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On Francis' Denial of Transubstantiation: A Rejoinder to Dave Armstrong
When he's not promoting the "wisdom" of Methodist founder John Wesley or the "glorious sounds" of rock bands like The Beatles, Novus Ordo apologist Dave Armstrong carries the water for another beacon of faith and virtue: the Argentinian apostate Jorge Bergoglio, who has been starring as "Pope Francis" in the ongoing theological comedy act that is the Vatican II religion. Apparently our post exposing the false pope's denial of dogma on the Feast of Corpus Christi caused enough of a ruckus for Armstrong to take notice. Alas, his concern is not, of course, with Francis declaring that "Jesus ... becomes bread" in the Eucharist and that "there we find God himself contained in a piece of bread". Instead, he saves all his ire for that "sedevacantist rag, Novus Ordo Watch" and other "reactionary extremists" who dare to expose the heresy in Francis' words, as we read in his June 25 response to our post:
"No, Pope Francis Did Not Deny Transubstantiation" (Dave Armstrong / Patheos)
Since Armstrong joined the discussion in our combox (appended to the original Novus Ordo Watch post) and challenged us to refute him, we are happy to oblige. Before we begin, let's just point out for the record that we didn't, as Armstrong says, "follow suit" after GloriaTV published the same accusation of heresy against Francis -- our post actually predates GloriaTV's by about half a day. But it shouldn't matter, as it was evident to anyone with Catholic ears that what the Jesuit pseudo-pope said in his Corpus Christi sermon is heresy; to wit:
In the presence of the Eucharist, Jesus who becomes bread, this simple bread that contains the entire reality of the Church, let us learn to bless all that we have, to praise God, to bless and not curse all that has led us to this moment, and to speak words of encouragement to others. …The Lord does great things with our littleness, as he did with the five loaves. He does not work spectacular miracles [!], but uses simple things, breaking bread in his hands, giving, distributing and sharing it. God's omnipotence is lowly, made up of love alone. And love can accomplish great things with little. The Eucharist teaches us this: for there we find God himself contained in a piece of bread. Being simple and essential, bread broken and shared, the Eucharist we receive allows us to see things as God does. (Antipope Francis, Homily for Corpus Christi, Zenit, June 23, 2019; italics removed; underlining added.)
As we pointed out in our original post, this is the Lutheran heresy of Consubstantiation, also called Impanation, according to which "the substance of Christ's Body exists together with the substance of bread, and in like manner the substance of His Blood together with the substance of wine" (Catholic Encyclopedia, s.v. "Consubstantiation"). This heresy was solemnly condemned by the Council of Trent in the 16th century:
If anyone denies that in the sacrament of the most holy Eucharist there are truly, really, and substantially contained the body and blood together with the soul and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ, and therefore the whole Christ, but shall say that He is in it as by a sign or figure, or force, let him be anathema. If anyone says that in the sacred and holy sacrament of the Eucharist there remains the substance of bread and wine together with the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, and denies that wonderful and singular conversion of the whole substance of the bread into the body, and of the entire substance of the wine into the blood, the species of the bread and wine only remaining, a change which the Catholic Church most fittingly calls transubstantiation: let him be anathema. (Council of Trent, Session 13, Canons 1, 2; Denz. 883-884)
The only correct understanding of what happens to the bread and wine when they are consecrated by a priest during Holy Mass is the dogma of Transubstantiation and nothing else -- not Luther's Consubstantiation, not Rahner's Transfinalization, not Schillebeeckx's Transignification, and not Muller's Transcommunication. Now let's have a look at Armstrong's response to our post. His argumentation that Francis did not deny Transubstantiation in his Corpus Christi homily can be boiled down to the following five claims:
Francis has affirmed his belief in Transubstantiation on other occasions
By talking about Jesus becoming bread or being enclosed in bread, Francis is using "phenomenological language"
The Bible itself uses the term "bread" to refer to the Eucharist
There are instances of the Church Fathers themselves using the term "bread" in this way
Popes have referred to the Eucharist as the "Bread of Angels"
With these five theses, Armstrong thinks he has delivered a severe blow to our accusation against Francis. But has he? We will now analyize and refute his arguments one by one.
(1) Francis has affirmed his belief in Transubstantiation on other occasions
Armstrong quotes from seven occasions on which Francis speaks about the Holy Eucharist, and he argues that these are examples of him affirming Transubstantiation. This, he claims, proves that he cannot have meant to teach Consubstantiation in his homily of June 23. Specifically, Armstrong refers to the following seven occasions on which Francis supposedly taught Transubstantiation (the words quoted below are what Armstrong himself quotes as evidence from each text; emphasis with blue font is Armstrong's):
Francis' Angelus Address of the same day, June 23, 2019 "This miracle — very important, so much so that it is recounted by all the Evangelists — manifests the Messiah's power and, at the same time, His compassion: Jesus has compassion for the people. That prodigious gesture not only remains as one of the great signs of Jesus' public life, but it anticipates what would later be, at the end, the memorial of His sacrifice, namely, the Eucharist, Sacrament of the [sic] His Body and of His Blood given for the salvation of the world. . . . The feast of Corpus Domini invites us every year to renew the wonder and joy for this stupendous gift of the Lord, which is the Eucharist. Let us receive it with gratitude, not in a passive, habitual way. We must not get used to the Eucharist and go to Communion out of habit: no! Every time we approach the altar to receive the Eucharist, we must truly renew our "Amen" to the Body of Christ. When the priest says to us "the Body of Christ," we say "Amen," but it must be an "Amen" that comes from the heart, with conviction. It is Jesus, it is Jesus who has saved me; it is Jesus who comes to give me the strength to live. It is Jesus, Jesus alive, but we must not get used to it: it must be every time as if it were our First Communion. . . . May Our Lady help us to follow Jesus with faith and love, whom we adore in the Eucharist."
Francis' Video Message for Eucharistic Congress of India, Nov. 2015 (Armstrong incorrectly cites this as Francis' Corpus Christi Homily of May 30, 2013) "There are other hungers- for love, for immortality for life, for affection, for being cared, for forgiveness, for mercy. This hunger can be satiated only by the bread that comes from above. Jesus himself is the living bread that gives life to the world (cf. Jn 6:51). His body offered for our sake on the cross, his blood shed for the pardon of the sins of humanity is made available to us in the bread and wine to [sic] the Eucharist transformed in the consecration. But the Eucharist does not end with the partaking of the bread [sic] and blood of the Lord. It leads us to solidarity with others. The communion with the Lord is necessarily a communion with our fellow brothers and sisters. And therefore the one who is fed and nourished by the very body and blood of Christ cannot remain unaffected when he sees his brothers suffering want and hunger." (This translation is a disaster, but the original isn't that great either: Francis actually speaks of the "bread and blood of the Eucharist, transformed by means of the consecration" [nel pane e nel sangue dell'Eucaristia, trasformato con la consacrazione].)
Francis' General Audience on Feb. 5, 2014 "Therefore the Eucharistic Celebration is much more than simple banquet: it is exactly the memorial of Jesus' Paschal Sacrifice, the mystery at the centre of salvation. "Memorial" does not simply mean a remembrance, a mere memory; it means that every time we celebrate this Sacrament we participate in the mystery of the passion, death and resurrection of Christ. The Eucharist is the summit of God's saving action: the Lord Jesus, by becoming bread broken for us, pours upon us all of his mercy and his love, so as to renew our hearts, our lives and our way of relating with him and with the brethren. . . . the bread that is the Body of Jesus Christ who saves us, forgives us, unites us to the Father."
Francis' Angelus Address of June 22, 2014 "Jesus underlines that he has not come into this world to give something, but to give himself, his life, as nourishment for those who have faith in Him. . . . Every time that we participate in Holy Mass and we are nourished by the Body of Christ, the presence of Jesus and of the Holy Spirit acts in us, shaping our hearts, communicating an interior disposition to us that translates into conduct according to the Gospel."
Francis' Angelus Address of Aug. 3, 2014 "In the Eucharist Jesus does not give just any bread, but the bread of eternal life, he gives Himself, offering Himself to the Father out of love for us."
Francis' Angelus Address of Aug. 16, 2015 "The Eucharist is Jesus who gives himself entirely to us. To nourish ourselves with him and abide in him through Holy Communion, if we do it with faith, transforms our life into a gift to God and to our brothers… eating him, we become like him. . . . [the Eucharist] is not a private prayer or a beautiful spiritual experience . . . it is a memorial, namely, a gesture that actualizes and makes present the event of the death and resurrection of Jesus: the bread is truly his Body given, the wine is truly is Blood poured out."
Francis' Angelus Address of Nov. 22, 2017 "It's not just a memory, no, it's more: It's making present what happened twenty centuries ago. . . . This is Mass: entering in this Passion, Death, Resurrection, and Ascension of Jesus, and when we go to Mass, it is as if we go to Calvary. Now imagine if we went to Calvary—using our imagination—in that moment, knowing that that man there is Jesus. Would we dare to chit-chat, take pictures, make a little scene? No! Because it's Jesus! We would surely be in silence, in tears, and in the joy of being saved… Mass is experiencing Calvary, it's not a show."
Thus far the evidence presented by Armstrong for his first argument. Our response will be twofold. First, none of the evidence adduced is actually a clear and unambiguous affirmation of Transubstantiation, for all quotations can easily be reconciled with belief in Consubstantiation, some of them even with a merely metaphorical understanding of the Eucharist. In fact, a quick internet search -- note well, Mr. Armstrong -- allows one to see that Lutheran adherents of Consubstantiation say very much the same thing about their "Eucharist" that Francis does in the passages quoted above. For example:
What we see, taste, touch, smell, and feel is ordinary bread and wine. The Holy Spirit persuades us that the bread is Christ's body and the wine is Christ's blood.... We receive the same body and blood. That means we receive the same forgiveness of sins.... The minister does not change bread and the wine into the body and the blood of Jesus. Christ has the power to make ordinary bread his body and ordinary wine his blood. And he does so.... But we are here. And here is Jesus. Is not the bread of this Sacrament the communion of the body of Christ? Is not the wine the communion of the blood of Christ? Does not our Lord Jesus serve us by giving us his body and blood to eat and to drink for the forgiveness of all our sins? (Rolf Preus, "The Communion", The Brothers of John the Steadfast, May 12, 2015)
To be clear: This quote is from a heretical Lutheran sermon in which Transubstantiation is denied and Consubstantiation is taught. This one example shall suffice to make the point. Armstrong appears completely oblivious to the fact that mere references to "Body of Christ", "Body and Blood of Christ", "sacrament", etc., are by no means unambiguous references to Transubstantiation specifically. After all, this same language is used in Holy Scripture, which countless Protestants read and understand in all sorts of different ways, but all of which are heretical and deny the dogma of Transubstantiation. This shows that someone using a term found in Sacred Scripture does not automatically mean that he is using it in an orthodox sense. Second, we can assume that in over six years, Francis probably has taught Transubstantiation explicitly at some point. But even if he did, this in no wise proves that he did not teach heresy during this year's Corpus Christi sermon. It only proves that he is happy to teach one thing at one time and another thing at another time, precisely as innovators have done for hundreds of years in order to poison souls in the most clever and effective way possible. In 1794, Pope Pius VI condemned this very tactic, which he had seen used in the robber synod of Pistoia, which was actually a theological prototype of the Second Vatican Council:
They [prior Popes and bishops] knew the capacity of innovators in the art of deception. In order not to shock the ears of Catholics, the innovators sought to hide the subtleties of their tortuous maneuvers by the use of seemingly innocuous words such as would allow them to insinuate error into souls in the most gentle manner. Once the truth had been compromised, they could, by means of slight changes or additions in phraseology, distort the confession of the faith that is necessary for our salvation, and lead the faithful by subtle errors to their eternal damnation. This manner of dissimulating and lying is vicious, regardless of the circumstances under which it is used. For very good reasons it can never be tolerated in a synod of which the principal glory consists above all in teaching the truth with clarity and excluding all danger of error. Moreover, if all this is sinful, it cannot be excused in the way that one sees it being done, under the erroneous pretext that the seemingly shocking affirmations in one place are further developed along orthodox lines in other places, and even in yet other places corrected; as if allowing for the possibility of either affirming or denying the statement, or of leaving it up the personal inclinations of the individual – such has always been the fraudulent and daring method used by innovators to establish error. It allows for both the possibility of promoting error and of excusing it. It is as if the innovators pretended that they always intended to present the alternative passages, especially to those of simple faith who eventually come to know only some part of the conclusions of such discussions, which are published in the common language for everyone's use. Or again, as if the same faithful had the ability on examining such documents to judge such matters for themselves without getting confused and avoiding all risk of error. It is a most reprehensible technique for the insinuation of doctrinal errors and one condemned long ago by our predecessor St. Celestine who found it used in the writings of Nestorius, bishop of Constantinople, and which he exposed in order to condemn it with the greatest possible severity. Once these texts were examined carefully, the impostor was exposed and confounded, for he expressed himself in a plethora of words, mixing true things with others that were obscure; mixing at times one with the other in such a way that he was also able to confess those things which were denied while at the same time possessing a basis for denying those very sentences which he confessed. In order to expose such snares, something which becomes necessary with a certain frequency in every century, no other method is required than the following: Whenever it becomes necessary to expose statements that disguise some suspected error or danger under the veil of ambiguity, one must denounce the perverse meaning under which the error opposed to Catholic truth is camouflaged. (Pope Pius VI, Apostolic Constitution Auctorem Fidei, preamble; underlining added.)
