Transcription
The point is I love the society of St. Pius the 10th. Okay? I love the Vatican. I love the universal church. I love the East. I love the West. Why? Because we are all one mystical body. All baptized in Christ. We're not two baptized bodies. We're one with disagreements with differences. The point is the Vatican should bend. The society of Pope Pius the 10th should bend. They should both compromise in a moral way, not sacrificing um o age-old dogmas. Nobody changes dogmas. None of them are willing to change dogmas because they agree on the same dogmas. I don't see them disagreeing on any dogmas. It's rather a matter of discipline they disagree on. And disciplines are subject to change. They have changed from the day of Christ to this very day.
So the letter that they put out, this 28-page dossier is really a profession of faith and it was written, in quotes, "in the face of the principal errors and the gravest dangers of our time," unquote and argues that Catholic tradition contains the remedies for the church's present crisis. Okay, I'm going to talk a little bit about this particular statement. The Catholic tradition contains the remedies for the church's present crisis. This is not exactly correct, the statement. Why? Because the church is not only made up of tradition. The church is made up of scripture and it's made of magisterial teaching. We have three founts of our faith. If you just take tradition and say that is the remedy of all evils, that's not exactly correct. That's partially correct. If you want the remedy of all evils, you have to include all three. Where is scripture? Where is magisterial teaching? All of these were present from the time of Christ, and they're present today. And they're necessary for the church to continue to grow. If all you take is tradition, without scripture, without magisterial teaching, you have no growth. It's stagnant. It's stagnant. And that is not the meaning of what the Second Vatican Council called a living tradition.
The adjective "living" is important to sacred tradition. Tradition is not something that is purely confinable to the past. It's something that is alive and thriving today but does not separate from its point of origin, which is the past. In other words, the truth does not change, but it becomes more and more explicated with new insights and new developments. Case in point: Divine Mercy, Divine Will, Sacred Heart of Jesus, Immaculate Heart of Mary. You don't find these in the old expressions of sacred tradition. You find them in the new expressions of sacred tradition thanks to prophetic revelation, theological contribution, magisterial interventions and teachings.
Let's start with the Sacred Heart. Revelation to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque. Nowhere did you find in tradition Jesus saying, "I need reparation to my Sacred Heart." You will not find it anywhere in tradition. You find it in the prophetic revelations of St. Margaret Mary. You may find it implicitly in the scriptures where Jesus is sorrowing, but you will never find him directly asking for reparation to his Sacred Heart anywhere in tradition up until Margaret Mary appears. Then when she appears, the church acknowledges this as an authentic post-biblical revelation, sanctions it as worthy of the canon, the, uh, the sacrament martyrology, makes it part of the church's liturgical feast day, and bingo, there it is, part of the church's now living tradition.
What about the Divine Mercy through Faustina? Where did you hear in tradition of a feast day of Divine Mercy? You did not hear it anywhere. But it is implicitly contained in scripture. It is implicitly contained in writings of the saints and fathers. But there is no mention of a feast day for the Divine Mercy that contains a plenary indulgence until St. Faustina appears and is given these messages by our good Lord, and it is sanctioned by Pope John Paul II, and he canonizes her, canonizes her and acknowledges this feast day as a feast day in the church, bringing it into the church's martyrology and liturgy, just like the feast day of the Sacred Heart, making it part of tradition. So this tradition of God's mercy that is present in scripture, that is present in the early churches' writings of the fathers and doctors, this tradition of God's um Sacred Heart through his son needing that is in need of compassion, commiseration, is present in scripture, in the writings of the church in doctors on the early centuries, but its explicated expression has not been found until the writings of Faustina and Margaret Mary Alacoque.
