Certainly such attempts can nowise be approved by Catholics, founded as they are on that false opinion which considers all religions to be more or less good and praiseworthy, since they all in different ways manifest and signify that sense which is inborn in us all, and by which we are led to God and to the obedient acknowledgment of His rule.
Not only are those who hold this opinion in error and deceived, but also in distorting the idea of true religion they reject it, and little by little turn aside to naturalism and atheism, as it is called; from which it clearly follows that one who supports those who hold these theories and attempt to realize them, is altogether abandoning the divinely revealed religion.
Pope Pius XI, Mortalium Animos, No. 2
(LifeSiteNews) — In a previous article I have argued that Francis is a public heretic and therefore neither a member of the Catholic Church nor its Visible Head. In this article I will ask whether Francis is also a public apostate, that is, one who has totally abandoned the profession of the Christian religion. If so, then a fortiori, we can be morally certain that he is not the Visible Head of the Church Militant.
On Friday, September 13 Francis addressed a group of young people and inter-religious dignitaries at Singapore’s Catholic Junior College. He said:
If we start to fight amongst ourselves and say ‘my religion is more important than yours, my religion is true, yours is not,’ where will that lead us? Where?
And he continued:
Every religion is a way to arrive at God. There are different languages to arrive at God, but God is God for all. And how is God God for all? We are all sons and daughters of God. But my god is more important than your god, is that true?
There is only one God and each of us has a language to arrive at God. Sikh, Muslim, Hindu, Christian, they are different paths.
The previous week, on the occasion of signing a joint declaration on “climate change” with the Grand Imam of Indonesia, he had declared:
I encourage you to continue along this path so that all of us, together, each cultivating his or her own spirituality and practicing his or her religion, may walk in search of God.
And in his 2019 he signed the Abu Dhabi statement which asserted that:
The pluralism and the diversity of religions, colour, sex, race and language are willed by God in His wisdom, through which He created human beings.
These statements directly contradict the teaching of the Catholic Church, whose Divine Founder, Jesus Christ, taught:
I am the way; I am truth and life; nobody can come to the Father, except through me. (Jn 14:6)
Young people in Singapore went to listen to a man whom they were told was the pope. They went with open hearts to listen to one whom they believed had God-given authority to teach them. They trusted him, and he betrayed them. Instead of teaching them the gospel, he set about deconstructing their faith in a way which leads towards apostasy and eternal separation from Christ.
Our Lord Jesus Christ desires the salvation of every man, every woman and every child. The Catholic Church was established for the salvation of all, and all are invited to unite themselves with Jesus Christ, her Divine Head, as members of his Mystical Body. This is a universal path to salvation, but also the only path to salvation. As St. Peter preached at the Temple in Jerusalem:
This is the stone which was rejected by you the builders, which is become the head of the corner. Neither is there salvation in any other. For there is no other name under heaven given to men, whereby we must be saved. (Acts 4:12)
“Holiness,” taught Pope Pius XII, “begins from Christ and Christ is its cause” and “no act conducive to salvation can be performed unless it proceeds from Him as from its supernatural source. ‘Without me,’ He says, ‘you can do nothing.’”[1]
It was by “His blood shed on the Cross that God’s anger was averted and that all the heavenly gifts, especially the spiritual graces of the New and Eternal Testament, could then flow from the fountains of our Savior for the salvation of men.”[2]
These graces flow from Christ through His Mystical Body the Church, for Christ “has purchased with His Blood His members who constitute the Church.”[3] Outside of the Catholic Church there is no salvation.
The dogma “outside the Church there is no salvation” has come under sustained attack in recent centuries.
In 1854, in an address to the College of Cardinals, Pope Pius IX lamented:
We have learned with grief that another error, not less melancholy, is introduced into certain parts of the Catholic world, and has taken possession of the souls of many Catholics. Carried away with a hope for the eternal salvation of those who are out of the true Church of Christ, they do not cease to inquire with solicitude what shall be the fate and the condition after death of men who are not submissive to the Catholic faith.[4]
He continued:
Far from Us, Venerable Brothers, to lay claim to put limits to the Divine mercy, which is infinite! Far from Us to scrutinize the counsels and mysterious judgments of God, unfathomable depth where human thought cannot penetrate!