Clear words from a real Pope! Armstrong should take them to heart and denounce Bergoglio instead of finding ever more creative ways to excuse and defend him.
(2) By talking about Jesus becoming bread or being enclosed in bread, Francis is using "phenomenological language"
The second argument Armstrong makes in defense of his "Pope" is that Francis is simply using "phenomenological language":
So why does Pope Francis often seem to equate "bread" (after consecration) with Jesus' Body? He doesn't say the more precise and literal "what was once bread" or "what has the appearance of bread" or "what continues to have the accidents of bread and wine". I contend that he's simply using phenomenological language. We do so all the time by saying, "the sun goes down" or "the sun rises."
It's everyday language that refers to appearance rather than essence. We know that He believes in transubstantiation because he refers to partaking of the Body and Blood in several of his homilies and other talks. He combines this orthodox belief with the language of appearance. And so he says, "the bread is truly his Body given, the wine is truly is Blood poured out" (8-16-15).
(Armstrong, "No, Pope Francis Did Not Deny Transubstantiation", Patheos, June 25, 2019; italics given.)
The problem is that by that reasoning, what heretic could not escape the charge of heresy? Are Lutherans, too, perhaps simply using phenomenological language? They too, as we saw, believe that "the bread is Christ's body and the wine is Christ's blood." But let's return to what Francis actually said. He said that in the Eucharist, "Jesus ... becomes bread", which is the exact opposite of what truly takes place: bread becomes Jesus. An appeal to phenomenological language will not help here: Under no appearance does Jesus become bread. The only thing that one could reasonably say is that Francis is using metaphorical -- not phenomenological -- language, but then that's not what Armstrong is saying, nor would it help his case very much. Yes, one can say that Christ becomes our food in the Holy Eucharist, but then that's literal and not metaphorical. Yes, one can even say that Christ is bread in a metaphorical sense (cf. Jn 6:48,51), but then Francis himself has ruled out that sense by saying in the very same sermon that in the Eucharist "we find God himself contained in a piece of bread." So, are we to believe that Francis meant that Christ is contained in metaphorical bread? And what would that even mean? On the other hand, if Christ Himself is the metaphorical bread that is contained in literal bread, we still have Consubstantiation! The fact that Francis then speaks of this bread as "broken and shared" doesn't help Armstrong's case, either. Since Armstrong invoked the "phenomenological language" defense, a few words should be said about the philosophical school of phenomenology, not because the Novus Ordo apologist invokes its principles -- he doesn't -- but because it enjoys some prominence in the Vatican II religion. Thus, a quick aside before we move on to Armstrong's next argument. Phenomenology is a discipline invented by the Austrian-German philosopher Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) in 1900. It concerns itself with the description and analysis of what appears to consciousness. Probably the most famous Novus Ordo proponent of the phenomenological method was the Polish apostate Karol Wojtyla ("Pope Saint" John Paul II). His infamous Theology of the Body is a prime example of the disaster that phenomenology can produce when it is applied to Sacred Theology. Other more or less well-known phenomenologists associated with the Vatican II Sect are Dietrich von Hildebrand, William Marra, Josef Seifert, Jean-Luc Marion, and Fr. Robert Sokolowski. Phenomenology is dangerous and can easily lead one into heresy, as is unwittingly demonstrated by Fr. Sokolowski, who has published a book in which he subjects the Blessed Sacrament to a phenomenological analysis. He writes:
The choice of bread and wine as the embodiment of the memorial of our Redemption furnishes an image of the Incarnation: as the Son took on human flesh and assumed it into the life of God, so the common material elements of bread and wine become transformed into signs and vehicles of that same life. And the fact that bread and wine are food confirms the sacrament's involvement in the distribution of life. It is in being fed that our life is sustained. The Eucharist is the most material of all the sacraments; it establishes a sacramentality in eating. The bread and wine given to us to be consumed are palpable images of the life that is conveyed to us in and through the Church. (Robert Sokolowski, Eucharistic Presence: A Study in the Theology of Disclosure [Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1994], p. 37; underlining added.)
No, Fr. Sokolowski: In the Holy Eucharist, bread and wine are not changed into mere signs, vehicles, or images. Neither are "bread and wine given to us to be consumed." Although, admittedly, this sounds quite a bit like what Francis said. Perhaps the Vatican's Modernist-in-Chief used not phenomenological language but phenomenology itself to prepare for Corpus Christi this year. The bottom line is this: Francis' overtly heretical statement cannot be explained away by saying he used phenomenological language.
(3) The Bible itself uses the term "bread" to refer to the Eucharist
Thinking that the "phenomenological language" defense gets his "Pope" off the hook, Armstrong moves to buttress his argumentation by appealing to Sacred Scripture: "Is it impermissible (or heretical) to speak in that way? I should think not, seeing that our Lord Jesus and the Gospel writers and St. Paul did so" (italics given). He then quotes the following six Scripture passages (we'll use the traditional Douay-Rheims translation here instead of whatever translation Armstrong used):
This is the bread which cometh down from heaven; that if any man eat of it, he may not die. I am the living bread which came down from heaven. ... As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father; so he that eateth me, the same also shall live by me. (Jn 6:50-51,58) And whilst they were at supper, Jesus took bread, and blessed, and broke: and gave to his disciples, and said: Take ye, and eat. This is my body. (Mt 26:26) And whilst they were eating, Jesus took bread; and blessing, broke, and gave to them, and said: Take ye. This is my body. (Mk 14:22) And taking bread, he gave thanks, and brake; and gave to them, saying: This is my body, which is given for you. Do this for a commemoration of me. (Lk 22:19) The chalice of benediction, which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? And the bread, which we break, is it not the partaking of the body of the Lord? For we, being many, are one bread, one body, all that partake of one bread. (1 Cor 10:16-17) For I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, that the Lord Jesus, the same night in which he was betrayed, took bread, and giving thanks, broke, and said: Take ye, and eat: this is my body, which shall be delivered for you: this do for the commemoration of me. In like manner also the chalice, after he had supped, saying: This chalice is the new testament in my blood: this do ye, as often as you shall drink, for the commemoration of me. For as often as you shall eat this bread, and drink the chalice, you shall shew the death of the Lord, until he come. Therefore whosoever shall eat this bread, or drink the chalice of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and of the blood of the Lord. But let a man prove himself: and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of the chalice. For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh judgment to himself, not discerning the body of the Lord. (1 Cor 11:23-29)
Thinking he has thus dealt a final blow against us evil Francis accusers, Armstrong concludes: "Thus, Pope Francis is using the language of Jesus, Paul, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. If he is wrong and is supposedly a eucharistic heretic, so are they. Since that is ridiculous, the accusation collapses in a heap" (italics given). So there! We're obviously very ignorant of Scripture! What in the world were we thinking?! Before we answer, we'll go ahead and make Armstrong's objection even stronger, for he missed something important: Even the traditional Roman rite of Mass itself uses the term "bread" to refer to the Holy Eucharist after the consecration has taken place:
Mindful, therefore, Lord, we, Thy servants, as also Thy holy people, of the same Christ, Your Son, our Lord, remember His blessed Passion, and also of His Resurrection from the dead, and finally of His glorious Ascension into heaven, offer unto Thy most excellent Majesty of Thine Own gifts, bestowed upon us, a pure Host (Victim), a holy Host, an unspotted Host, the holy Bread of eternal life [Panem sanctum vitae aeternae] and the chalice of everlasting salvation. ("Unde et Memores", Latin-English Missal, TraditionalCatholic.net; underlining added.)
