If You Believe These Things, You Might be a Modernist
It pains me to see how so many (hopefully) good intentioned Catholics are truly compromised with the heretical Modernist Religion. This was the intentional game plan of Modernists long ago, to infiltrate the Church in such a way that Catholics would be promoting their ideas, all the while thinking they were still faithful Catholics. Many Popes tried to warn us about this. Entire Encyclicals were written on the subject. But now, we have an entire generation of Catholics who truly do not realize how much of their beliefs are rooted in a heresy. St. Pius X called it “the synthesis of all heresies.”
Today, we do not hear much about Modernism anymore, which of course pleases the Modernists, and ultimately pleases Satan himself. They would prefer to remain inconspicuous, so as to quietly continue their reign of terror upon the souls of Catholic Christians. One place you can look for obvious Modernism is the movement of so-called “progressive liberal Catholicism.” The truth is there is no such thing. There is truth and there is error. There is Catholicism and there is heresy. There is no conservative against liberal, or traditionalist against progressive. This apparent divide was also a part of the plan of the Modernists, in order to get its doctrines acceptable among the laity.
Modernism is an attempt to take the perennial teachings of the Church, along with her disciplines, practices, and Liturgy, and adapt it to the standards of the modern world. It is a religion of compromise to the whims of the present generation and its “needs, wants, desires, and goals.” And yet, Sacred Scripture teaches, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Hebrews 13:8). “I am the Lord; I change not” (Malachi 3:6). “He is always the same and never makes dark shadows by changing” (James 1:17). The Church is called to engage the world with the intention of converting the world. Modernism seeks to infiltrate the Church with the hope of conforming her to the world, as if such a thing was ever possible.
One of the four marks of the Church is the mark of Holiness. Her purity and beauty can never be disfigured by the influence of the world. In reality, the only thing the Modernists have succeeded in doing is creating their own religion. However, like the crafty deception of the ancient serpent, the religion of Modernism attempts to trap children of God with the façade of false teaching disguised cleverly as orthodox Christianity. It injects a single drop of poison into a gallon of water, so that the fatal mix seems almost imperceptible upon first glance, and yet a single sip would contain the necessary concoction to kill you.
The reason we should be concerned with the beliefs of the Modernist religion is because they lay the foundation for the eventual emergence and system of the Antichrist. Modernism lays the groundwork for indifferentism, which leads to the One World Religion; and also Naturalism, which leads to the New World Order.
Some of the tenets you will find in Modernists are the following:
Universal salvation, or close proximity to it. This encompasses the idea that all (or the vast majority) of people most likely end up in Heaven because, “God is love,” and because, “So and so seemed like a decent human being.” Implicit in this belief is also a denial, or at least a suspicion, of the existence of Hell. This teaching denies the necessity of sanctifying grace and the reality of mortal sin. It also misinterprets the term “love” and redefines it from a worldly perspective, and forgets that the love of God is displayed in graces sent to us for our repentance from sin and to spur us on to virtue and holiness. However, without repentance and faith, we do not meet the “God who is love” when we die, but rather the Just Judge. And saying “So and so was a decent human being” completely ignores St. Paul’s entire teaching concerning the necessity of unmerited grace and that works done under our own natural power, without the aid of divine grace, have no power to save us.
Indifferentism. We see this today with the bumper stickers that promote “Co-Exist.” As Catholics, our desires are identical to God’s desires, “who wants all people to be saved and to come to knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:4). There is objective truth which means there is objective error. However, the modern world swims in the oceans of relativism, and thus all that matters is we try to be good people, and “nobody can really know the truth anyways.” Taking this tenet a step further, we see that efforts to convince or convert others to believe differently are considered “judgmental” and “hateful” and “backwards.” Indifferentism advances the idea that all religions are more or less good and praiseworthy, and all of them in some are expressions of the divine. And yet, St. Paul teaches, “I am saying that these sacrifices are offered to demons, not to God. And I don’t want you to participate with demons” (1 Corinthians 10:20).
Naturalism. You will notice with Modernists that there is rarely, if ever, discussion regarding the supernatural, or to things pertaining to the supernatural. This explains why they have no focus at all towards the Four Last Things: Death, Judgement, Heaven, and Hell. The miracles of Our Lord and of Scripture in general are denied or held under suspicion, including the Resurrection. Thus, religion becomes more of a humanitarian aid, and a means towards temporal ends. Miracles do not really happen, apparitions are probably the lies of children, and the life of Jesus is thought to be a collection of exaggerated fables intended to just teach lessons about the human condition. The focus is primarily on temporal concerns, because there no real belief regarding eternal concerns. Naturalism fosters a practical atheism. And with its emphasis on temporal issues, it opens the door wide open for the One World Government to attempt to solve the crises facing the modern day, with no thought of God or prayer or repentance at all.