But it belongs to the duty of Our Apostolic office to excite your Episcopal solicitude and vigilance to make all possible efforts to remove from the minds of men the opinion, as impious as it is fatal, according to which people can find in any religion the way of eternal salvation.[5]
And he declared:
Faith orders Us to hold that out of the Apostolic Roman Church no person can be saved, that it is the only ark of salvation, and that whoever will not enter therein shall perish in the waters of the deluge.[6]
The dogma extra ecclesiam nulla salus ought to inspire in Catholics a great desire to work for the salvation of all those outside the Church. Meditating upon it should move us to share the Catholic faith with others, and to reform our own lives so that we do not pose a stumbling block to their full acceptance of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
As Pope Pius IX taught in Quanto Conficiamur Moerore:
God forbid that the children of the Catholic Church should even in any way be unfriendly to those who are not at all united to us by the same bonds of faith and love. On the contrary, let them be eager always to attend to their needs with all the kind services of Christian charity, whether they are poor or sick or suffering any other kind of visitation.
First of all, let them rescue them from the darkness of the errors into which they have unhappily fallen and strive to guide them back to Catholic truth and to their most loving Mother who is ever holding out her maternal arms to receive them lovingly back into her fold. Thus, firmly founded in faith, hope, and charity and fruitful in every good work, they will gain eternal salvation.[7]
In his words cited above, Francis directly contradicts the infallible teaching of the Catholic Church regarding the unique path to God, which is Jesus Christ in His Mystical Body, the Church. His false doctrine also manifests a clear lack of charity for souls outside the Church. Francis is encouraging them along paths which lead only to eternal anguish and despair.
The doctrine taught by Francis is certainly heretical, but does it go beyond that, as Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò has suggested, and constitute “open apostasy”?
What is apostasy?
An apostate “is someone who, after being baptized, obstinately and totally abandons the Christian faith.”[8]
The canonist Augustine describes the difference between heresy and apostasy as follows:
Apostasy differs from heresy only as to the extent of the material object of faith denied; the specific malice, viz., the denial of God’s truthfulness, or of the divine authority, is the same in both. An apostate, therefore, is one who rejects the whole deposit of faith and becomes an unbeliever, whilst a heretic is one who wilfully rejects or doubts only the one or other truth revealed and proposed by the Catholic Church.[9]
For example, someone who refuses belief in a particular doctrine proposed by the Magisterium of the Catholic Church – such as Our Lady’s Immaculate Conception – while retaining the conviction that there is indeed divine revelation and thus continues to profess fundamental doctrines of the Christian religion, is a heretic, but not an apostate. Whereas someone who has repudiated the deposit of faith itself, for example, by becoming a Hindu, a Muslim, or an atheist, is an apostate.
St. Thomas Aquinas taught:
Apostasy denotes a backsliding from God. This may happen in various ways according to the different kinds of union between man and God.[10]
St. Thomas gives three uses of the term apostasy. First, it can be used in a limited sense with reference to one who backslides from God “by withdrawing from the religious life to which he was bound by profession, or from the Holy Order which he had received” or, secondly, of one who repudiates the moral order “by rebelling in his mind against the Divine commandments.”[11]
But the form of apostasy which we are considering in this article is apostasy in the strictest sense. This “apostasy simply and absolutely” is the kind “whereby a man withdraws from the faith” and it is called “apostasy of perfidy.” In this way, “apostasy, simply so called, pertains to unbelief.” For if “he give up the faith, then he seems to turn away from God altogether.”[12]
The Catholic Encyclopedia summarizes Catholic teaching on the “apostasy of perfidy” as follows:
Perfidiæ is the complete and voluntary abandonment of the Christian religion, whether the apostate embraces another religion such as Paganism, Judaism, Mohammedanism, etc., or merely makes profession of Naturalism, Rationalism, etc. The heretic differs from the apostate in that he only denies one or more of the doctrines of revealed religion, whereas the apostate denies the religion itself, a sin which has always been looked upon as one of the most grievous.[13]
It is not necessary for a man to adhere openly to another religion – such as Islam or Judaism – to be considered an apostate. There are apostates who clothe their ideas in the language of Christianity but have rejected the fundamentals of the Christian religion in such a way that constitutes not just the rejection of one or more doctrines as proposed for belief by the Catholic Church, but the rejection of the Christian religion itself.