In addition, just before the priest administers Holy Communion to himself, he prays: "I will take the Bread of heaven [Panem coelestem], and will call upon the Name of the Lord." And in the liturgical rite of Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, the priest chants at the conclusion of the hymn Tantum Ergo: "Thou hast given them bread from heaven" (Panem de coelo praestitisti eis). Yes, clearly, both Sacred Scripture and the Roman liturgy at times refer to the Holy Eucharist as "bread." The question is: Does this mean that what Francis said is orthodox? As we will see presently, the answer is: far from it. In the first passage cited, Jn 6:50-51,58, Christ Jesus refers to Himself as the Living Bread come down from Heaven. His use of the word "bread" there is obviously metaphorical, for He is certainly not literal bread, nor did He appear to be bread, either, so one cannot claim He was using phenomenological language. If we look attentively at the context of John 6, we see that Christ begins His Bread of Life discourse after the Jews challenge Him to work an even greater miracle than the multiplication of the loaves to feed the five thousand: "They said therefore to him: What sign therefore dost thou shew, that we may see, and may believe thee? What dost thou work? Our fathers did eat manna in the desert, as it is written: He gave them bread from heaven to eat" (Jn 6:30-31). The phrase "bread from heaven" appears in Ps 77:24 in reference to the miraculous manna of Moses (cf. Ex 16:11-15). Our Lord picks up this phrase and applies it to Himself -- not as though He were bread in a literal sense but in a metaphorical sense, for He would give His very literal Body and Blood to be consumed by His disciples as the true heavenly food, and that is "bread" much greater than that given by Moses! Hence He says:
I am the bread of life. Your fathers did eat manna in the desert, and are dead. This is the bread which cometh down from heaven; that if any man eat of it, he may not die. I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever; and the bread that I will give, is my flesh, for the life of the world. (Jn 6:48-52)
Therefore, unless Armstrong wants to argue that Francis spoke metaphorically, he cannot invoke John 6 in his defense. But then a metaphorical sense to Francis' words is ruled out by the simple fact that there is no reasonable metaphorical sense in which Christ is "contained in a piece of bread", as the apostate from Buenos Aires put it. Had Francis simply said that Christ is the Bread of Life or the Bread come down from Heaven, there wouldn't be an issue. But this he did not say. The second, third, and fourth passages cited (Mt 26:26; Mk 14:22; Lk 22:19) are of questionable relevance since the "bread" our Blessed Lord took into His sacred hands was, at that moment, still unconsecrated. Does Armstrong perhaps mean to argue that the Gospel writer nevertheless also speaks of it being broken and given to the disciples, after Transubstantiation has already occurred, without pointing out separately that the bread is then no longer bread? That would be Armstrong scraping the bottom of his apologetical barrel. If that kind of hairsplitting is what he wishes to hang his entire defense of Bergoglio on, he needs only to say so, and we can then fight that one out in a follow-up post. The fifth passage cited is 1 Cor 10:16-17, in which St. Paul refers to the Holy Eucharist as "the bread, which we break" and the "one bread" of which all partake. Is this an instance of phenomenological language? It might be -- the commentaries from Catholic Scripture scholars are not all in agreement. For example, Fr. George Leo Haydock notes that St. Paul speaks in this manner "because of the outward appearance of bread" (source), which would support a phenomenological understanding. On the other hand, Fr. Cornelius à Lapide sees in the term "bread" an idiomatic expression proper to Hebrew, called a "Hebraism", which would be closer to a metaphor:
I reply that bread, by a Hebraism, stands for any food (2 Kings ii. 22 [sic -- presumably means xii. 21 here]). So Christ is called manna (S. John vi. 31), and bread (Ibid. vi. 41). The reason is that bread is the common and necessary food of all. Moreover, S. Paul does not say "bread" simply, but "the bread which we break," i.e., the Eucharistic or transubstantiated bread, which is the body of Christ, and yet retains the species and power of bread. In this agree all the Fathers and orthodox doctors. Christ, on other occasions as well as in the Last Supper, is said to have broken and distributed the bread, according to the Hebrew custom by which the head of the house was wont to break the bread and divide the food among the guests sitting at table. For the Easterns did not have loaves shaped like ours, which need a knife to cut them up, but they used to make their bread into wide and thin cakes.... Hence "to break bread" signifies in Scripture "to feast," and breaking bread signifies any feast, dinner, or meal. In the New Testament it is appropriated to the Eucharist; therefore "to break bread" is a sacramental and ecclesiastical term. Hence S. Paul calls here the Eucharist "the bread which we break," meaning the species of the body of Christ which we break and consume in the sacrament. (The Great Commentary of Cornelius à Lapide: I Corinthians, trans. and ed. by W. F. Cobb [Edinburgh: John Grant, 1908], pp. 242-243; underlining added.)
Lapide then refers the reader to his commentary on 1 Cor 11:24, which takes us to the sixth passage cited by Armstrong (1 Cor 11:23-29). Lapide says:
Hence there is no foundation for the argument of Calvin, who says that all these words "took," "blessed," "brake," "gave," refer to bread only, and that therefore it was bread that the Apostles took and ate, not the body of Christ. My answer is that these words refer to the bread, not as it remained bread, but as it was changed into the body of Christ while being given, by the force of the words of consecration used by Christ. In the same way Christ might have said at Cana of Galilee, "Take, drink; this is wine," if He had wished by these words to change the water into wine. So we are in the habit of saying, Herod imprisoned, slew, buried, or permitted to be buried, S. John, when what he buried was not what he imprisoned: he imprisoned a man; he buried a corpse. Like this, and consequently just as common, is this way of speaking about the Eucharist, which is used by the Evanglists and S. Paul. (Great Commentary: I Corinthians, p. 272; underlining added.)
We can understand this final passage too, then, as either using the word "bread" in a phenomenological sense or else as a Hebraism meaning "food". All this leads us to the following conclusion: Out of the six passages brought up by Armstrong to substantiate the claim that the use of phenomenological language has biblical precedent, at most two of them actually do so, whereas the other four do not. Even the two that do, however, ultimately accomplish nothing in support of Francis, since we already saw under section (2) above that he wasn't using phenomenological language. Fundamentally, Armstrong's argument is quite a superficial one: He contends that because in Scripture there are some instances where the Holy Eucharist is referred to as "bread", therefore Francis is entitled to say that "Jesus ... becomes bread" and "God himself [is] contained in a piece of bread" in the Eucharist, both of which, taken at face value, are heretical. But does this follow? If Armstrong were right, his argument would prove too much. Then every Protestant statement about the Eucharist as bread would suddenly become orthodox, as long as it didn't explicitly rule out Transubstantiation. Then anyone could, at all times, simply refer to the Blessed Sacrament as bread on the grounds that "we're using biblical language again"! Then one could say that at Mass, bread is offered to the Holy Trinity (as indeed Montini's Novus Ordo Missae does say!), that in Holy Communion we receive bread, that we worship the bread in the monstrance.... We'd just be being extremely biblical, right? The supposed return to the use of the language of the Bible and of the Church Fathers only serves one end: the gradual subversion of Catholic dogma. It is no wonder, therefore, that in recent decades it has been advocated by the adherents of the New Theology (Nouvelle Theologie, aka Ressourcement Theology), many of whom were held in suspicion of heresy by the Holy Office or were otherwise censured (such as Chenu, Congar, Rahner, de Lubac, and others; cf. Pope Pius IX, Syllabus of Errors, n. 13). Pope Pius XII, however, shot down this noble-sounding but quite nefarious endeavor:
In theology some want to reduce to a minimum the meaning of dogmas; and to free dogma itself from terminology long established in the Church and from philosophical concepts held by Catholic teachers, to bring about a return in the explanation of Catholic doctrine to the way of speaking used in Holy Scripture and by the Fathers of the Church. They cherish the hope that when dogma is stripped of the elements which they hold to be extrinsic to divine revelation, it will compare advantageously with the dogmatic opinions of those who are separated from the unity of the Church and that in this way they will gradually arrive at a mutual assimilation of Catholic dogma with the tenets of the dissidents. Moreover they assert that when Catholic doctrine has been reduced to this condition, a way will be found to satisfy modern needs, that will permit of dogma being expressed also by the concepts of modern philosophy, whether of immanentism or idealism or existentialism or any other system. Some more audacious affirm that this can and must be done, because they hold that the mysteries of faith are never expressed by truly adequate concepts but only by approximate and ever changeable notions, in which the truth is to some extent expressed, but is necessarily distorted. Wherefore they do not consider it absurd, but altogether necessary, that theology should substitute new concepts in place of the old ones in keeping with the various philosophies which in the course of time it uses as its instruments, so that it should give human expression to divine truths in various ways which are even somewhat opposed, but still equivalent, as they say. They add that the history of dogmas consists in the reporting of the various forms in which revealed truth has been clothed, forms that have succeeded one another in accordance with the different teachings and opinions that have arisen over the course of the centuries. It is evident from what We have already said, that such tentatives not only lead to what they call dogmatic relativism, but that they actually contain it. The contempt of doctrine commonly taught and of the terms in which it is expressed strongly favor it. Everyone is aware that the terminology employed in the schools and even that used by the Teaching Authority of the Church itself is capable of being perfected and polished; and we know also that the Church itself has not always used the same terms in the same way. It is also manifest that the Church cannot be bound to every system of philosophy that has existed for a short space of time. Nevertheless, the things that have been composed through common effort by Catholic teachers over the course of the centuries to bring about some understanding of dogma are certainly not based on any such weak foundation. These things are based on principles and notions deduced from a true knowledge of created things. In the process of deducing, this knowledge, like a star, gave enlightenment to the human mind through the Church. Hence it is not astonishing that some of these notions have not only been used by the Oecumenical Councils, but even sanctioned by them, so that it is wrong to depart from them. Hence to neglect, or to reject, or to devalue so many and such great resources which have been conceived, expressed and perfected so often by the age-old work of men endowed with no common talent and holiness, working under the vigilant supervision of the holy magisterium and with the light and leadership of the Holy Ghost in order to state the truths of the faith ever more accurately, to do this so that these things may be replaced by conjectural notions and by some formless and unstable tenets of a new philosophy, tenets which, like the flowers of the field, are in existence today and die tomorrow; this is supreme imprudence and something that would make dogma itself a reed shaken by the wind. The contempt for terms and notions habitually used by scholastic theologians leads of itself to the weakening of what they call speculative theology, a discipline which these men consider devoid of true certitude because it is based on theological reasoning. (Pope Pius XII, Encyclical Humani Generis, nn. 14-17; underlining added.)
What our bread man Francis thinks of Scholasticism, we saw again just recently in Naples (for some commentary on that, be sure to listen to our free podcast). We can summarize Pope Pius XII's teaching as follows: It is not permissible to go back on Catholic formulations of doctrine that have been crystallized by the laborious work of the Church's holiest and most competent authorities over the centuries, on the pretext of returning to the language of Scripture or of the Church Fathers. And thus we have also implicitly answered Armstrong's point (4) There are instances of the Church Fathers themselves using the term "bread" in this way. It doesn't matter if there are such instances because it is simply not permissible to return to the language of the Church Fathers, as Pope Pius XII said, and for the reasons given. As is clearly evident from the rotten fruits of the New Theology, which is the essence of Novus Ordo theology, the use of such language in our day only accomplishes one thing: the gradual erosion of Catholic dogma.
(5) Popes have referred to the Eucharist as the "Bread of Angels"
Armstrong's last main argument is that Popes Leo XIII, Pius XI, and Pius XII have referred to the Blessed Sacrament as the "Bread of Angels." This phrase comes from Ps 77:25, which is the verse right after the one quoted earlier about the manna in the desert being the "bread of heaven." Verse 25 states: "Man ate the bread of angels: he sent them provisions in abundance." On this point, the Catholic Encyclopedia explains:
The expression "Bread of Angels" (Psalm 77:25) is a mere metaphor, which indicates that in the Beatific Vision where He is not concealed under the sacramental veils, the angels spiritually feast upon the God-man, this same prospect being held out to those who shall gloriously rise on the Last Day. (Catholic Encyclopedia, s.v. "The Blessed Eucharist as a Sacrament"; underlining added.)
Here, again, we are back to the fact that some scriptural references to bread are metaphorical. These could only help Armstrong if he were arguing that Francis was speaking metaphorically when he said that "Jesus ... becomes bread" and is "himself contained in a piece of bread." But we have already seen that these words cannot reasonably be understood in a metaphorical or phenomenological way.
A Final Argument
At the end of his post, Armstrong offers one last argument. He writes:
Jesus was omniscient, and so He knew that in 2019, there would be sedevacantist and reactionary extremists making out that Pope Francis denied transubstantiation because he used the same sort of language that He, the Apostle Paul, and the evangelists had used, as recorded in inspired revelation. And indeed, Protestants (and atheists) could have and have in fact made the same sorts of arguments against transubstantiation, by noting that the Bible refers to consecrated bread as still "bread." But He didn't change the way He talked. He didn't speak like a Thomist or systematic theologian. But His words and that of the others in the Bible are just as likely to be misunderstood as Pope Francis' identical language has been. He didn't consider that enough reason to use different language Himself, or to bring about different language used by the other Scripture writers and apostles. (Armstrong, "No, Pope Francis Did Not Deny Transubstantiation", Patheos, June 25, 2019; italics given.)
