, "Lex credendi statuit lex orandi"—what we are to believe determines how we pray.

B. The Crisis of Faith

We must now ask ourselves, what led to the present crisis of faith and made it possible? One thing is certain, it did not come about overnight. The virus of decay and decomposition has been gnawing at the marrow of the Catholic Church for decades, if not for centuries.

Although the Middle Ages certainly had their dark side, too—where man is involved, frailty and sin are not far away —they mark a blossoming and zenith of Catholic faith such as has never been witnessed neither before or since. Starting with the Armenians and ranging, to name but a few examples, from Chlodwig and his Franks to Saints Henry, Louis, Stephen, Wenceslaus, the rulers of the day placed themselves and their peoples at the service of Christ the King. The Holy Roman Empire saw itself as embodying the kingdom of God on earth inasmuch as it is possible on earth since the Fall.

However, this period of the greatest realisation of the Pax Christi in Regno Christi is also the cradle of revolution to come. Humanism and the Renaissance do not simply glorify the artistic achievements of Ancient Greece and the heroic deeds of Ancient Rome but also assimilate pagan thinking. Thus the Church comes in for increasing criticism. What counts now is no longer the practice of Christian virtues, a saintly life, the imitation of the Crucified Christ and the example of the apostles, but rather the full development of individual genius, the acquisition of knowledge for the sake of knowledge and personal fame. This marks the beginning of a process of secularization that is to continue over the centuries to follow. Certain representatives of the Church seem to join the dance in celebrating this marriage between God and the world, between Christ and false gods. At all events, the palaces of the Renaissance Popes and households of many a Prince Bishop are hard to reconcile with the example set by the Saviour of the World when He washed His disciples' feet.

Such abuses may have been the immediate cause of Martin Luther's revolt against the Church, but the real reasons for the Wittenberg monk's insurrection are to be sought elsewhere and at a deeper level. It was his almost pathologically passionate nature that drove him to rise up against God-given truth as embodied in the teaching and the priesthood of the Church. With his proclamation of the subjective conscience, Luther made the individual the supreme judge in matters of faith and postulated the universal priesthood of all believers in opposition to the particular priesthood established by Christ. He also rejected the idea that the Church is the source and mediator of salvation. In today's jargon one could sum up his ideas as "Christ yes, Church no"—a way of thinking that turns every Christian into his own Pope.

During and in the wake of Luther's revolt whole countries tear themselves away from the Universal Father of Christendom and cut themselves off from the source of all grace, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Since Luther's Reformation only individuals have returned to the bosom of the Church whereas the apostate movement itself has split up into thousands of different denominations and sects. Large areas of Germany, Switzerland and Holland, the whole of Scandinavia and, as a consequence of Henry VIII's claim to supremacy, much of what once belonged to the British Empire have to this day not found their way back to the Faith of the Apostles.

At the beginning of the 18th century, under the influence of a rationalistic, deistic notion of God, secret societies spring up dedicated to purely human, inner-worldly concerns. Believing in humanity, loving humanity and dreaming of universal brotherhood, they sneer at, deny and fight the idea of God's presence in the world. These are the Masonic circles from which the Illuminati around Jakob Weishaupt in Bavaria and the Alta Venta with the Carbonari in Italy are later to spring.

Under the cloak of religious neutrality a bitter struggle is now unleashed against the divine right of kings, i.e. against the monarchy, and against the Church. "First the throne, then the altar," is the watchword. The age of Enlightenment has arrived. Lessing preaches radical religious indifference in the Parable of the Rings in his Nathan der Weise; Voltaire issues his call of "ecrasez l'infame", whereby the infamous thing to be crushed is the Church. Years of subversive activity in the salons, in literature and in the theatre prepare the ground excellently for the French Revolution.

