Mark Williams | Reporter
Few Popes in the history of the Holy Roman Catholic Church have been more controversial than Pope Paul VI. Aside from his strong and heroic condemnation of birth control, something I applaud as a rare show of backbone, and a few vague statements against the “auto-demolition of the Church” (which he himself caused, as I will show), his life, which Pope Francis outrageously declares to have been one of “heroic virtue” and “sanctity”, and his pontificate, which has been extolled with such absurd platitudes as “bringing the Church into the modern age”, is I believe one of the most disgraceful and contemptible in modern history. I believe the recent decision by Pope Francis to canonize (that is, declare to be a saint) Pope Paul VI will go down in history as one of the greatest scandals of the Francis pontificate. It is on par with Francis’ apparent enabling of the pedophilia crisis and his heretical remarks in favor of public adulterers receiving Holy Communion. I believe the canonization of Paul VI is invalid.
The main reason why I, along with many other traditional Catholics, contest the validity of the canonization (declaration of sainthood) of Paul VI is his activities during the infamous Second Vatican Council (Vatican II), a gathering of all the bishops of the Church to make decisions regarding the state of the Church in the modern world. Vatican Council II (1962-1965) was begun by Paul VI’s crypto-communist predecessor, Pope John XXIII—(unsurprisingly, John XXIII was also recently declared a saint by Pope Francis). Pope “Saint” John XXIII went so far as to make a secret treaty with the Soviets, known as the Pact of Metz, which promised Vatican II would not condemn communism, if only the Soviets would allow Russian “orthodox” prelates to attend the Council. Thus, even in the beginning of Vatican II we see corruption and scandal: at the time that communism was at the height of its power and posing a real threat of world domination; at the time when a condemnation of communism was most needed from the Church; the time when many of the faithful were being persecuted and thrown in jail in eastern European countries conquered by the Soviets—at this crucial time, the Vatican was silent and making backdoor deals.
From the moment Paul VI, born 1897 as Giovanni Baptiste Montini, was elected Pope, he sought to impose even more radical decisions than his predecessor. The direction taken by Vatican II, then, became even more revolutionary than before. Within two years, in 1965 when Vatican II was concluded, this pseudo-Council of the Church essentially repudiated everything the Catholic Church had previously stood for. It is not an exaggeration to repeat what the contemporary Brazilian intellectual and counter-revolutionary, Prof. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, said about the Council at the time, saying Vatican II was “as sad as the Death of Our Lord.
For example, in the 1832 encyclical of Pope Gregory XVI, “Mirari Vos”, the popular liberal concepts of religious freedom, universal tolerance, and indifferentism were condemned. Writes Gregory XVI: “This shameful font of indifferentism gives rise to that absurd and erroneous proposition which claims that liberty of conscience must be maintained for everyone. It spreads ruin in sacred and civil affairs, though some repeat over and over again with the greatest impudence that some advantage accrues to religion from it. …. When all restraints are removed by which men are kept on the narrow path of truth, their nature, which is already inclined to evil, propels them to ruin. …. Experience shows, even from earliest times, that cities renowned for wealth, dominion, and glory perished as a result of this single evil, namely immoderate freedom of opinion, license of free speech, and desire for novelty.”
These noble words of Gregory XVI were confirmed in the 1864 “Syllabus of Errors” of Pope Pius IX, Gregory’s immediate successor to the Papacy. A mere 100 years before Vatican II, the “Syllabus of Errors” infallibly condemned the notion of separation of Church and state and religious freedom. Catholics were henceforward forbidden from accepting those notions, even when contrary to civil laws and social norms. But in an outright and heretical contradiction with the magisteria of Gregory XVI and Pius IX, Pope Paul VI and the Second Vatican Council issued the declaration “Dignitatis Humanae”, which declared: “This Vatican [council] declares that the human person has a right to religious freedom.” Thus did Vatican II embrace something that the previous Popes had formally condemned: a blatant contradiction.