Though it may appear on the surface to have some merit, this too is lousy argumentation. The fact of the matter is that Christ gave us a Church to interpret, understand, explain, promulgate, and defend His Truth. Once this Truth has been authoritatively set forth, with the proper language to safeguard it from heresy and other errors, it is not permissible to abandon that terminology under the pretext of returning to biblical parlance. That is the clear teaching of Pope Pius XII, and adherence to it is not optional (unless you're Novus Ordo, of course, but then anything goes).
Summary and Concluding Thoughts
This has been a fairly long response, but this was necessary to make it thorough. Our rejoinder to Dave Armstrong is summarized as follows:
In none of the instances cited has Francis clearly affirmed belief in Transubstantiation, for all words quoted are reconcilable with the heresy of Consubstantiation just as well
Even if Francis has affirmed Transubstantiation somewhere, this proves only that he is content to preach at times orthodoxy and at other times heresy, to the greater confusion of the people and to allow himself plausible deniability for a more effective dissemination of heresy; this is consistent with the approach of past heretics condemned by the Church
Francis' declaration that in the Eucharist "Jesus ... becomes bread" and "there we find God himself contained in a piece of bread" is not reasonably explained by supposing him to be using phenomenological language, since God does not appear to become bread or appear to be contained in it, either
Our Lord and the Evangelists only use the word "bread" in reference to Christ metaphorically, not phenomenologically; St. Paul uses the term either phenomenologically, once or twice, or as a Hebraism meaning any type of food; this, however, cannot justify Francis' claim that God becomes bread or that He is enclosed in bread; if it could, then any Lutheran or other Protestant could just as legitimately appeal to St. Paul in defense of his heresy
Per Popes Pius VI and Pius XII, it is not permissible to return to biblical language or the language of the Church Fathers, for this would erode and subvert the Church's subsequent and unambiguous formulations of Catholic doctrine; not coincidentally, such subversion is precisely the fruit of Novus Ordo theology
The Popes' use of the term "Bread of Angels" is metaphorical, not phenomenological
At this point, we must pose a simple question to Mr. Armstrong: Imagine there were some deceitful religious figure (cf. 2 Cor 11:13; 2 Thess 2:8-10; 2 Pet 2:1) intent on teaching the heresy of Consubstantiation, yet while leaving himself a small loophole of plausible deniability so that he could always claim to be orthodox if challenged. Precisely how would such a one accomplish this if not in the manner Francis has done? Indeed it is hard to see what heretic couldn't make use of Armstrong's argumentation to promote his own "Bible-based" heresy, for what heretic does not claim to find his peculiar doctrine in Scripture? Therefore he could always claim to be using scriptural language to disseminate his false doctrine, as long as he doesn't explicitly state: "I reject Transubstantiation." We must not forget that although every portion of the Bible is certainly divinely inspired and entirely free from error (see 2 Tim 3:15-17), nevertheless Scripture is the "raw data" of written Revelation, and it belongs to the Church to explicate the exact doctrines contained therein, with their precise formulations; for in the Bible "are certain things hard to be understood, which the unlearned and unstable wrest ... to their own destruction" (2 Pet 3:16). Therefore, to "return to the language of the Bible" would necessarily lead to an obscuring of Catholic doctrine and would also, ironically, ultimately result in a rejection of the very truths taught by the Scriptures. This is precisely what we have seen in the New Theology of the very people who first insisted we needed to "return to the sources", rejecting Scholasticism. ("Cardinal" Gerhard Muller's heresy on the Holy Eucharist is a perfect case in point.) With regard to Transubstantiation in particular, Pope Pius VI went so far as to condemn an orthodox description of the dogma as "dangerous" and "favorable to heretics" because it omitted the term "Transubstantiation" and did not elaborate sufficiently on the way in which Christ is present in the Sacred Species:
The doctrine of the synod [of Pistoia], in that part in which, undertaking to explain the doctrine of faith in the rite of consecration, and disregarding the scholastic questions about the manner in which Christ is in the Eucharist, from which questions it exhorts priests performing the duty of teaching to refrain, it states the doctrine in these two propositions only: 1) after the consecration Christ is truly, really, substantially under the species; 2) then the whole substance of the bread and wine ceases, appearances only remaining; it (the doctrine) absolutely omits to make any mention of transubstantiation, or conversion of the whole substance of the bread into the body, and of the whole substance of the wine into the blood, which the Council of Trent defined as an article of faith, and which is contained in the solemn profession of faith; since by an indiscreet and suspicious omission of this sort knowledge is taken away both of an article pertaining to faith, and also of the word consecrated by the Church to protect the profession of it, as if it were a discussion of a merely scholastic question,--dangerous, derogatory to the exposition of Catholic truth about the dogma of transubstantiation, favorable to heretics. (Pope Pius VI, Apostolic Constitution Auctorem Fidei, n. 29; Denz. 1529; underlining added.)
One can only imagine what Pius VI would have said to Armstrong's argumentation that the statement "Christ is contained in a piece of bread" is orthodox because of biblical and phenomenological language! Think about where Armstrong's reasoning logically leads: Shall we proclaim that God the Father is greater than God the Son, which is a heresy, on the grounds that Christ said: "...for the Father is greater than I" (Jn 14:28), leaving out of account how the Church says this quote must be understood? Shall we refer to the Blessed Mother no longer as the "Mother of God", which is a term not found in the Bible, and instead call her only "the Mother of my Lord" (Lk 1:43)? Shall we say that Christ had "brethren" because that's the term used in the Gospels (e.g., see Mt 12:46-49; Mt 13:55; Jn 2:12), although it refers to the members of His extended family and not to any brothers or sisters in the strict sense, since His Mother was a perpetual virgin? Shall we refer to all fellow-Catholics as "saints" because that's what St. Paul did at times (e.g., see Rom 16:15; 1 Cor 14:33; Phil 1:1; Heb 13:24)? What would all this do to Catholic dogma and doctrine in the long term? To ask the question is to answer it. The idea of returning to the language of Scripture ultimately implies that it doesn't matter what the Church has defined, or what terminology she has sanctioned or forbidden, because we can never go wrong using the language Christ Himself and the biblical writers used. What an insult to Christ and His Church! After the last 6+ years of the Francis circus, it is beyond obvious that Bergoglio checks every single box of the how-to-identify-a-Modernist checklist. Given his track record, wherever there is any ambiguity in his words such that they can be understood in either an orthodox or a heterodox sense, we must assume that he intends to convey the heretical meaning, unless there is clear evidence to the contrary. That's because he has given us an excessive number of reasons to -- let's put it nicely -- suspect his orthodoxy, on an almost daily basis. Especially in conjunction with Francis' repeatedly displayed contempt for (what he claims to believe is) the Holy Eucharist, we recall Pope St. Pius X's admonition to recognize Modernists not only by what they say but also by how they speak and how they act:
Although they express their astonishment that We should number them amongst the enemies of the Church, no one will be reasonably surprised that We should do so, if, leaving out of account the internal disposition of the soul, of which God alone is the Judge, he considers their tenets, their manner of speech, and their action. Nor indeed would he be wrong in regarding them as the most pernicious of all the adversaries of the Church. (Pope St. Pius X, Encyclical Pascendi, n. 3; underlining added.)
Based on what Francis has said, how he has said it, and what he has done, over and over again in the last six years, we have evidence by the truckload that the man is a Modernist and not a Catholic. Let us wrap up this post by giving a final word of advice to Mr. Armstrong: Give it up. Quit trying to outdo Jimmy Akin in defending the indefensible. Join your co-religionists who tried for a long time to "explain" Francis but finally realized it could no longer reasonably be done. We're thinking of people like Catholic Answers' long-time radio host Patrick Coffin, the Vericast loudmouth Tim Haines, Church Disneyland's Michael Voris, the podcaster Taylor Marshall, and to an extent even the popular apologist Patrick Madrid. The emperor has no clothes, and everyone knows it. Exit Dave Armstrong. Image source: youtube.com (Vatican News - English; screenshot) License: fair useGod in migrants, God in the poor, God in bread!
"Jesus becomes Bread", "God contained in a Piece of Bread": Francis' Lutheran Corpus Christi
[UPDATE: See our Rejoinder to Dave Armstrong's Rebuttal here] This past Thursday was the Feast of Corpus Christi, the annual festival on the Roman calendar that celebrates the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar, the Holy Eucharist. In this sacrament, which is the literal and true Body, Blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus Christ, our Blessed Lord remains with us unto the end of time under the appearance of bread and wine. This sacrament is confected during the Holy Catholic Mass, when the priest consecrates bread and wine. The process whereby this unique and miraculous conversion takes place is called Transubstantiation. This is the Catholic dogma, and it is well known to any Catholic who takes his Faith seriously. Oftentimes the Feast of Corpus Christi cannot solemnly be observed on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday and so the celebration with its outdoor procession is transferred to the following Sunday. Beginning last year, "Pope" Francis (Jorge Bergoglio) has made the decision for the diocese of Rome to transfer the observance to Sunday, and so the solemnities for Corpus Christi took place there today. Based on his past behavior since at least 2014, it is clear that Francis is highly uncomfortable with Corpus Christi, which is also called the Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ in the English-speaking world. This was evident once again today. Vatican News has released the following video:
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7oIZSIHdbs[/embedyt]
Having led the Novus Ordo worship service outside Santa Maria Consolatrice in the Roman district of Casal Bertone, when it came time for the solemn procession, as is his custom, Francis outsourced the carrying of the monstrance to "Cardinal" Angelo de Donatis, the Vicar General of the diocese. Francis himself did not join the procession at all; as always, he quietly disappeared, only to pop up again at the endpoint of the procession, where an altar had been set up in a soccer field for Benediction of the (invalid Novus Ordo version of the) Blessed Sacrament. Presumably, Bergoglio had been driven there while everyone else followed the procession on foot.
Mr. de Donatis takes over while the "Pope" heads to his Ford Focus...
Once the entire procession arrived in the incredibly ugly surroundings of its destination -- a place Francis himself had picked, according to Sr. Bernadette Reis of Vatican Media, so that he could be close to the "peripheries" --, when it came time to kneel, Bergoglio kept standing before the monstrance although a large, gorgeous, and comfortable kneeler had been conspicuously placed before the altar for him to use:
As is well known, standing is Francis' custom -- he practically never kneels before what he claims to believe is the Real Presence of God Himself in the Most Holy Eucharist (with only some very rare exceptions). The only way to explain the continued presence of an eye-catching kneeler when it is clear that he will not use it, is that Francis himself insists on having it. That, in turn, can only reasonably be explained by the supposition that he wants to demonstrate as blatantly as possible his proud contempt and hatred for the Real Presence of Christ ostensibly contained in the monstrance.
The Vatican has never given an official explanation for Francis' refusal to kneel or genuflect, but as he likes to demonstrate every year on Holy Thursday for the washing of twelve people's feet, a physical inability to kneel is not the reason:
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RlqdlIPbFk[/embedyt]
This past April 11, Francis also showed how well and quickly -- even though not unassisted -- he is able to get on his knees when it really matters to him. Remember?