For example, naturalism excludes the possibility of supernatural revelation. Therefore, the naturalist is an apostate, even if he continues to call himself a Christian, and professes something which he calls Christianity. He may hold that Christ was a great moral teacher, that Christian doctrines are symbolic of deeper truths, and so on, but he is still an apostate and not a Christian.
That naturalism and rationalism constitute apostasy is the teaching of the Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Church of the First Vatican Council (1870). The Council taught:
Thereupon there came into being and spread far and wide throughout the world that doctrine of rationalism or naturalism, – utterly opposed to the Christian religion, since this is of supernatural origin, – which spares no effort to bring it about that Christ, who alone is our lord and saviour, is shut out from the minds of people and the moral life of nations.
Thus they would establish what they call the rule of simple reason or nature. The abandonment and rejection of the Christian religion, and the denial of God and his Christ, has plunged the minds of many into the abyss of pantheism, materialism and atheism, and the consequence is that they strive to destroy rational nature itself, to deny any criterion of what is right and just, and to overthrow the very foundations of human society.[14]
Similarly, Pope Leo XIII taught that the “essence” of “naturalism or rationalism” is “utterly to do away with Christian institutions and to install in society the supremacy of man to the exclusion of God.”[15]
The belief that, as Francis put it, “every religion is a way to arrive at God” and that “each cultivating his or her own spirituality and practicing his or her religion, may walk in search of God” flows from naturalism. It is incompatible with the belief that there is one true supernatural religion revealed by Jesus Christ, which is the sole means of salvation.
Pope Leo XIII explained the connection between these two errors in his encyclical letter Humanum Genus:
Now, the fundamental doctrine of the naturalists, which they sufficiently make known by their very name, is that human nature and human reason ought in all things to be mistress and guide. Laying this down, they care little for duties to God, or pervert them by erroneous and vague opinions. For they deny that anything has been taught by God; they allow no dogma of religion or truth which cannot be understood by the human intelligence, nor any teacher who ought to be believed by reason of his authority.[16]
It arises from this, “that in the various forms of religion there is no reason why one should have precedence of another; and that they are all to occupy the same place.”[17]
Consequently, naturalists teach “the great error of this age” which is that “a regard for religion should be held as an indifferent matter, and that all religions are alike.”[18] The Supreme Pontiff teaches that:
This manner of reasoning is calculated to bring about the ruin of all forms of religion, and especially of the Catholic religion, which, as it is the only one that is true, cannot, without great injustice, be regarded as merely equal to other religions.[19]
In his encyclical letter Mortalium Animos, Pope Pius XI explicitly condemns the kind of interreligious dialogue which Francis has repeatedly engaged in and he clearly teaches that the belief that all religions are paths to God constitutes “altogether abandoning the divinely revealed religion,” that is, it constitutes apostasy. He taught:
For since they hold it for certain that men destitute of all religious sense are very rarely to be found, they seem to have founded on that belief a hope that the nations, although they differ among themselves in certain religious matters, will without much difficulty come to agree as brethren in professing certain doctrines, which form as it were a common basis of the spiritual life.
For which reason conventions, meetings and addresses are frequently arranged by these persons, at which a large number of listeners are present, and at which all without distinction are invited to join in the discussion, both infidels of every kind, and Christians, even those who have unhappily fallen away from Christ or who with obstinacy and pertinacity deny His divine nature and mission.
Certainly such attempts can nowise be approved by Catholics, founded as they are on that false opinion which considers all religions to be more or less good and praiseworthy, since they all in different ways manifest and signify that sense which is inborn in us all, and by which we are led to God and to the obedient acknowledgment of His rule.
