TrapCast Express
TrapCast Express, it's Thursday, April 4th, 2024.
Happy Easter to all Catholics.
Yes, all Catholics believe that Jesus Christ truly rose from the dead.
And that would not include, for example, Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Muller,
who was Prefect of the Congregation for the Destruction of the Faith from 2012 to 2017.
For years, Muller has been presented by the Novus Ordo press as some kind of lion of conservatism and orthodoxy,
simply because he opposes some of Pope Francis' more obvious ideas,
his deviations from Roman Catholicism.
You know, especially with regard to issues pertaining to the Fifth, Sixth, and Ninth Commandments.
But disagreeing with divorce and remarriage, sodomy and abortion is not enough to make a man a Catholic.
To be a Catholic, it is necessary to oppose these evils, but certainly not sufficient.
As Pope Benedict XV said,
Such is the nature...
...of Catholicism, that it does not admit of more or less,
but must be held as a whole, or as a whole, rejected.
And that's from the encyclical letter,
Published November 1st, 1914, paragraph 24.
Now, of course, Cardinal Muller does profess belief in the resurrection of Christ,
but when you take a close look at what he teaches about it,
you find...
...that his understanding of the resurrection of Christ is not what was taught by the Roman Catholic Church
until the death of Pope Pius XII in 1958.
Donald Atwater's Catholic Dictionary, 3rd edition, 1958, defines the resurrection of Christ as,
quote,
"...the reanimation of the body in the tomb by the soul of Christ on the morning of the third day after his death,
unquote, and then elaborates, quote,
"...Christ's body, though it has entered a glorified existence,
forever remains a true, material, physical human body,
numerically identical with the body crucified on Calvary."
Unquote.
That is the Catholic belief.
Now, it's clear that since that is what Christ's resurrection means,
if video cameras had been around back then,
then obviously the resurrected Christ could have been recorded on video.
Not so for Cardinal Muller.
Listen to what he writes, quote,
"...a running camera would not have been able to make an audiovisual recording
of either the Easter manifestations of Jesus in front of his disciples,
nor of the resurrection event which, at its core,
is the consummation of the personal relation of the Father
to the incarnate Son in the Holy Ghost."
In contrast to human reason,
animals and technical devices are not capable of a transcendental experience,
and thus also lack the ability to be addressed by the Word of God
through perceptible phenomena and signs.
Only human reason in its inner unity,
of categoricality and transcendentality,
is determinable by the Spirit of God
to enable it to perceive in the sensory-cognitive image
triggered by the manifestation event
the person-reality of Jesus
as the cause of this sensory-mental-cognitive image.
Unquote.
That's my translation from his book
Katholische Dogmatik,
and I hope you enjoyed it.
Thank you for watching.
I'll see you next time.
Bye-bye.
Catholic Dogmatics, 2010 edition, page 300.
The latest edition is from 2016, to my knowledge,
but I'm quoting from the 2010 edition
because that's the one I have.
And I'm using my own translation here
because most of the book has not yet been
officially released in English,
including this portion,
and that's not surprising
because translating Muller is a nightmare,
as you probably know,
given what I just read to you.
Muller just writes heaps of gobbledygook
that sound extremely erudite and deep,
but will ultimately leave the reader
only perplexed and bewildered
and certainly not enlightened or edified.
Or would you say that what you just heard
increases either your understanding of
or your devotion to the resurrected Christ?
I didn't think so.
I'm including a link in the show notes
to a Novels Ordo Watch blog post
from, I believe, 2016
that contains all the documentation for this,
including a scan of the original German
straight from the book,
so you can verify all this for yourself.
But wait, there's more.
On page 301, Muller says this,
quote,
the realization of the reality
of the transcendental event
is triggered by the Easter manifestations.
The belief of the disciples
is the historically verifiable sign
that points to the Easter event
and through which the Easter event
becomes accessible, unquote.
Now, note well,
Muller here claims that
what is historically verifiable
for us,
verifiable fact
is not the resurrection
or the appearance
of the risen Christ per se,
testified to by the disciples,
but merely the disciples' belief
in the resurrection
and appearance of the risen Christ.
It is not their historical testimony
regarding historical fact
that makes the truth
of the resurrection accessible to us,
but merely their belief
in a transcendental event
that makes the truth of the resurrection
that a running camera
would not have been able to capture.