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrZvsy5PYGk[/embedyt]
We covered that calculated humiliation of the papacy here. But not only did Francis engage in his usual contemptible Corpus Christi behavior today, he also uttered clear and unmistakable heresy against the Holy Eucharist in his sermon. The Vatican has provided the Italian original here, and Zenit has released a complete English translation. The sermon's main emphasis was clearly not on the miraculous presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist or even on the miracle of the loaves and fishes which had been read during the Gospel (see Lk 9:11-17). Rather, the emphasis was excessively on sharing, blessing, giving, etc. -- all things having to do with our fellow man and nothing a Protestant would have a problem with. It was the usual attempt to redirect the focus from the supernatural to the natural, taking a vertical truth and converting it into something horizontal. It was the usual Bergoglian theme of, "OK, so there is this divinely-revealed truth, fine; but now what about the poor, the suffering, and the elderly?" However, all this is not even our concern now. Bergoglio's sermon for Corpus Christi did not just have the wrong emphasis, it was explicitly heretical. He said:
In the presence of the Eucharist, Jesus who becomes bread, this simple bread that contains the entire reality of the Church, let us learn to bless all that we have, to praise God, to bless and not curse all that has led us to this moment, and to speak words of encouragement to others. ...The Lord does great things with our littleness, as he did with the five loaves. He does not work spectacular miracles [!], but uses simple things, breaking bread in his hands, giving, distributing and sharing it. God's omnipotence is lowly, made up of love alone. And love can accomplish great things with little. The Eucharist teaches us this: for there we find God himself contained in a piece of bread. Being simple and essential, bread broken and shared, the Eucharist we receive allows us to see things as God does. (Antipope Francis, Homily for Corpus Christi, Zenit, June 23, 2019; italics removed; underlining added.)
Any child who wants to make his First Holy Communion would not be admitted if this were his understanding of the Eucharist. It is heresy! The only correct understanding of what happens to the bread and wine when they are consecrated by a priest during Holy Mass is the dogma of Transubstantiation, nothing else. What Bergoglio puts forward in today's homily is, at best, the Lutheran heresy of Consubstantiation, also called Impanation, according to which "the substance of Christ's Body exists together with the substance of bread, and in like manner the substance of His Blood together with the substance of wine" (Catholic Encyclopedia, s.v. "Consubstantiation"). This heresy was condemned at the Council of Trent in the 16th century:
Of course there will not be lacking now Novus Ordo apologists who will try to argue that Francis didn't mean what he said in a heretical sense. But at this point, only a fool would still be swayed by the constant hermeneutical acrobatics that people like Tim Staples, Jimmy Akin, or Dave Armstrong come up with to keep people chained to the illusion that this Argentinian apostate is the Pope of the Catholic Church, who is keeping the gates of hell from prevailing. It's not as if Francis were somehow incapable of speaking clearly and in an orthodox fashion. A man who constantly speaks in such a way that heresy is easily and naturally understood from his words, and does not lift a finger to do anything about it -- one, in fact, who continually pushes the envelope further and further --, is quite clearly a heretic. In Bergoglio's case, his heresy on the Holy Eucharist is expressed not only in his words but is confirmed also by the bodily contempt he shows on the Feast of Corpus Christi, year after year. [See our Rejoinder to Dave Armstrong's Rebuttal here] Image source: youtube.com (Vatican News - English; screenshots) Licenses: fair useWalt weighs in on current "Communion" controversy...
"Cardinal" Kasper says Protestant Spouses who are given Novus Ordo Communion don't need to believe in Transubstantiation
A lot of adherents of the Novus Ordo Sect are not aware that their church already officially permits Protestants to receive "Holy Communion", under certain conditions, without them renouncing their false religion and converting to Catholicism. This topic is of the greatest importance, as it proves definitively that the Vatican II Sect is not the Catholic Church, because according to traditional Catholic teaching, the Catholic Church is incapable of universally legislating disciplinary laws that are in themselves evil, harmful, or heretical:
The Church is infallible in her general discipline. By the term general discipline is understood the laws and practices which belong to the external ordering of the whole Church. Such things would be those which concern either external worship, such as liturgy and rubrics, or the administration of the sacraments. . . . If she [the Church] were able to prescribe or command or tolerate in her discipline something against faith and morals, or something which tended to the detriment of the Church or to the harm of the faithful, she would turn away from her divine mission, which would be impossible. (Rev. Jean Herrmann, Institutiones Theologiae Dogmaticae, Vol. 1 [4th ed., Rome, 1908], p. 258; quoted here.)
We have addressed this topic a few times on this blog before and argued it at length with copious documentation:
Where were the Dubia Supporters when John Paul II allowed "Communion" for PROTESTANTS?
Sacraments for Non-Catholics in the 1983 Code of Canon Law (Introduction to Sedevacantism, Part 3
Vatican's Rules on Communion for Protestants could be further Relaxed
This issue has been in the news again recently as Germany's Novus Ordo bishops have gone on record stating that they would like to begin permitting the Protestant spouses of "Catholics" to receive "Communion":
German "Bishops" cause Outrage by allowing "Holy Communion" for Protestants on Case-by-Case Basis
When other German Novus Ordo bishops then complained to the Vatican about it, Francis ordered representatives of both sides to come to Rome to discuss the matter -- with the result that Francis told them to figure it out themselves. We have produced a brief podcast covering the chaos:
By telling the German pretend-bishops to come, preferably, to a unanimous solution on the issue, Francis is implicitly agreeing that Protestant reception of what is supposed to be the Catholic Holy Eucharist, is perfectly acceptable. And why shouldn't he say that, given the teaching and practice of the Vatican II Sect? It is, after all, already condoned in principle in the 1983 Code of Canon Law, promulgated by "Saint" John Paul II and has its remote roots in the Second Vatican Council:
Canon 844 3. Catholic ministers administer the sacraments of penance, Eucharist, and anointing of the sick licitly to members of Eastern Churches which do not have full communion with the Catholic Church if they seek such on their own accord and are properly disposed. This is also valid for members of other Churches which in the judgment of the Apostolic See are in the same condition in regard to the sacraments as these Eastern Churches. 4. If the danger of death is present or if, in the judgment of the diocesan bishop or conference of bishops, some other grave necessity urges it, Catholic ministers administer these same sacraments licitly also to other Christians not having full communion with the Catholic Church, who cannot approach a minister of their own community and who seek such on their own accord, provided that they manifest Catholic faith in respect to these sacraments and are properly disposed. (Antipope John Paul II, Novus Ordo Code of Canon Law, Canon 844.3-4)
In 2003, the same John Paul II reaffirmed this impious and sacrilegious law in an encyclical letter:
While it is never legitimate to concelebrate [the New Mass] in the absence of full communion, the same is not true with respect to the administration of the Eucharist under special circumstances, to individual persons belonging to Churches or Ecclesial Communities not in full communion with the Catholic Church. (Antipope John Paul II, "Encyclical" Ecclesia De Eucharistia, n. 45)
This goes for the Latin church as much as it does for the Eastern Novus Ordo churches, whose Code of Canons for the Eastern Churches, published in 1990 by the same John Paul II, legislates the exact same thing (see Canon 671 §§ 3-4). As noted, this sacrilegious and implicitly heretical practice is rooted in Vatican II itself:
…[W]orship in common (communicatio in sacris) is not to be considered as a means to be used indiscriminately for the restoration of Christian unity. There are two main principles governing the practice of such common worship: first, the bearing witness to the unity of the Church, and second, the sharing in the means of grace. Witness to the unity of the Church very generally forbids common worship to Christians, but the grace to be had from it sometimes commends this practice. The course to be adopted, with due regard to all the circumstances of time, place, and persons, is to be decided by local episcopal authority, unless otherwise provided for by the Bishops' Conference according to its statutes, or by the Holy See. (Vatican II, Decree on Ecumenism Unitatis Redintegratio, n. 8; underlining added.)
To admit Protestant spouses to receive "Communion" in the Vatican II Church, then, is not inconsistent in the least. It is evil, of course -- but for someone who adheres to Vatican II, it is certainly in line with the council and the post-conciliar magisterium of Francis' predecessors. Now one of Germany's most influential Modernist theologians has weighed in on the issue: the apostate "Cardinal" Walter Kasper. (Yes, he's definitely an apostate, as demonstrated here.) On May 15, Vaticanist Andrea Tornielli of La Stampa posted an English translation of an interview he conducted with Fr. Kasper about the current "intercommunion" controversy in Germany. With regard to the stipulation in John Paul II's Code of Canon Law that says that before they can receive the Novus Ordo Eucharist, Protestants must "manifest Catholic faith in respect to these sacraments", Kasper said:
The two encyclicals [of John Paul II on Ecumenism and the Eucharist, respectively] insist very much on the Protestants' adherence to the Catholic doctrine on the Eucharist, that is, on manifesting "the faith which the Catholic Church professes", to quote John Paul II himself. This seems very important to me, because the sacraments are sacraments of faith. For a true Lutheran, based on confessional writings, the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist is obvious. The problem is the liberal and the reformed (Calvinists) Protestants. Especially with them the problem must be clarified in pastoral conversations. Certainly, one cannot ask [of] a Protestant what is normally asked [of] a Catholic. It is enough to believe: "This is (est) the body of Christ, given for you". Luther also insisted on this. Even a "normal" Catholic believer does not know the most developed doctrines on transubstantiation or consubstantiation. (Walter Kasper, in Andrea Tornielli, "The Council and two encyclicals admit cases of Eucharist to Protestants", Vatican Insider, May 15, 2018)
As a professional Modernist, Kasper knows exactly how to subvert and neutralize every last bit of Catholicism. He also knows how to twist words to end up meaning the opposite of what they actually state. Look at what Kasper does here: He correctly notes that John Paul II -- who, by the way, was not exactly an orthodox Catholic himself -- required "Protestants' adherence to the Catholic doctrine on the Eucharist". Then he says he agrees with this and pays lip service to what supposedly is that Catholic doctrine. But then he acts like the Lutheran heresy of Consubstantiation is entirely compatible with the Catholic dogma of Transubstantiation, when it is in fact a denial of that dogma! Kasper's position is essentially, "Let's not fuss about this. Lutherans and Catholics both believe that Christ somehow is present, and that's good enough." No, it is not! Every Catholic is taught and must believe the dogma of Transubstantiation:
If anyone says that in the sacred and holy sacrament of the Eucharist there remains the substance of bread and wine together with the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, and denies that wonderful and singular conversion of the whole substance of the bread into the body, and of the entire substance of the wine into the blood, the species of the bread and wine only remaining, a change which the Catholic Church most fittingly calls transubstantiation: let him be anathema. (Council of Trent, Session 13, Canon 2; Denz. 884)
Kasper's claim that "one cannot ask [of] a Protestant what is normally asked [of] a Catholic" is outrageous and entirely gratuitous. It is offered without any evidence or supporting argumentation. Furthermore, his assertion that it "is enough to believe: 'This is (est) the body of Christ, given for you'" is encouraging heresy and explicitly condemned by the Church:
The doctrine of the [condemned] synod [of Pistoia], in that part in which, undertaking to explain the doctrine of faith in the rite of consecration, and disregarding the scholastic questions about the manner in which Christ is in the Eucharist, from which questions it exhorts priests performing the duty of teaching to refrain, it states the doctrine in these two propositions only: 1) after the consecration Christ is truly, really, substantially under the species; 2) then the whole substance of the bread and wine ceases, appearances only remaining; it (the doctrine) absolutely omits to make any mention of transubstantiation, or conversion of the whole substance of the bread into the body, and of the whole substance of the wine into the blood, which the Council of Trent defined as an article of faith, and which is contained in the solemn profession of faith; since by an indiscreet and suspicious omission of this sort knowledge is taken away both of an article pertaining to faith, and also of the word consecrated by the Church to protect the profession of it, as if it were a discussion of a merely scholastic question, -- dangerous, derogatory to the exposition of Catholic truth about the dogma of transubstantiation, favorable to heretics. (Pope Pius VI, Bull Auctorem Fidei, no. 29; Denz. 1529)
What Kasper proposes in his interview is even worse than what the 18th-century regional synod of Pistoia proposed regarding the Eucharist, which Pope Pius VI condemned; because Kasper implicitly accepts the heresy of Consubstantiation, acting as though it were not a denial of Transubstantiation but merely an alternate view that does not differ from the true dogma in any essential way. This itself is heresy. The fact is that many prelates in the Vatican II Church themselves do not believe in Transubstantiation. The most blatant case in point today is "Cardinal" Gerhard Ludwig Muller, who has proposed what might be called "Transcommunication" instead:
The Heresies of "Cardinal" Muller, Part 1: Denial of Transubstantiation
Other major Novus Ordo theologians of recent decades have proposed other heretical alternatives to Transubstantiation, such as Transsignification and Transfinalization. Pope Pius XII condemned them:
Some even say that the doctrine of transubstantiation, based on an antiquated philosophic notion of substance, should be so modified that the real presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist be reduced to a kind of symbolism, whereby the consecrated species would be merely efficacious signs of the spiritual presence of Christ and of His intimate union with the faithful members of His Mystical Body. (Pope Pius XII, Encyclical Humani Generis, n. 26)
For Kasper to insist that it suffices to believe that "This is (est) the body of Christ" is disingenuous, for every Protestant believes that, even those who deny any kind of Real Presence. After all, Christ Himself used these words: "Take ye, and eat. This is my body" (Mt 26:26). The whole theological debate between Catholics and Protestants is about the meaning of the "is" here, so it is simply deceitful to claim that it suffices to acknowledge that "this is my body". Lastly, for Kasper to state that "[e]ven a 'normal' Catholic believer does not know the most developed doctrines on transubstantiation or consubstantiation" says a lot about the sorry state of Novus Ordo catechesis -- but it says nothing about what Catholics must or need not believe. By the way: When in 2015 Francis was asked directly by a Lutheran woman about whether she would be permitted to receive "Communion" at a "Catholic Mass", he gave a typical Bergoglian answer: Yes, no, maybe, and you figure it out. And he did it in the presence of none other than "Cardinal" Kasper! Remember?