Not only are those who hold this opinion in error and deceived, but also in distorting the idea of true religion they reject it, and little by little turn aside to naturalism and atheism, as it is called; from which it clearly follows that one who supports those who hold these theories and attempt to realize them, is altogether abandoning the divinely revealed religion.[20]
To emphasize: In this text Pius XI makes it clear that the opinion that (i) “all religions” are “more or less good and praiseworthy, since they all in different ways manifest and signify that sense which is inborn in us all” and (ii) that they are ways by “which we are led to God” is an error. He goes further and states that “in distorting the idea of true religion they reject it” and turn aside to “naturalism and atheism.”
“From which it clearly follows,” he teaches, that one who, like Francis, “supports those who hold these theories and attempt to realize them, is altogether abandoning the divinely revealed religion.” And to “abandon the divinely revealed religion” is to commit apostasy.
For:
[I]n reality beneath these enticing words and blandishments lies hid a most grave error, by which the foundations of the Catholic faith are completely destroyed.[21]
Francis is an apostate. He is also an apostate actively engaged in leading young Catholics into apostasy. In fact, he does so in exactly the manner warned about by Pope Pius XII in his encyclical letter Summi Pontificatus:
Now what scandal is more permanently harmful to generation after generation, than a formation of youth which is misdirected towards a goal that alienates from Christ ‘the Way and the Truth and the Life’ and leads to open or hidden apostasy from Christ? That Christ from Whom they want to alienate the youthful generations of the present day and of the future, is the same Christ Who has received from His Eternal Father all power in Heaven and on earth. He holds in His omnipotent Hand the destiny of States, of peoples and of nations. His it is to shorten or prolong life: His to grant increase, prosperity and greatness.
Of all that exists on the face of the earth, the soul alone has deathless life. A system of education that should not respect the sacred precincts of the Christian family, protected by God’s holy law, that should attack its foundations, bar to the young the way to Christ, to the Savior’s fountains of life and joy (cf. Isaias xii. 3), that should consider apostasy from Christ and the Church as a proof of fidelity to the people or a particular class’s word: ‘They that depart from thee, shall be written in the earth’ (Jeremiah xvii. 13).[22]
What are the effects of public apostasy?
Public apostasy, by its very nature, severs a person entirely from membership of the Church.
Pope Pius XII taught that:
[O]nly those are to be included as members of the Church who have been baptized and profess the true faith, and who have not been so unfortunate as to separate themselves from the unity of the Body, or been excluded by legitimate authority for grave faults committed.[23]
A sin can be “such as of its own nature to sever a man from the Body of the Church”, and these sins are “schism, heresy and apostasy.”[24]
In earlier articles I have (i) explored the effects of public heresy on membership of the Church, and (ii) argued that as a public heretic, Francis cannot be the pope.
The effects of public apostasy are the same as those of public heresy, and all the arguments I put forward in the pieces linked to above apply with even greater force to the case of a public apostate.
Theologian Joachim Salaverri writes that the divisions of the various kinds of heretic “also apply completely to the apostate.”[25] And Monsignor Gerard Van Noort affirms:
Public heretics (and a fortiori, apostates) are not members of the Church. They are not members because they separate themselves from the unity of Catholic faith and from the external profession of that faith. Obviously, therefore, they lack one of the three factors – baptism, profession of the same faith, union with the hierarchy – pointed out by Pius XII as requisite for membership in the Church.[26]
I explained in the previous piece that a minority of theologians have regarded it as possible that material public heretics, that is, those who are not guilty of personal sin in their public profession of heresy, remain members of the Church.
I have explained the serious problems with this position, which have led the majority of Catholic theologians to reject it and to hold the position that all public heretics – no matter how innocent – are severed from the Mystical Body of Christ.