Despite what is otherwise maintained, this revolution is less of a social or political event than a religious one and one determined by the history of the day. It rings in the age of public godlessness. When the head of Louis XVI fell under the guillotine on 21 January 1793, the idea of the Christian state and the Christian social order finally fell, too: God, the Great Architect of the Universe, is resting high above the clouds—and let him stay there! In the meantime we shall find our own way of ridding ourselves of lousy monks, power-mad priests and the tyrannical kings. All power lies with the people; authority emanates from the grass roots. Anyone who is not in agreement with this postulate must be eliminated as an enemy of the people in the name of liberty, equality and fraternity.

Various Popes warn against this spirit of revolution and anarchy, but their voice is not heard. Instead Karl Marx, who learned systematic dialectics from Hegel, is listened to all the more willingly. Atheistic materialism begins its triumphal march through the world, insinuating itself first into men's minds and then pervading institutions and states. It develops into the greatest prison known to human history; it is the universal Kingdom of satan as opposed to the Universal Kingdom of Christ. Its arch-enemies are faith, the Church, Christ, and the concept of God. "Religion," Karl Marx proclaims, "is the opium of the people." The victims of this ideology—right down to the Chinese students of our own day—run into millions. In the last analysis deserting God leads to man's complete enslavement, to hell on earth.

But let us now turn to the Church itself. Since the French Revolution certain Catholic circles have been toying with the idea of a reconciliation between the Church and the world, between orthodoxy and heresy. A typical example of this way of thinking is to be found in the following proposition condemned in the Syllabus drawn up under Pope Pius IX: "that the Roman Pontiff can and ought to adjust himself with progress, liberalism and modern civilization" (No.80). Pope St. Pius X also rejects such thinking when he condemns Modernism, the total reinterpretation of Catholic dogma, as the "synthesis of all heresies."

As a result of these efforts the flood is dammed more or less effectively up to the death of Pius XII in 1958. Then, however, an adulterous generation sets about dismantling the Catholic ramparts—something Hans Urs von Balthasar had already called for in the early fifties—and the Second Vatican Council turns into a witches' sabbath for all liberal thinkers, left-wing Catholics and illusion-ridden enthusiasts. What was valid yesterday is questioned and denied today. What was condemned yesterday has to be strictly adhered to today. What was the glory of the Church yesterday is something for which it has to beat its breast and beg forgiveness for before the whole world today. What have turned out to be most disastrous documents of Vatican II are:

The Decree on Ecumenism, which maintains that "the Spirit of Christ has deigned to use these separated churches and communities as means of salvation," which according to all the rules of logic is in direct contrast to the age-old truth of "extra Ecclesiam nulla salus" (outside the Church there is no salvation);

The Declaration on the Relations of the Church to Non-Christian Religions, which no longer sees the latter as systems opposed to the Holy Spirit but reinterprets them as ways to God;

The Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, according to which the Church of God no longer is the Catholic Church but merely subsists in it, i.e. is identical with it in its accidents;

The Declaration on Religious Freedom, which calls for the dethroning of Christ the King in the public sector;

The Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, which proclaims an illusory paradise on earth in the form of man's permanent progress in universal brotherhood. Cardinal Ratzinger has called the latter an 'Anti-Syllabus' and admitted, in other words, that it proclaims what the syllabus drawn up under Pius IX rejects.

As long as these errors are not eradicated, as long as the fatal reorientation of the Church remains uncorrected, there can be no thought of a root and branch renewal, of a renaissance of the Christian Occident. There is no way in which deficits in the field of dogma, the abandonment of the kyrios, of Christ as the Creator and Redeemer of the World, as Universal King and Lord, can be made up for by preaching on discipline and morals or even by the appointment of conservative bishops. For it is the dogma. This is putting the cart before the horse: it is faith that is the guiding principle for praxis and not vice versa. Hence it is futile to call for respect for human life, trodden underfoot a thousand fold every day in abortions, without first ensuring that respect for God, for Jesus Christ Our Lord, is once again firmly anchored in human souls.