Francis on Shared "Communion" with Lutherans: "Life is Bigger than Explanations"!
When it comes to issues on which there can only be one answer, the "Dictator Pope" suddenly prefers not to dictate at all. How he acts all depends on whatever does the most harm to Catholicism. That's his principle of action. And so we have yet another episode in the ongoing theological freak show of the Novus Ordo Sect. The irony to it all is that since the "New Mass" of Paul VI (Novus Ordo Missae) is actually invalid, especially (but not only) because it is usually offered by "priests" who are not validly ordained -- the Protestant spouses who believe that what they are receiving in Novus Ordo communion is essentially just ordinary bread, are actually right. This whole thing is beyond parody. Image source: Wikimedia Commons (Centro Televisivo Vaticano) License: CC BY 3.0Oops: The former "Guardian of Orthodoxy" is a Heretic himself!
The Heresies of "Cardinal" Müller, Part 1: His Denial of Transubstantiation
Time and again the secular and Novus Ordo media have portrayed "Cardinal" Gerhard Ludwig Müller (b. 1947) as a conservative Catholic theologian and, especially in his recently-completed five-year role as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, that is, as the Vatican's chief "guardian of orthodoxy". What many people do not realize and some appear to deliberately ignore is the fact that there is copious evidence to show that the 69-year-old German theologian is in fact a heretic himself. No, that's not an exaggeration. In this post and those that follow in this series we will demonstrate beyond doubt that Gerhard Muller may indeed be a lot of things but member of the Roman Catholic Church is not one of them. Although we have mentioned Muller's heresies on this web site before from time to time, a dedicated blog post series on this very topic is justified on account of the fact that the idea of Muller being an orthodox Catholic "no-compromise" theologian is still enjoying widespread popularity and quite unjustly so. This misconception is mainly due to the fact that he insists, entirely correctly, that adultery is never permissible and that those who are publicly known to persist in this sin cannot be admitted to the sacraments. This alone, however, does not make a Catholic. It does not suffice to adhere to one dogma or even most; one must adhere to all of them without exception. He who pertinaciously doubts or denies even one dogma is not a Catholic at all, regardless of what other orthodox ideas he may hold:
The practice of the Church has always been the same, as is shown by the unanimous teaching of the Fathers, who were wont to hold as outside Catholic communion, and alien to the Church, whoever would recede in the least degree from any point of doctrine proposed by her authoritative Magisterium. Epiphanius, Augustine, Theodore drew up a long list of the heresies of their times. St. Augustine notes that other heresies may spring up, to a single one of which, should any one give his assent, he is by the very fact cut off from Catholic unity. "No one who merely disbelieves in all (these heresies) can for that reason regard himself as a Catholic or call himself one. For there may be or may arise some other heresies, which are not set out in this work of ours, and, if any one holds to one single one of these he is not a Catholic" (S. Augustinus, De Haeresibus, n. 88). (Pope Leo XIII, Encyclical Satis Cognitum, n. 9)
Müller's Academic Background
Muller was a student of the infamous "Cardinal" Karl Lehmann (b. 1936), the long-time "bishop" of Mainz, Germany. Lehmann himself was a student of the Modernist Fr. Karl Rahner (1904-1984), who at the time of the Second Vatican Council was one of those notorious suit-and-tie priests together with his buddy, Fr. Joseph Ratzinger. Muller wrote his 1977 doctoral dissertation and his 1985 so-called Habilitationsschrift (an additional dissertation required to be allowed to teach at a German university) under "Cardinal" Lehmann. The fact that his doctoral thesis focused on the ecumenical-sacramental theology of the Lutheran Dietrich Bonhoeffer (source) says plenty about what kind of "theology" resides in the Mullerian mind. In 1986, he became professor of dogmatic theology and the history of dogma at the University of Munich, a position in which he remained until 2002, when "Pope" John Paul II appointed him "bishop" of Regensburg. Muller has authored numerous books, most famously his 900-page dogmatic theology manual, Katholische Dogmatik, which is currently in its 10th edition (first published in 1995). He is an admirer of Joseph Ratzinger, who tasked him with compiling, editing, and publishing his Collected Works, the first volume of which was published in 2008 (the entire collection spans 16 volumes). On July 2, 2012, the same Fr. Ratzinger, as "Pope" Benedict XVI, appointed Muller Prefect of the Congregation for the Destruction of the Faith. He held this post until July 1 of this year, when Francis declined to renew his contract for another five years. It is time, therefore, to take a good look at the theology presented by Mr. Muller, who, considering his academic career, has no excuse in the world that would absolve him from the charge of heresy, whether in its material element (dogma-denying error in the intellect) or its formal element (pertinacity in the will). The first installment in this series on the heresies of "Cardinal" Muller will focus on the man's denial of the well-known Catholic dogma of Transubstantiation.
The Catholic Dogma of Transubstantiation
Before we examine Muller's writings on the issue, let us briefly review the teaching of the Catholic Church on the Real Presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist, which is accomplished through the mystery of Transubstantiation at the consecration during the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. The clearest and definitive dogmatic teaching on this comes from the Council of Trent, Session 13, promulgated by Pope Julius III in 1551:
First of all the holy Synod teaches and openly and simply professes that in the nourishing sacrament of the Holy Eucharist after the consecration of the bread and wine our Lord Jesus Christ, true God and man, is truly, really, and substantially contained under the species of those sensible things. For these things are not mutually contradictory, that our Savior Himself is always seated at the right hand of the Father in heaven according to the natural mode of existing, and yet that in many other places sacramentally He is present to us in His own substance by that manner of existence which, although we can scarcely express it in words, yet we can, however, by our understanding illuminated by faith, conceive to be possible to God, and which we ought most steadfastly to believe. For thus all our forefathers, as many as were in the true Church of Christ, who have discussed this most holy sacrament, have most openly professed that our Redeemer instituted this so wonderful a sacrament at the Last Supper, when after the blessing of the bread and wine He testified in clear and definite words that He gave them His own body and His own blood; and those words which are recorded [Matt. 26:26ff.; Mark 14:22; Luke 22:19 ff.] by the holy Evangelists, and afterwards repeated by St. Paul [1 Cor. 11:23 ff.], since they contain within themselves that proper and very clear meaning in which they were understood by the Fathers, it is a most disgraceful thing for some contentious and wicked men to distort into fictitious and imaginary figures of speech, by which the real nature of the flesh and blood of Christ is denied, contrary to the universal sense of the Church, which, recognizing with an ever grateful and recollecting mind this most excellent benefit of Christ, as the pillar and ground of truth [1 Tim. 3:15], has detested these falsehoods, devised by impious men, as satanical. This, indeed, the most Holy Eucharist has in common with the other sacraments, that it is a "symbol of a sacred thing and a visible form of an invisible grace"; but this excellent and peculiar thing is found in it, that the other sacraments first have the power of sanctifying, when one uses them, but in the Eucharist there is the Author of sanctity Himself before it is used. For the apostles had not yet received the Eucharist from the hand of the Lord [Matt. 26:26; Mark 14:22] when He Himself truly said that what He was offering was His body; and this belief has always been in the Church of God, that immediately after the consecration the true body of our Lord and His true blood together with His soul and divinity exist under the species of bread and wine; but the body indeed under the species of bread, and the blood under the species of wine by the force of the words, but the body itself under both by force of that natural connection and concomitance by which the parts of Christ the Lord, "who hath now risen from the dead to die no more" [Rom. 6:9], are mutually united, the divinity also because of that admirable hypostatic union with His body and soul. Therefore, it is very true that as much is contained under either species as under both. For Christ whole and entire exists under the species of bread and under any part whatsoever of that species, likewise the whole (Christ) is present under the species of wine and under its parts. But since Christ, our Redeemer, has said that that is truly His own body which He offered under the species of bread [cf. Matt. 26:26ff.; Mark 14:22ff.; Luke 22:19 ff.; 1 Cor. 11:23 ff.], it has always been a matter of conviction in the Church of God, and now this holy Synod declares it again, that by the consecration of the bread and wine a conversion takes place of the whole substance of bread into the substance of the body of Christ our Lord, and of the whole substance of the wine into the substance of His blood. This conversion is appropriately and properly called transubstantiation by the Catholic Church. ... Can. 1. If anyone denies that in the sacrament of the most holy Eucharist there are truly, really, and substantially contained the body and blood together with the soul and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ, and therefore the whole Christ, but shall say that He is in it as by a sign or figure, or force, let him be anathema. Can. 2. If anyone says that in the sacred and holy sacrament of the Eucharist there remains the substance of bread and wine together with the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, and denies that wonderful and singular conversion of the whole substance of the bread into the body, and of the entire substance of the wine into the blood, the species of the bread and wine only remaining, a change which the Catholic Church most fittingly calls transubstantiation: let him be anathema. (Council of Trent, Decree on the Most Holy Eucharist; Denz. 874-877; 833-884.)