Updating. Modernists do not believe in fixed and eternal truths or dogma. Everything is up for grabs in the court of Human Reason. Sacred Scripture is nothing more than just the opinions of people confined to their own culture, trying to make sense of the divine. So when Modernists push for a change in dogma to appease modern opinions, they do so because they believe doctrines are just expressions of the era they belong to. This explains why today we continue to see a push for women priests and also gay marriage, neither of which exist in reality, but to Modernists, they exist if we decide to make them exist.
Relativism. Whether in faith and morals, what you believe is good for you; and what I believe is good for me. Unless, of course, you are a faithful and practicing Catholic Christian, then you are labeled as backwards and trying to keep people locked up in the Middle Ages (a glorious time in history, followed by the drudgery of the French Revolution and the “Enlightenment” which enslaved humanity to its emotions and vices). This also explains why there is a push to emphasize emotions over objective truth and reality. “How does that make you feel?” takes precedence over, “Is it true?”
Also, be aware that Modernists use phrases that Christians use, such as “Incarnation” or “Sacraments” or “Eucharist,” but they have warped definitions of these dogmas. You have to really get to the root of it by quoting Councils verbatim and asking if they agree with the dogmas and decrees of Holy Mother Church. They also place supreme emphasis on Human Reason as being the final arbiter of truth. It is more authoritative than the Magisterium.
Derek Holmes, in The Triumph of the Holy See, writes, “The notion that God revealed absolute truths which were in turn promulgated by the Church in the form of immutable statements of unchangeable truths were regarded as incompatible with an evolutionary understanding of human development and the cultural and religious life of man.”
In the book What Has Happened to the Catholic Church, Fr. Radecki writes, “Modernists believe that religion is a result of intellectual efforts of modern man. There is no need for a visible church since this would hinder the liberty of man. Man becomes his own authority who can fashion his own humanistic, man made religion.”
Pope Gregory XVI wrote in the Encyclical Singulari Nos, “Blind they are …they pervert the eternal concepts of truth …they are seen to be under the sway of a blind and unchecked passion for novelty …despising holy and Apostolic Traditions they embrace other and vain, futile, uncertain doctrines, condemned by the Church.”
Pope St. Pius X, in the Encyclical Pascendi, wrote, “Undoubtedly, were anyone to attempt the task of collecting together all the errors that have been broached against the faith and to concentrate into one the sap and substance of them all, he could not succeed in doing better than the Modernists have done. Nay, they have gone farther than this for… their system means the destruction not of the Catholic religion alone, but of all religion… They lay the axe not to the branches and shoots, but to the very root, that is, to the faith and its deepest fires. And having struck at this root of immortality, they proceed to disseminate poison through the whole tree, so that there is no part of Catholic truth from which they hold their hand, none that they do not strive to corrupt.”
So how can one know if they have been compromised with Modernism? One way is to see if you agree with the dogmas and conciliar decrees of the Catholic Church.
For example, here is an infallible (free from error) decree stated at the Ecumenical Council of Florence:
“It firmly believes, professes and preaches that all those who are outside the Catholic Church, not only pagans but also Jews or heretics and schismatics, cannot share in eternal life and will go into the everlasting fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels, unless they are joined to the Catholic Church before the end of their lives; that the unity of the ecclesiastical body is of such importance that only for those who abide in it do the Church’s sacraments contribute to salvation and do fasts, almsgiving and other works of piety and practices of the Christian militia produce eternal rewards; and that nobody can be saved, no matter how much he has given away in alms and even if he has shed his blood in the name of Christ, unless he has persevered in the bosom and the unity of the Catholic Church.”
Or consider these Papal condemnations from Pope Pius IX, who infallibly condemned the following propositions:
-The prophecies and miracles set forth and recorded in the Sacred Scriptures are the fiction of poets, and the mysteries of the Christian faith the result of philosophical investigations. In the books of the Old and the New Testament there are contained mythical inventions.
-Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true.
-Man may, in the observance of any religion whatever, find the way of eternal salvation, and arrive at eternal salvation.
-Good hope at least is to be entertained of the eternal salvation of all those who are not at all in the true Church of Christ.
-Protestantism is nothing more than another form of the same true Christian religion, in which form it is given to please God equally as in the Catholic Church.
-The ecclesiastical power ought not to exercise its authority without the permission and assent of the civil government.
-National churches, withdrawn from the authority of the Roman pontiff and altogether separated, can be established.
-The Roman pontiffs have, by their too arbitrary conduct, contributed to the division of the Church into Eastern and Western.
-Catholics may approve of the system of educating youth unconnected with Catholic faith and the power of the Church, and which regards the knowledge of merely natural things, and only, or at least primarily, the ends of earthly social life.
-The Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church.
-In the present day it is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion should be held as the only religion of the State, to the exclusion of all other forms of worship.
-The Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization.
If you believe any of those things above, you might be a Modernist. Repent and come back home.
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. We love you. Save souls. Amen.