Another Vatican II contradiction, an outright heresy compared to previous teaching, is found in the Council document “Nostra Aetate”, the ‘decree on non-Christian religions’. Shockingly, in this decree, the Council claims Catholics and Muslims worship the same God. This belief, held by many today, is not a Catholic belief and never has been. On the contrary, Pope Eugene IV (reigned 1431-1447) called “abominable” the “sect of Mahomet”; Pope Callixtus III called Islam “diabolic”, “reprobate” and “faithless”. I am not asking for an unfounded attack on Islam. Rather, I am pointing out that the teachings of the Church prior to the 1960s contradict what Vatican II says. All people, whether traditionalist Catholics like myself, or the general public, deserve an explanation: why the contradiction? My explanation—the traditional Catholic position—is that Vatican II is not Catholic, not even a true Council of the Catholic Church, in the real sense of the word. If Vatican II contradicts previous teachings, it is Vatican II that has to be discarded, not the teachings already handed down since the times of the Apostles…
This tendency that emerged prominently at Vatican II, to make a rupture with the tradition and history of the Church, also manifested itself in a general call for changes to the Catholic Mass. It is not at all surprising that Pope Paul VI answered these demands, creating the “Novus Ordo Mass” in 1969 and imposing it by force on the entire Roman Catholic Church. Instead of saying Mass in Latin, as had been the custom of the Catholic Church since the Apostolic Age, the Pope changed the language to English. The priest said Mass facing the people instead of away from them, revealing a change of focus from God to the laity. Many prayers and ceremonies deemed offensive to Protestants and non-Catholics were removed. As Jean Guitton, a friend of Paul VI explained: “The intention of Pope Paul VI with …. the New Mass, was to reform the Catholic liturgy in such a way that it should almost coincide with the Protestant liturgy. There was with Pope Paul VI an ecumenical intention to remove […] what was too Catholic in the traditional sense in the Mass and, I repeat, to get the Catholic Mass closer to the Calvinist Mass.” Simple observation shows the Novus Ordo mass is virtually indistinguishable from any High Church Protestant worship service.
Of course, Paul VI’s actions were totally illegal because the Mass had already been set in stone since 1570 AD, when Pope St. Pius V, at the urging of the Council of Trent, declared the Catholic Mass would remain for all time unchanged in the decree Quo Primum. When Paul VI made a new Mass, he had no authority to do so. Most people assume the New Mass is still a valid Mass because the priest still validly consecrates the bread and wine into the body and blood of the Lord. Personally, I agree with this position. However, there is a difference between validity and illegality. One can validly run a red light, but it is still illegal. It is the same with the New Mass: it is valid, but illicit. The traditional Catholic position is that the New Mass is not pleasing to God. I invite others to draw their own conclusions.
What else did Paul VI do that calls his sainthood into question? Paul VI destroyed much of the beauty and ceremony of the Church: one good example is his “abandonment” of the Papal triple-crown, which he handed over to the United Nations—a symbol of the Church giving over its political authority to secular, Masonic institutions. We can say in passing that Paul VI’s actions (and non-actions) regarding sexual morals are questionable at best, considering the Crisis we are experiencing today, which I contend is directly connected to the liberalisation reforms and the new Freudian sexual morals subtly introduced with Vatican II. The book “Vatican II, Homosexuality, and Pedophilia” by Atila Sinke Guimarães (published by Tradition in Action) will be instructive here.
Ultimately, because there is no dogma of the Church that canonizations are infallible (most probably, as the traditional position explains, they are only infallible when followed by strictest processes), we can safely doubt and even reject the canonization of Pope Paul VI. Since there is no evidence Paul VI repented of his misdeeds, he cannot be said to have lived a life of “heroic virtue”. Pope Francis is merely canonizing him in order to make the Second Vatican Council and the modern Vatican II church appear holy. Until sufficient evidence can be produced refuting the traditional Catholic position, I urge the public, not just Catholics, to refrain from calling this man a Saint. I also call for a public inquiry into the canonisations of other questionable popes—John Paul II, for example. Catholics and non-Catholics alike deserve clarity and answers from the Vatican.
Eventually, I believe clarity will come, perhaps during the restoration of the Church alluded to in the 1917 Fatima Apparitions. I can foresee the eventual annulment of Vatican II, the restoration of the traditional Mass all over the world, the revival of teaching the traditional doctrines, and, perhaps most importantly, the full revocation of the canonisation of “Saint” Paul VI. In the meantime, traditional Catholics will be working hard for the preservation
ECC Cornerstone 