Notice that although the notion of Transubstantiation is somewhat complex, Holy Mother Church nevertheless teaches it not in a confusing or obscure manner, but with great clarity so as to allow the believer to understand this mystery as much as is humanly possible. Anyone can glean from this that the Church teaches that when the consecration takes place at Mass, the substance of the bread and wine ceases to be and is converted into the Body and Blood of Christ, the mere appearances of bread and wine remaining. The Catechism of the Council of Trent, edited by St. Charles Borromeo and published by Pope St. Pius V, explains this further in its section on the Sacrament of the Eucharist.
Müller's Idea of the Real Presence
The clear and magnificent Catholic teaching on Transubstantiation being fresh in our minds, we will now examine the doctrine that is taught by Mr. Muller, which can only be described as insufferable mystifying gobbledygook.
Our sources for the Mullerite doctrine will be three books authored by him in which he explains in some detail what it is he believes about the Real Presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist. They are the following: Mit der Kirche denken ["Thinking with the Church"], 2nd ed. (Wurzburg: Johann Wilhelm Naumann, 2002); Die Messe: Quelle christlichen Lebens ["The Mass: Source of Christian Life"] (Augsburg: Sankt Ulrich Verlag, 2002); Katholische Dogmatik ["Catholic Dogmatic Theology"], 8th ed. (Freiburg: Herder, 2010). As none of these books have been translated into English, we will provide our own translation of the passages to be quoted. The first quotation we will examine is taken from Muller's book Thinking with the Church. We will first provide the original German, followed immediately by a faithful English translation. If you think some of this sounds grotesque, the problem is not with the translation -- it is with Muller's theology.
Jesus nimmt die Mahlgaben von Brot und Wein in seine Hände. Er bringt sie so in die unmittelbare Einheit mit seiner leiblichen Präsenz. Sein Stiftungswort macht sie zu Zeichen, in denen er selber in seiner ganzen geschichtlichen und leiblichen Gegenwart als Sohn des Vaters kommunizierbar wird. Jesus spricht an den Vater das Dankgebet, die Eucharistia. In dieser dankenden Hingabe des ewigen und des Mensch gewordenen Sohnes nimmt er Brot und Wein in seinen Gehorsam und seine Liebe zum Vater hinein. Er reicht nun den Jüngern Brot und Wein. In diesem Darreichungsgestus zeigt sich seine hingebende Liebe für uns und seine Bereitschaft, seine Lebenshingabe zum Zeichen der sich in der Geschichte durchsetzenden Liebe Gottes zu den Menschen zu machen. Er läßt die Jünger gleichzeitig aber auch teilnehmen an seinem Hingabeakt an den Vater für uns. Wer darum diese Gaben von Brot und Wein genießt, kommuniziert real an der Menschheit Jesu und seinem ganzen Schicksal, nämlich an seinem Leib und seinem Blut. Er tritt darin in die Wirklichkeit des Neuen Bundes, d. h. die liebende Gemeinschaft mit Gott ein, die in der Offenbarung der Liebeseinheit von Vater und Sohn kommunizierbar geworden ist. Brot und Wein sind hier selbstverständlich nicht Vertretungssymbole, sondern Realsymbole, weil sie am Wirklichkeitsgehalt der menschlichen und leibhaftigen Selbsthingabe Jesu teilhaben und eben aufgrund des Stiftungswortes diese Wirklichkeit gegenwärtig machen. [English translation:] Jesus takes the gifts of bread and wine into his hands. In this way he unites them directly with his bodily presence. His words of institution make them into signs in which he himself becomes communicable in his entire historical and bodily presence as the Son of the Father. Jesus prays to the Father the prayer of thanksgiving, the Eucharistia. In this grateful abandonment of the eternal and the incarnate Son, he takes bread and wine into his obedience and his love for the Father. He now hands the bread and wine to the disciples. In this offertory gesture his devoted love for us shows itself, as does his willingness to make the offering of his life a sign of the love of God for men, which [love] asserts itself in history. At the same time, however, he allows the disciples to participate in his act of abandonment to the Father for us. Whoever, therefore, consumes these gifts of bread and wine, partakes in a real way of the humanity of Jesus and his entire destiny, that is to say, of his body and blood. He enters thus into the reality of the New Covenant, that is, [into] loving fellowship with God, which has become communicable in the revelation of the unity of love of Father and Son. Thus bread and wine are not, of course, representational symbols [Vertretungssymbole] but reality-symbols [Realsymbole], because they share in the reality-content [Wirklichkeitsgehalt] of the human and bodily self-giving of Jesus and, on account of the words of institution, make this reality present. (Gerhard Ludwig Müller, Mit der Kirche denken, p. 47)
Got that?! In case you didn't, do not worry because there is more, lots more. We now turn to Muller's book on the Mass:
Nun ergeben sich an dem Begriff "Leib und Blut" Mißverständnisse, wenn man meinte, Fleisch und Blut stünden hier für die physischen und biologischen Bestandteile des historischen Menschen Jesus. Es ist auch nicht einfach der verklärte Leib des auferstandenen Herrn gemeint, wenn man hier unter Leib einfach die materielle Dimension am Menschsein meint.... In Wirklichkeit bedeuten Leib und Blut Christi nicht die materiellen Bestandteile des Menschen Jesus während seiner Lebenszeit oder in der verklärten Leiblichkeit. Leib und Blut bedeuten hier vielmehr Gegenwart Christi im Zeichen des Mediums von Brot und Wein, die im Hier und Jetzt sinnengebundener menschlicher Wahrnehmung kommunizierbar wird. So wie die Jünger vor Ostern mit Jesus wahrnehmbar zusammen waren, indem sie seine Worte hörten und ihn in seiner sinnlichen Gestalt auf eine menschengemäße Weise wahrnahmen, so haben wir jetzt Gemeinschaft mit Jesus Christus, vermittelt durch das Essen und Trinken des Brotes und des Weines. [English translation:] The term "body and blood" would be misunderstood if one were to suppose flesh and blood to mean the physical and biological components of the historical man Jesus. Neither is it simply the transfigured body of the risen Lord if by "body" is meant the material dimension of being human.... In reality, "body and blood of Christ" do not mean the material components of the man Jesus during his lifetime or in his transfigured corporeality. Rather, body and blood here mean the presence of Christ in the sign of the medium of bread and wine, which [presence] is made communicable in the here and now of sense-bound human perception. Just as before Easter the disciples were perceptibly together with Jesus by hearing his words and perceiving him in his sensory figure in accordance with human nature, we now have fellowship with Jesus Christ, communicated through the eating and drinking of the bread and the wine. (Gerhard Ludwig Müller, The Mass: Source of Christian Life, pp. 139-140)
It's good to know that Mr. Muller eats and drinks "bread and wine" at "Mass", lest anyone should mistake him for a Catholic. Although Muller does indeed speak of a "conversion of substance" (Wesensverwandlung) on the very same page from which we just quoted, it does not take long to find out that his idea of conversion of substance is not at all the Catholic dogma of Transubstantiation. On the contrary, he attempts a phenomenological reinterpretation of the notion of substance:
Das natürliche Wesen dieser Gaben besteht nicht in dem, was naturwissenschaftlich als letzter Baustein ausfindig gemacht werden kann. Das Wesen dieser Gaben kann man nur in ihrem Bezug zum Menschen verdeutlichen. Die Wesensbestimmung muß also anthropologisch ansetzen. Das natürliche Wesen dieser Gaben als Frucht der Erde und der menschlichen Arbeit, als die Einheit eines Natur- und Kulturproduktes besteht darin, Nahrung und Stärkung des Menschen und die Gemeinschaft der Menschen im Zeichen des gemeinsamen Mahles zu verdeutlichen. Natürlicherweise sind diese Gaben auch ein Hinweis darauf, daß unser Leben und die Erhaltung unseres Daseins von Gott abhängt, dem wir uns deshalb zu Dank verpflichtet fühlen. Dieses natürliche Wesen von Brot und Wein wird von Gott verwandelt in diesem Sinn, daß das Wesen von Brot und Wein nun darin besteht, die Heilsgemeinschaft mit Gott anzuzeigen und zu realisieren, die in Menschwerdung, Kreuz und Auferstehung des Sohnes Gottes und in der Sendung des Heiligen Geistes gegeben ist. ...In der Wesensverwandlung geht es also darum, daß Brot und Wein aus natürlichen Medien der Kommunikation zum neuen Weg einer übernatürlichen Kommunikation werden zwischen Gott und der Menschheit, mit dem Ziel der Vermittlung des Heils, das in Jesus Christus sich real-geschichtlich ereignet hat. Christus ist also real gegenwärtig in einem objektiven Sinn, weil Gott allein den absoluten Horizont setzt, vor dem die Weltwirklichkeit und die Geschichte und die Weise seiner Selbstvermittlung betrachtet werden kann. [English translation:] The natural substance of these gifts [of bread and wine] does not consist in that which can be examined by natural science as the ultimate building block. The substance of these gifts can only be explained in their relation to man. Thus the determination of substance must begin anthropologically. The natural substance of these gifts as the fruit of the earth and of human labor, as the integrity of a product of nature and culture, consists in showing clearly the nourishment and refreshment of man and the human community under the auspices of the common meal. Of course these gifts are also an indication that our life and the preservation of our being depends upon God, which is why we feel we owe Him our gratitude. These natural substances of bread and wine are converted by God in the sense that the substance of bread and wine now [i.e. after the conversion] consists in indicating and bringing about the saving communion with God which is given in the Incarnation, Cross, and Resurrection of the Son of God and the sending of the Holy Ghost. ...In other words, the conversion of substance means that bread and wine go from being natural vehicles of communication to being a new way of supernatural communication between God and man, with the goal of transmitting salvation, which occurred in Jesus Christ in a real-historical way. Christ, then, is really present in an objective sense, because it is God alone who fixes the absolute horizon, before which the reality of the world and history and the manner of his self-communication can be contemplated. (Gerhard Ludwig Müller, The Mass: Source of Christian Life, pp. 140-141)
Is your head spinning yet from all the bafflegab? One thing is clear: Whatever Muller may actually affirm about the Real Presence of Christ, it's definitely not the Catholic dogma of Transubstantiation.
False Philosophy behind Müller's Heresy
As becomes evident here, Muller has a completely different (and false) idea of what the philosophical notion of substance is. For this reason alone he can speak all he wants about a "conversion of substance" -- he will always mean something other than Transubstantiation. The Catholic dogma to which he is obliged to adhere under pain of heresy and eternal damnation, however, is not some idea of conversion of substance, or some kind of Real Presence, but Transubstantiation specifically. And for this reason, we can and must say that Muller is a genuine heretic. In another place of the same book, the heretical "cardinal" asserts: "The uniformity of this confession [of faith in Transubstantiation] is not dependent on the Aristotelian distinction of substance and accidents" (The Mass, p. 196). However, the exact opposite is the case, as Pope Pius VI made clear in his 1794 document Auctorem Fidei, a bull in which he condemned a number of errors that had been put forward by the diocesan synod of Pistoia, Italy -- a prototype of Vatican II, incidentally -- eight years prior:
The doctrine of the synod, in that part in which, undertaking to explain the doctrine of faith in the rite of consecration, and disregarding the scholastic questions about the manner in which Christ is in the Eucharist, from which questions it exhorts priests performing the duty of teaching to refrain, it states the doctrine in these two propositions only: 1) after the consecration Christ is truly, really, substantially under the species; 2) then the whole substance of the bread and wine ceases, appearances only remaining; it (the doctrine) absolutely omits to make any mention of transubstantiation, or conversion of the whole substance of the bread into the body, and of the whole substance of the wine into the blood, which the Council of Trent defined as an article of faith, and which is contained in the solemn profession of faith; since by an indiscreet and suspicious omission of this sort knowledge is taken away both of an article pertaining to faith, and also of the word consecrated by the Church to protect the profession of it, as if it were a discussion of a merely scholastic question,--dangerous, derogatory to the exposition of Catholic truth about the dogma of transubstantiation, favorable to heretics. (Pope Pius VI, Bull Auctorem Fidei, n. 29; Denz. 1529; underlining added.)