Van Noort summarises the argument here:
[I]f public material heretics remained members of the Church, the visibility and unity of Christ’s Church would perish. If these purely material heretics were considered members of the Catholic Church in the strict sense of the term, how would one ever locate the ‘Catholic Church?’ How would the Church be one body? How would it profess one faith? Where would be its visibility? Where its unity? For these and other reasons we find it difficult to see any intrinsic probability to the opinion which would allow for public heretics, in good faith, remaining members of the Church.[27]
This position is also defended by Cardinal Louis Billot:
[T]he unity of the profession of faith, which is dependent on the visible authority of the living magisterium, is the essential property by which Christ wanted His Church to be adorned forever, it follows clearly that those cannot be part of the Church who profess differently from what its magisterium teaches. For then there would be a division in the profession of faith, and division is contradictory to unity. But notorious heretics are those who by their own admission do not follow the rule of the ecclesiastical magisterium. Therefore they have an obstacle that prevents them from being included in the Church, and even though they are signed with the baptismal character, they either have never been part of its visible body, or have ceased to be such from the time they publicly became heterodox after their baptism.[28]
If it is contrary to the visible unity of the Church that a public heretic be a member, how much more so is it contrary to this unity that a man who publicly rejects the very foundations of revealed religion should be a member of Christ’s Church? And if a public apostate is not a member of the Church, he cannot be her Visible Head, because the “very nature of the office makes it necessary that the Supreme Pontiff be a member of the Church.”[29]
References
| ↑1 | Pope Pius XII, Mystici Corporis Christi, No. 51. |
|---|---|
| ↑2 | Pope Pius XII, Mystici Corporis Christi, No. 30. |
| ↑3 | Pope Pius XII, Mystici Corporis Christi, No. 59. |
| ↑4 | Pope Pius XI, Singulari Quadem. |
| ↑5 | Pope Pius XI, Singulari Quadem. |
| ↑6 | Pope Pius XI, Singulari Quadem. |
| ↑7 | Pope Pius IX, Quanto Conficiamur Moerore, No. 9. |
| ↑8 | Joachim Salaverri S.J., Sacrae Theologiae Summa IB, (1956; translated by Kenneth Baker S.J., 2015), p422. |
| ↑9 | For the details of the source and a longer extract see here: https://www.wmreview.org/p/profession-of-faith-heresy-and-separating-oneself-from-the-church-canonist-fr-augustine-osb. |
| ↑10 | St Thomas Aquinas, ST II.II q. 2 a. 1. |
| ↑11 | St Thomas Aquinas, ST II.II q. 2 a. 1. |
| ↑12 | St Thomas Aquinas, ST II.II q. 2 a. 1. |
| ↑13 | Catholic Encyclopedia, Apostasy. Source: https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01624b.htm. |
| ↑14 | First Vatican Council, Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Church. Full text here: https://www.papalencyclicals.net/councils/ecum20.htm. |
| ↑15 | Pope Leo XIII, Immortale Dei, No. 47. |
| ↑16 | Leo XIII, Humanum Genus, No. 12. |
| ↑17 | Leo XIII, Humanum Genus, No. 22. |
| ↑18 | Leo XIII, Humanum Genus, No. 16. |
| ↑19 | Leo XIII, Humanum Genus, No. 16. |
| ↑20 | Pope Pius XI, Mortalium Animos, No. 2. |
| ↑21 | Pope Pius XI, Mortalium Animos, No. 4. |
| ↑22 | Pope Pius XII, Summi Pontifcatus, No. 69-70. |
| ↑23 | Pope Pius XII, Mystici Corporis Christi, No. 22 |
| ↑24 | Pope Pius XII, Mystici Corporis Christi, No. 23 |
| ↑25 | Joachim Salaverri S.J., Sacrae Theologiae Summa IB, (1956; translated by Kenneth Baker S.J., 2015), p422. |
| ↑26 | Mgr Gerard Van Noort, Dogmatic Theology Volume II: Christ’s Church, (6th edition, 1957, trans. Castelot & Murphy), p241. |
| ↑27 | Mgr Gerard Van Noort, Dogmatic Theology Volume II: Christ’s Church, (6th edition, 1957, trans. Castelot & Murphy), p242. |
| ↑28 | Louis Cardinal Billot, De Ecclesia, Q.7. (translated by Fr Julian Larrabee). |
| ↑29 | Rev E. Sylvester Berry, The Church of Christ: An Apologetic and Dogmatic Treatise, (Mount St Mary’s Seminary, 1955, p227. |