"By their fruits you shall know them," the Gospel teaches us in Mt 7,16. The fruits of Vatican II are, however, bitter, inedible, rotten. One of the services rendered to the Church by Archbishop Lefebvre is that he has placed the blame for its dissolution squarely at the door not only of the post-conciliar reforms but of the council itself. I Accuse the Council is the title of one of his most important works. In it he points to the sources of the poisoning of the teaching, the faith, the morals and the whole life of the Church. His declaration on the Feast of the Presentation of Our Lady in 1974 is of special significance in Church history: "We refuse and have always refused to follow a Rome with the neo-modernist and Protestant tendencies that have appeared clearly in the Second Vatican Council and all the reforms stemming from it. All these reforms have contributed to and continue to contribute to the destruction of the Church, to the ruin of the priesthood, to the extermination of the sacraments and of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, to the disappearance of the religious life, to the naturalist thinking and the pride of place given to Teilhard de Chardin in what is taught at the universities and seminaries and in catechesis, teachings that stem from Liberalism and Protestantism and have already been solemnly condemned by the magisterium on various occasions. No authority, not even the highest in the hierarchy, can force us to give up or truncate our faith as it has been clearly formulated and proclaimed by the magisterium for nineteen centuries. St. Paul says, 'If we or an angel from heaven should preach a different gospel to you from the one we have preached, let him be anathema" (Gal 1,8).

In the nearly twenty-five years that have passed since the end of Vatican II there has been a fundamental change of climate in the Church: tens of thousands of priests and religious have forsaken their ideals and thrown themselves into the arms of the world; the countless churches and monasteries sold and demolished in, for example, Holland (but not only there) symbolize the process of inner demolition and destruction. The Church is shaken to its foundations as regards its identity and mission. Now it wishes to join other major religions in helping to promote (in line with Masonic thinking) secular progress and the establishment of a single world government and world religion. The syncretistic assembly of the world's major religions convoked by Pope John Paul II in Assisi on 27 October 1986 was a visible sign of departure from the task assigned to the Church by Jesus Christ when he established it.

C. Faith in the Year 2000

In all ages God has given his oppressed flock a saviour. At present, however, the great apostasy preceding the appearance of the Antichrist (2 Thess 2,1-12) is going on before the horrified eyes of the Christian faithful and with the acquiescence of the Church's hierarchy. The Christian Occident is sinking into a morass of practical atheism and public godlessness, of immorality and obscenity, of false religions and the direct worship of Satan. The collapse of marriage and the family, the powerful advance of Islam and Asiatic religions, the wildfire spread of esoteric cults and the New Age movement—all these are harbingers of the Kingdom of the Antichrist.

Nevertheless, in the midst of this decay God's grace has set signs of hope. Oases of faith, intensive Church life and missionary zeal are to be found here and there. There are new seminaries, monasteries, schools and priories around which young families with large numbers of children gather, constituting the seed being planted today ready to sprout and blossom tomorrow. Here, in the midst of a godless world witness is given to the faith, the name of God is praised, the redeeming Cross of Christ is carried with joyful souls. In their daily Rosary the faithful in these oases turn above all to the great Lady who has again and again sped to her children's aid in the course of history with her powerful intercession and, as is said in the Divine Office of the Church, alone overcomes all the heresies of the whole world.

Surely the whole truth of the Gospel shines forth anew here. I am referring to St. Paul's statement that where sin abounded, grace abounded almost to overflowing (Rom 5,20) and that God has chosen the weak things of the world so that he might confound the strong.(1 Corinth. 1,27)

What did our good Master say? "If you can believe, all things are possible to him that believes." (Mk 9,22) Thus it is faith, our faith in the divinity of Christ, that will triumph over a whole world of opponents. Anyone who has had the good fortune to be present at the three-day pilgrimage on foot from Paris to Chartres or at the episcopal consecrations performed by Archbishop Lefebvre on 30 June 1988 has witnessed the dawning of a third Christian millennium.

Christus vincit, Christus regnat, Christus imperat was sung on these two occasions.

Christ is being crucified in His Church today, He is dying and will soon be buried. But on the third day He will rise again in glory.