Now, here's the big important point I wish to make. Their writings in no way contradict anything written about mercy or Sacred Heart devotion in the past, but explicates that devotion to a new level. Hence the word "living tradition." Our God is not a God who is asleep on a vacation. Who stopped revealing himself at the closure of scripture. Who said, "Okay, now the last apostle revealed the last word. I can now take a rest and I'll see you all later. Goodbye. You're on your own now. I revealed everything. I don't have no need to talk to you anymore." That is a dead tradition. It doesn't grow. It's stagnant. It's irreformable. That's not the church's tradition. It's a living tradition that has its roots that never change in the past. The truths, the roots never move, but they continue to grow. Why? Because they are constantly feeding the branches and the leaves and the fruits that come from these roots nutrition. These fruits and leaves and growth of branches are today's prophetic revelations that include the writings also of the Servant of God Luisa Piccarreta, explicating that which has never been changed in the Old Testament on God's Divine Will in the Our Father prayer: "Thy will be done on earth as in heaven." This was a pledge that it will come. Otherwise, God would not have said, "May it come." So he was petitioning the Father for His will to come on earth, and the gift of living in the Divine Will is the answer to that petition. It has begun to come here already, thanks to these writings and the work of the Holy Spirit and the free consent of the first virgin to receive this gift, conceived in St. Luisa Piccarreta, after whom anyone can receive this gift. Hence the new outpouring, the second Pentecost, a term used for the first time by Popes John XXIII and John Paul II, both of whom were canonized on the same day in St. Peter's Square. This gift of living in the Divine Will does not go against tradition, but it explicates tradition.
Just read Article 66 of the Catholic Catechism, the second sentence. It says, "Even though revelation is complete in Christ," and in the previous statement it says, "we expect no new public," that's the key adjective, "we expect no new public revelation of Christ until his final glorious manifestation in the flesh." The second sentence adds, "Even though this revelation is complete in Christ, it has not yet been completely explicated." You see where I'm going? So even though tradition is grounded, its roots are set, it is still growing. It's spreading its branches, its leaves, its fruits. These are growing. That's what the word "explication" means. That's why Jesus in the scriptures used His word as a seed, not as a rock that's stagnant and doesn't add, but a seed that continues to grow and grow and grow. He sows the seed. He's the sower. He described the parables. "I'm the sower of the seed. The seed is the word of God." And what happens when He sows it? He allows time, rain, sun, the soil's nutrients to nurture that seed and enable it to produce a shoot, a trunk, branches, leaves, fruits, etc., etc., on and on and on. That's how Christ's revelation works. And that is why holy tradition is not something that you can confine to the past. It is alive and it is thriving and it is continuing to explicate itself to this very day.
So when the society says that Catholic tradition contains the remedies for the church's present crisis, this is a partial truth. What is missing is Catholic tradition, in addition to sacred scripture and magisterial teaching, contains the remedies of the church's present crisis. Then it would be a statement that is sound and well-prepared. It adds, "We are convinced that tradition, again emphasizing tradition, contains all the remedies for the deepest evils from which the church and the world would suffer and for which solutions are sought in vain outside of it." Again, I repeat the same point. They are correct, but they are incomplete. Tradition does contain remedies, but it does not contain all the remedies. All the remedies are found not only with tradition but with sacred scripture and with magisterial teaching. Now you find all the remedies.
It adds, describing the declaration as a positive affirmation of Catholic belief rather than a protest document, "The text that we present to you is not the sterile litany of a group of nostalgics but the necessary expression, peaceful yet resolute, of our faith." That's a good statement. I agree 100% with that. It adds, "In the present confusion, it is no longer sufficient to recall a few isolated truths. It has become indispensable to set in full light the entire order of Catholic doctrine in its supernatural coherence and luminous harmony, omitting no dogma, diminishing no truth."
