Modernism is a real heresy with real consequences. My previous posts on traditional Catholicism and the COVID-19 crisis may seem like disconnected issues, but they are not. Modernism is a rejection of Jesus Christ and His Church. Such a rejection not only has spirtual consequences but earthly ones too. So why should Modernism matter to us?
Is it really just about the Traditional Latin Mass? The answer is no—it’s not just all about the Latin Mass and reverence or nostalgia for it. Yes, that is important and interesting to discuss, but the Modernist problem extends well beyond that.
While liberals (think James Martin, S.J.) and neo-conservatives (think Catholic Answers) waste hours upon hours on social media and Youtube channels, trying to find ways to defend “Pope” Francis, Vatican II and the Modernism that hijacked the Church, there are real hardworking people out there whose lives, careers and eternal souls are being destroyed at the altar of this “hermeneutic of continuity” (although “Francis” seems to have at least rejected the hermeneutic of continuity now and admits the religion he peddles is not the same faith as pre-Vatican II Catholicism.)
The reality is that Modernism and the rejection of traditional Catholic principles and teachings has real world implications—it’s not just an academic discussion reserved to those with theology degrees from Steubenville. I will give just a few examples.
Destruction of the Faith, Families and Souls
This is the first and most obvious real-life consequence of the Modernist heresy. Modernists reject the notion of unchangeable Catholic dogma and seek to impose their own man-based, subjectivist based artificial substitute for Truth and objective reality that has been divinely revealed to us. Using various forms of duplicity, legalisms and good ol’ fashion oppression, the Modernists seek to destroy what Catholics used to know as their faith.
According to the Modernist, our faith is really just an expression of our own personal feelings. Dogmas, miracles and traditional devotions have no basis in historical reality but are really just archaic symbols–vestiges of the past that we hold on to for purposes of nostalgia, but no longer apply to our everyday lives in the modern world. Everything we experience in our lives is subject to change, “science” and progress, while any unwillingness to maintain and pass on the traditions of our forefathers is nothing but uncharitable rigid scrupulosity that must be rejected.
These Modernist ideas necessarily lead to the rejection of the Ten Commandments, the Sacraments, the Sacrifice of the Holy Mass and even the deposit of faith itself. It destroys marriages, leads to depression, destroys families, undermines trust in the Church and ultimately God Himself. Under the Modernist regime, materialism and narcissism become the new face of a personalized false religion—after all “God loves everyone,” “love is love” and “we will all be in Heaven one day anyway.”
Death and Unemployment
As we speak, many good Americans, including myself, are fighting to keep our jobs and support our families because we refuse to take the experimental, dangerous COVID-19 abortion-tainted shots. Two years ago we heard “only 15 days to flatten the curve.” Now our livelihoods and even our lives are on the line.
What have the Modernists in the Church done for us? Defend our right in the public square to follow our consciences? Did they reiterate the Church’s constant and bold stance against the sacrifice of unborn babies and forced, dangerous medical experimentation on human beings?
No, not only do they refuse to defend the life of unborn babies and those in position of weakness from godless overlords who seek to murder and force experimental drugs into our bodies, but they get on social media and publicly support the secular humanist agenda, and cut the knees right out from under faithful Catholics. They even go so far as to force these evil injections on their own church employees and fire those who choose to follow their conscience. This is a product of Modernism—a desire to fit in with the modern secular culture.
Modernists tend to be very weak-kneed, duplicitous people that use fancy language and legalisms to mislead and con unsuspecting Catholics into committing sin because the sin itself is a modern cultural value. Before COVID, this took the form of defending such perversions as adulterous marriages and homosexuality. With the onset of COVID, it manifests itself in the defense of abortion-based drugs at the expense of careers and economic ruin.
Destruction of Catholic Education
Modernists, especially the Jesuits, have managed to infiltrate formerly faithful Catholic institutions of learning and systematically convert them into bastions of atheistic communism and progressive cultural gulags, while extorting students and their parents out of tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of dollars for essentially worthless degrees.
Modernists within these “Catholic in name only” schools teach and promote Darwinian evolution, Black Lives Matter, the homosexual agenda, abortion, and socialism. At the same time they denigrate Holy Scripture, Catholic Tradition and anything remotely connected to long-standing principles of Christendom or subservience to Christ’s social kingship.
There’s literally no difference whatsoever between a typical Jesuit school and any public school, except that public schools do not pretend to be Catholic in order to swindle parents out of tuition money that funds the destruction of their children’s faith and moral worldview.
Breakdown of the Rule of Law
This one might not be so obvious but the connection between the breakdown of the rule of law and Modernism definitely exists. Modernism, as exemplified in the Vatican II document Dignitatis humanae, accepts modern Enlightenment notions of liberty. This is problematic because “liberty,” as both classical (think John Locke and Adam Smith) and progressive (think Justin Trudeau) liberals understand it, is contrary to Catholic social teaching—especially as outlined in the encyclicals of Popes Gregory XVI, Pius IX, Leo XIII, Pius X, and Pius XI.
The practical consequences of accepting modern notions of “religious liberty” that include “separation of church and state” and other liberal notions of “natural rights” is that the role of Christ the King in the public square is diminished, if not outright rejected, in exchange for a man-obsessed ideology that leaves no room for Christ. No longer does traditional Catholic teachings on morals and social organization influence civil laws. They are rejected to the point that such rejection is enshrined in political constitutions—even the United States Constitution. And the Modernist ideology approves of it all.
At the end of the day, a political system based on the Will of the People, and not on the Will of the Lord, is built on a foundation of sand that will ultimately crumble under its own weight. This is because all authority comes from God and any political system that does not ground itself in Truth, as revealed in the Divine and Natural Law, is doomed to fail.
Laws enacted and applied without reference to a standard of Truth, necessarily are subject to the whims and raw power of the godless authoritarian. Ask the truckers in Canada right now.
Conclusion
We need to destroy Modernism and all its evil fruits. This isn’t just about John Denver songs at Mass and women altar servers. This is not just a fun subject for Steubenville graduates to make money on Youtube with. Modernism affects and destroys the lives of real people, families and even entire nations. Defeating Modernism is an important key to restoring not just trust in the Church but a sound foundation for our culture and political society.