A few weeks ago, the image of the “archbishop” of Canterbury imparting a blessing in the Clementine Chapel of St. Peter’s Basilica outraged the Catholic world. The name of the self-styled successor of the apostles is Sarah Mullaly, who was received in audience by Pope Leo XIV. In the image, one can see Mullaly imparting the blessing while, beside her, a complacent bishop responds to the parody by making the sign of the cross.
I share the general indignation of Catholics, but not the surprise. For anyone who knows the true meaning of the ecumenism promoted by the Second Vatican Council, it is perfectly obvious that the image that has caused so much outrage is a graphic document fully consistent with the principles of ecumenism. What is reflected in that image has been happening for decades in the Catholic Church, but, as the Spanish proverb says, a picture is worth a thousand words. Some people now seem to have understood that ecumenism is incompatible with the doctrine of the Church and that it directly contradicts Tradition and Scripture.
Over the years, Catholics have been led to believe that some shameful scenes of religious promiscuity were mere abuses that did not reflect the “doctrine” of ecumenism. Through this subterfuge, ecumenism has been excused from all the successive ecclesial aberrations, from Pope John Paul II’s kiss of the Koran to the worship of Pachamama at St. Peter’s Basilica during the pontificate of Francis. However, it is not necessary to be very intelligent to realize that this is merely a crude maneuver.
The defenders of Communism use the same tactic to ignore the extermination caused by their ideology, always referring to an abstract and purely nominal definition of their doctrine. The fallacy could be summarized thus: «In the Communist Manifesto, there is no command to kill dissidents, so no killing of dissidents can be attributed to Communism». Auf diese Weise, any negative consequence that follows from the application of certain ideologies or certain movements is automatically re-defined as abuse and not as a logical consequence. Following this method, if someone wants to do harm with a new system or a new ideology, they merely need to take the precaution of avoiding to leave any record of their true intentions in the foundational text.
The reality is that ecumenism, in practice and regardless of what its ambiguous foundational texts say, establishes the parity of all religions. All are in part true, all in a certain sense worship the same God, all have valid priests and deserve the same respect. The differences with the Catholic religion are insignificant and must be charitably omitted from the public discourse to foster interreligious dialogue and synodality.
Christ, Krishna or Pachamama; resurrection, reincarnation or eternal return, what matters? Throw the hair into the sea. The important thing is to hold our hands together and sing in a circle while on our faces we see the stupid and distant expression of a hippie sated with marijuana.
Parallel to this covert promotion of apostasy, the champions of ecumenism carried out their campaign against proselytism. They knew perfectly well that it was impossible to defend both things. The Catholic proselytism is the zeal to make proselytes, i.e., followers of Christ, and that is incompatible with the promotion of a watered-down and evasive Christianity.
Therefore, by adopting the anti-Christian discourse, they set out to associate proselytism with violence, making the unsuspecting faithful believe that they were actually synonyms. They stopped only until they had grained in the floppy mind of entire generations that doing proselytism was equivalent to exercising violence to force people to follow Christ.
In reality, doing proselytism is equivalent to suffering violence, not exercising it. Proselytism is what the eleven apostles who were executed did; proselytism is what St. Stephen did before the Sanhedrin and that was to be stoned; proselytism is what St. Francis Xavier did in Japan, risking his life, not taking it from others, and what the 26 martyrs of Nagasaki did, who were crucified for peacefully preaching the Gospel.
The history of the Catholic Church and of its martyrs is the history of proselytism, which has its foundation in the words of Jesus Christ: «Go and make disciples of all nations».
Once the average Catholic was convinced that for nothing in the world he should dare to preach the truth, on pain of being considered an undesirable fanatic, the path was cleared to receive all religions, all Christian sects and all their more or less crazy priests. Thus one can enter the dialogue.
A dialogue in which the parties have agreed in advance not to speak about the truth, not to defend their beliefs, not to touch any important point and not to disagree in anything. That is the definition of «dialogue» for the champions of ecumenism. I believe that it is the definition of shooting the breeze.
And thus we have arrived, without realizing it, to the grotesque spectacle of the “archbishop” imparting the blessing in the wichtigsten place of Catholicism. The implicit message in that scene is that the apostles who died for defending the truth, the martyrs who spilled their blood to protect it, the saints who dedicated their life to guarding it, and ultimately the same Christ who befehlen to preach it, were all wrong.
Therefore, the ecumenism that not only allows, but provokes such situations, is one of the greatest betrayals that have ever been carried out against the Catholic religion, an anti-catechism that has been infiltrated with innocuous air for decades and that threatens to corrode little by little all the dogmas and all the doctrines of the Catholic religion.
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