Okay, I want to add something to the statement. The SSPX is heavily invested in scholastic theology. I know this because I know many of them. I was formed in the Latin liturgy by them. I love the Latin liturgy, the extraordinary form. I do it in many churches. Not presently right now while I'm visiting doctors, but when I go back to Italy, when I was in, for example, Michigan, I would do it at two parishes. And I love it. It's a beautiful liturgy, but it does have an incompletion to it. It's not complete in itself. Even though the effort of the Pope was to gather up all the existing liturgies at the time and make it the liturgy of liturgies, that was a valiant effort and it achieved in large part that objective. But what it did not include was many of the first thousand years of liturgy in the East. Remember, the first liturgy was not the Latin rite. It was the Greek rite. For the first thousand years of Christendom, from the time of Christ till let's say the time of the scholastics with, you know, St. Bernard of Clairvaux from the 11th century, Bonaventure and Aquinas from the 12th century and onward, Duns Scotus, you have all these scholastics and then others that follow them like Tancred and Bazo, etc., Molinard. These all scholastics were great in advancing and perpetuating the scholastic theology and liturgy. That's good. But let us not forget our roots. The first thousand years of Christian liturgy was Greek. It wasn't Latin. And the liturgy celebrated by Jesus and the Apostles was not Latin. He spoke in Aramaic. And the words written down were in Koine Greek. A Greek liturgy that followed. And so did the first churches that were created in Antioch, Alexandria, Constantinople, and then Rome. These were the four major churches. And they all started in Greek.
So I understand the statement of them affirming that the entire order of Catholic doctrine is indispensable in its supernatural coherence and luminous harmony, omitting no dogma and diminishing no truth. But I think that a lot of truths that are found in the Eastern Patristic tradition have been omitted in the scholastic Western tradition. I'm not saying dogmas, but truths. I'll give you just one simple example: deification. You won't find it in almost any scholastic text. Thomas Aquinas mentions it maybe once, Augustine maybe twice, but the Eastern Fathers mention it all the time. This concept of deification that's found in the writings of certain saints, including Luisa Piccarreta, who was inspired by the Good Lord, whose whose writings I believe, as we know, have been approved by the church. The Hours of the Passion have multiple imprimaturs. The Blessed Virgin Mary book dictated by Mary to her have multiple imprimaturs. Her first five, 19 volumes had the imprimatur of her bishop and Censor Librorum and St. Hannibal Mary di Francia. The list goes on. So I understand their perspective. But tradition in the scholastic sense and liturgy in the scholastic sense is part is not complete without the Patristic sense. Am I saying that they do not include Patristic teachings in their in their curriculum? Of course they do, because I listen to their classes. I participated in them. They do have some Patristic lessons. Naturally, the emphasis is on scholasticism because this is where they live in the West. But my point is that the liturgy is very ecumenical, which is what they tend to criticize in this 28-page document. They criticize very heavily the concept of ecumenism. The church is not fully united with Rome. Whereas in fact, the first church and the first liturgy was not in Latin, which means that if we are to go to our roots, we have to be ecumenical. We have to go outside of the Latin paradigm and embrace the beginnings of Christianity that Christ himself celebrated in Aramaic and Koine Greek. In fact, the very first liturgy, the, let me put it this way. The liturgy that most reflects the liturgy of the Apostles and Christ is not the Latin or the Novus Ordo liturgy. It's not the English liturgy, the Spanish liturgy. It's not the vernacular liturgy, and it's not the Latin Rite liturgy. It's the Orthodox Byzantine liturgy that is that which best reflects the liturgical action of the priest during the time of the Apostles. And that is why I lived with the Byzantine Catholic monks for 10 years in Rome to learn their liturgy, to learn their Eastern rites, learn their theology. And I did. And I have a great appreciation for the Patristic theology as I do for the Western scholastic theology, and for the Eastern and Western liturgies.
So ecumenism is not something intrinsically evil that's a threat to our faith. It's an enrichment if it's approached in the right way. Certainly, everything that is open can be contaminated. Whether it's a jar of peanut butter, whether it is your soul to evil influence from the television or from the media, whether is the church's sacred truths to paganistic uh influences from the world, anything is subject to contamination. You cannot avoid that. But what you can avoid is exposing it to these evil elements. And that's not what ecumenism is supposed to do. Just because something can be perverted doesn't mean it's bad. It means it must be protected in the right way. Just like a daughter or a child being raised in an evil secular society. You cannot say, "I don't want to have a child because society is too evil." No, out of love you have the child and you protect the child. You raise it the right way, knowing that you cannot completely keep them from evil. Because Jesus didn't want it this way either when He said to the Father, "I did not pray that you should keep them out of the world, but that you should keep them from the world. They must be in the world, but not become part of the world." That is what we are to do with ecumenism, with our loved ones, and with everything in life. So, ecumenism can be a good thing provided it's used in the right way.