Over 100 years ago,
Pope St. Pius X warned us
against this modernist distortion
of tradition, saying,
quote,
tradition as understood by the modernists
is a communication with others
of an original experience
through preaching
by means of the intellectual formula,
unquote.
That's from the encyclical
Paschendi,
Dominici Gregis,
number 15.
Now look,
for 1900 years,
Catholics did not find it
terribly difficult to understand
what was meant by the bodily
resurrection of Christ.
Our blessed Lord's soul
was reunited to his body,
the very same body
that had hung upon the cross
and was afterwards lying in the tomb.
Being resurrected,
this body is now immortal
and glorified,
no longer subject to pain,
although he did choose to retain
the five principal wounds
in his hands, feet, and side
in proof of his identity.
It was precisely to demonstrate
the reality of his resurrection
that Christ did not simply appear,
but ate real food
with his apostles
and allowed, even encouraged them
to touch him,
especially St. Thomas,
the doubting apostle.
But what happens to all that
in Cardinal Muller's theology?
It just dissolves.
Something about
blah-blah inner unity,
blah-blah transcendental experience,
blah-blah sensory cognitive image.
My eye!
For a refreshingly clear
and doctrinally sound antidote
to Muller's gobbledygook,
let's listen to an explanation
of the conditions of the risen Christ
given by Monsignor Joseph Clifford Fenton
in 1940.
Quote,
One essential feature of the story
witnessed by the apostles
is to be found in the characteristics
of the risen Jesus.
We must not forget
that the disciples recognized their master
just as truly
as any men have ever recognized
one of their fellows.
At the same time,
they saw that his body
was radically in a different condition,
from that which had hitherto
characterized it.
Previously,
the body of Jesus
had been amenable to suffering.
Now the apostle Thomas
could put his finger
into the frightful wounds
of the hands
and could bring his hand
into the open side
without causing pain
or distress to the master.
Now Jesus appeared
and disappeared as he would.
The locked door of the upper room
remained as it was.
The apostles gathered
without Jesus
and while the door stayed locked,
he came into them.
When he had completed
the instructions he wished
to give the disciples at Emmaus,
he vanished from their sight.
In other words,
Jesus of Nazareth,
risen from the grave,
manifested a complete mastery
over the laws which govern
the created universe.
Those whom Jesus had raised
from the dead previous
to his own resurrection
did not manifest
these qualities at all.
Quadratus could very well assert
that people whom Jesus
had brought back to life
had lived in his own time,
but the implication is, of course,
that finally they died.
Jesus was the first
to return to life
glorious and immortal.
His return
and the qualities he manifested
both constitute
overwhelmingly ample evidence
that the doctrine
which he offered to the world
as divine revelation
actually was
what he claimed it to be.
Unquote.
That was Father Joseph Clifford Fenton
from his book
We Stand With Christ,
pages 352 to 353.
It's been republished since,
but under a different title.
It is now called
Laying the Foundation,
and there it's found
on pages 379 and 380.
And you can find a link,
to this book,
in the show notes.
So yes,
the entire credibility
of the Christian religion
rests on the truth
of the resurrection of Christ,
as St. Paul himself tells us.
Quote,
And if Christ be not risen again,
then is our preaching vain,
and your faith is also vain.
Unquote.
That's from his first letter
to the Corinthians,
chapter 15, verse 14.
So, given how Muller undermines
the resurrection of our Lord,
how credible is the Catholic religion
if we go by his theology?
It's not based on the historical fact
of the resurrection.
It's based on a belief
based on an experience.
But wait,
I have still more.
On page 303,
Muller tops it off
with this.
Quote,
Whether the women's visit
to the tomb
in the early Easter morning
and the discovery
that the body of Jesus
is no longer there
was a historical occurrence
in the manner portrayed
does not need to be decided here.
It's possible
that this narrative
reflected a veneration
of the tomb
by the community
of Jerusalem.
Unquote.
Man, when these neo-modernists
are done with their theology,
there is nothing
left of the Catholic faith.
By the way,
do you know how Muller
got the job of
chief guardian of orthodoxy
in the Vatican in the first place?
He was appointed to it
by Benedict XVI
in 2012.
And when his first five-year term
as prefect of the Congregation
for the Doctrine of the Faith
was over in 2017,
Francis did not renew it
and instead appointed someone else.
Because for Francis,
Muller was way too orthodox.
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