In this case, welcoming the Patristic tradition, welcoming iconography, which is a beautiful statement. It's like a summary of teachings just by looking at it. It's a like a bunch of mysteries of the life of Jesus and Mary combined in one view. And it's many times accompanied by 40 days of fasting. Monks who make these icons have a tradition of fasting before they do them. So, it's a prayer you're looking at representing the life of Mary, the mysteries of the lives of Mary, Jesus, Joseph, and even sometimes the saints. Not only do you have iconography and um Eastern liturgy, but you also have um I also mentioned deification, but that we don't really have in the West very much. You also have in the East this beautiful approach of facing the East all the time. Facing the Sun of God, representing the physical star of our solar system that rises in the East, that illuminates the world, and that descends in the West in the form of a white host. Jesus is born as the Light of the World. He illuminates the world through His Word. And when He descends, He leaves us the Eucharist. That is the sun rising in the East and descending as the moon in the West. The Eastern Church follows this beautiful symbolism. I love it.
And another beautiful symbolism of the Eastern Church is that in so doing, well, this tradition is no longer followed today, but it was followed in the '60s. On the general judgment, when all souls are raised, they will face the celebrant for the first time during the liturgy. Why do I say that? Because it was the practice up until the '60s for all the people to be buried facing the setting of the sun. Facing the sun setting, facing the West. The priest, when he stands, faces the East. So on the general judgment, all will stand facing the West, and the priest will stand facing the East, facing all of his spiritual children. Now this is no longer the case today, but it is a beautiful symbolism that was created by the Eastern liturgy, not by the Western liturgy, but the Latin Rite follows this because it faces the East, like the Eastern liturgies do as well.
Now, by the way, many people say, "Oh, the Second Vatican Council destroyed the church by introducing the priest facing the people." I say to these people, "Have you not read one document of the Second Vatican Council?" Nowhere will you find in the Second Vatican Council the priest facing the East, facing the West, facing the people. It's nowhere to be found. Rather, it was a post-conciliar document by St. Pope Pius XII, Pope Paul VI, who was shot, by the way, a living martyr, and the remnants of his bloodied shirt can be found in the Duomo in Milan. I went and visited it twice. It's not found in the Second Vatican Council. This change of the liturgy came after the Second Vatican Council.
But anyway, the point is I love the Society of St. Pius the 10th. Okay? I love the Vatican. I love the universal church. I love the East. I love the West. Why? Because we are all one mystical body. All baptized in Christ. We're not two baptized bodies. We're one with disagreements with differences. The point is the Vatican should bend. The society of Pope Pius the 10th should bend. They should both compromise in a moral way. Not sacrificing um o age-old dogmas. Nobody changes dogmas. None of them are willing to change dogmas because they agree on the same dogmas. I don't see them disagreeing on any dogmas. It's rather a matter of discipline they disagree on. And disciplines are subject to change. They have changed from the day of Christ to this very day. Jesus changed Mosaic law more than once. That was a disciplinary law. Like when the showbread was given to David when he didn't have enough food, that was reserved for the priests. Same thing with Jesus, right? He ate on the Sabbath grain, which was prohibited by the Mosaic law. He said, "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath," or when He cured a woman on a Sabbath. He did this on purpose to show them that yes, tradition according to the Mosaic law has a point. But when tradition, without departing from this point, can be explicated in a new setting, we should embrace it. And this new setting was Jesus Christ. The discipline remains, but the expression is a new form of adoration, of worship, and honor to God, without taking away from that same discipline, this meaning behind that discipline.
Well, that is all for the video this time. Again, thank you so much for taking a little bit of your time to be here with us. Always remember that if ever you have any feedback or suggestions, please don't ever hesitate to let us know in the comments below.