Notice that the definition which the Sovereign Pontiff assails here does not in fact contain anything positively erroneous. It was condemned on the grounds that it suspiciously omitted what is essential to the integrity of the dogma, that is, the very term "Transubstantiation" and the precise truth it expresses. By the middle of the 20th century, some theologians favored replacing Transubstantiation with a different concept, arguing that the Aristotelian notion of substance had been superseded. Pope Pius XII firmly rejected any such attempts:
These condemnations by Popes Pius VI and Pius XII drive a dagger through the heart of Muller's approach to the Real Presence. His underlying thesis -- namely, that one can adequately express the dogma of the Real Presence without the Aristotelian-scholastic terminology consecrated by the Church for this purpose -- is thus exposed as false and dangerous. It is important to keep in mind that the notions of substance and accident are an intrinsic part of the dogma. They are not merely a convenient explanatory model temporarily borrowed by the Church in order to express a truth to a particular audience at a particular point in the long-gone past, only to be replaced by one more suitable to our times as the need may arise. If that were so, then the Church would be in continual need of "updating" (aggiornamento!) her teachings according to the whims and mores of contemporary man. Instead of being "the pillar and ground of the truth" (1 Tim 3:15), the Church would be but a house "built ... upon the sand" (Mt 7:26), a "reed shaken with the wind" (Mt 11:7), "tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine" (Eph 4:14). In the dogma of Transubstantiation, the Church has wedded herself irrevocably to the substance/accident distinction first drawn by the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle. This distinction wasn't "invented" by Aristotle but discovered and properly formulated by him. It is a distinction demanded by reason and easily verified by common sense. That is the reason why the Church was able to embrace it and make it part of her dogma in the first place, so much so that it is impossible to adequately express the dogma without using the notions of substance and accident. Any attempts to replace these categories with different ones -- for example, by borrowing ideas from modern philosophy -- necessarily involve a denial of the dogma and thus will be heretical. In evaluating Muller's bizarre theology of the Eucharist, then, not only do we discover his tinkering with Transubstantiation, we also find that his entire philosophical foundation is messed up: "[T]he truth of faith of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharistic signs presupposes the symbolic structure of reality...", the dissident theologian claims (Catholic Dogmatic Theology, p. 697). Thus he shows that he bases his "theology" on a novel and faulty ontology (philosophy of being) inspired by modern and post-modern philosophical currents such as phenomenology, existentialism, and German idealism. It is hardly surprising, then, that the result should be verbose gobbledygook that undermines Catholic dogma.
Müller's clever Teflon Theology
Of course, like all Neo-Modernists, Muller is extremely clever. One can indeed find in his writings individual statements that sound like they are presenting orthodox doctrine on the Holy Eucharist, and it is to such that his defenders will point when he is accused of proposing or flirting with heresy. Yet these ostensibly orthodox statements must be dismissed, at best, as a clever ruse to escape condemnation because no one who is truly orthodox continually mixes orthodox statements with ambiguous ideas or outright errors so that heresy is likely to be taken from his words, again and again. Pope Pius VI rejected precisely such maneuverings in his condemnation of the errors of the Synod of Pistoia:
[Our predecessors] knew the capacity of innovators in the art of deception. In order not to shock the ears of Catholics, the innovators sought to hide the subtleties of their tortuous maneuvers by the use of seemingly innocuous words such as would allow them to insinuate error into souls in the most gentle manner. Once the truth had been compromised, they could, by means of slight changes or additions in phraseology, distort the confession of the faith that is necessary for our salvation, and lead the faithful by subtle errors to their eternal damnation. This manner of dissimulating and lying is vicious, regardless of the circumstances under which it is used. For very good reasons it can never be tolerated in a synod of which the principal glory consists above all in teaching the truth with clarity and excluding all danger of error. Moreover, if all this is sinful, it cannot be excused in the way that one sees it being done, under the erroneous pretext that the seemingly shocking affirmations in one place are further developed along orthodox lines in other places, and even in yet other places corrected; as if allowing for the possibility of either affirming or denying the statement, or of leaving it up the personal inclinations of the individual – such has always been the fraudulent and daring method used by innovators to establish error. It allows for both the possibility of promoting error and of excusing it. It is as if the innovators pretended that they always intended to present the alternative passages, especially to those of simple faith who eventually come to know only some part of the conclusions of such discussions, which are published in the common language for everyone's use. Or again, as if the same faithful had the ability on examining such documents to judge such matters for themselves without getting confused and avoiding all risk of error. It is a most reprehensible technique for the insinuation of doctrinal errors and one condemned long ago by our predecessor St. Celestine who found it used in the writings of Nestorius, bishop of Constantinople, and which he exposed in order to condemn it with the greatest possible severity. Once these texts were examined carefully, the impostor was exposed and confounded, for he expressed himself in a plethora of words, mixing true things with others that were obscure; mixing at times one with the other in such a way that he was also able to confess those things which were denied while at the same time possessing a basis for denying those very sentences which he confessed. In order to expose such snares, something which becomes necessary with a certain frequency in every century, no other method is required than the following: Whenever it becomes necessary to expose statements that disguise some suspected error or danger under the veil of ambiguity, one must denounce the perverse meaning under which the error opposed to Catholic truth is camouflaged. (Pope Pius VI, Bull Auctorem Fidei, introd.; underlining added.)
What Pius VI rebukes here is very much what "Cardinal" Muller does: He affirms in one sentence what he denies in another, using language that is so obscure and complex as to leave even the attentive reader incapable of understanding what he is actually proposing. This allows him to demolish the dogma of Transubstantiation in the minds of the faithful while rebuffing those who call him out for it as not "getting" what he really means. It is evident from the quotes presented here that Muller's writing is a hopeless mix of vague ideas wrapped in impressive-sounding but undefined made-up-on-the-spot terminology, with the apparently intended aim of causing as much confusion in the reader as possible while retaining a modicum of plausible deniability. What Muller does could be called Teflon theology, because nothing will stick to it. His words and ideas are intended to be slick and slippery enough to prevent any censure, especially that of heresy, from being attached to it.
False Alternatives to Transubstantiation
We see this very clearly in what he has written about the Holy Eucharist and especially the Real Presence. While it is clear that Muller does not teach Transubstantiation as defined by the Council of Trent, just what he actually does hold is anyone's guess. The notion of the Real Presence he puts forward sounds very much like the error of "Transignification", once infamously promoted by Edward Schillebeeckx and Karl Rahner. But this distortion of the Real Presence was condemned even by Antipope Paul VI (see "Encyclical" Mysterium Fidei, n. 11), and of course Muller disclaims that he subscribes to this view. At the same time, he concedes that Transignification -- as well as its cousin, "Transfinalization" -- can be developed within the framework of the theory of reality-symbolism he endorses (and which has its origin in Rahner; see Catholic Dogmatic Theology, p. 708). If we are looking for an accurate label to stick on the Mullerite version of the Real Presence, perhaps the term "Transcommunication" would describe it adequately, since he appears to be saying that in the Eucharist, God chooses bread and wine to communicate His Presence. But whatever the most accurate term for the Mullerite concept may be, it is most certainly not Transubstantiation, which is the Catholic dogma. Unfortunately for the German heretic, the First Vatican Council ruled out any kind of "reinterpretation" or "deeper understanding" of dogma once it has been defined:
For, the doctrine of faith which God revealed has not been handed down as a philosophic invention to the human mind to be perfected, but has been entrusted as a divine deposit to the Spouse of Christ, to be faithfully guarded and infallibly interpreted. Hence, also, that understanding of its sacred dogmas must be perpetually retained, which Holy Mother Church has once declared; and there must never be recession from that meaning under the specious name of a deeper understanding. Therefore . . . let the understanding, the knowledge, and wisdom of individuals as of all, of one man as of the whole Church, grow and progress strongly with the passage of the ages and the centuries; but let it be solely in its own genus, namely in the same dogma, with the same sense and the same understanding. (Vatican I, Dogmatic Constitution Dei Filius, Ch. 4; Denz. 1800)
Further, Pope St. Pius X condemned the following proposition as a Modernist error: "The dogmas which the Church professes as revealed are not truths fallen from heaven, but they are a kind of interpretation of religious facts, which the human mind by a laborious effort prepared for itself" (condemned in Decree Lamentabili Sane, n. 22; Denz. 2022).
False Ideas have Consequences
Because he does not believe in the dogma of Transubstantiation as once defined, Muller also does not see any sense in asking at what precise point in time during Mass the bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Christ:
Zu klären bleibt noch eine in der Theologiegeschichte entstandene Frage nach dem genauen Zeitpunkt dieser heiligen Wandlung von Brot und Wein zu realen Zeichen der Heilskommunikation mit Gott in Jesus Christus. Ist es die Herabrufung des Heiligen Geistes, die in der ostkirchlichen Liturgie meist nach den Einsetzungsberichten geschieht, oder ist es die Rezitation der Einsetzungsworte Jesu selber, die die Wandlung bewirken? Man wird die Frage weder in diesem noch in jenem Sinne beantworten müssen, weil die Frage theologisch keinen richtigen Sinn ergibt. Die Wandlung, die zum Grundbestand des katholischen Glaubens in der Ost- und Westkirche gehört, geschieht durch die Einbeziehung der Opfergaben in den Dialog von Vater, Sohn und Geist. Dies ist der Inhalt der drei Gebetsabschnitte, die auf die Präfation folgen, wo der Vater angesprochen wird in der Vermittlung des Sohnes und des Heiligen Geistes. Indem die Gaben von Brot und Wein in dieses Geschehen der dreifaltigen Liebe, die sich in der Heilsgeschichte zu unseren Gunsten verwirklicht hat, einbezogen werden, werden sie für uns zu Leib und Blut Jesu Christi. [English translation:] There still remains to be clarified a question which has arisen in the history of theology concerning the exact moment [at which takes place] this sacred conversion of bread and wine into real signs of the salvific communication with God in Jesus Christ. Is it the calling down of the Holy Ghost which in the liturgy of the Eastern churches mostly takes place after the institution narrative, or is it the recitation of the words of institution of Jesus itself which effects the conversion? It will not be necessary to answer the question the one way or the other, because the question does not really make sense theologically. The conversion, which is part of the fundamentals of the Catholic faith in the Eastern and Western Church, occurs through the incorporation of the sacrifical gifts into the dialogue of Father, Son, and Spirit. This is the content of the three parts of the prayer following the Preface, in which the Father is addressed in the communication of the Son and the Holy Ghost. By including the gifts of bread and wine in this action of triune love, which in salvation history actualized itself to our benefit, they become for us the Body and Blood of Christ. (Gerhard Ludwig Müller, The Mass: Source of Christian Life, pp. 141-142)
Real Catholics want to know exactly when bread and wine cease to be and the Incarnate God becomes present on the Altar because they want to adore Him and not bread and wine, which would constitute the mortal sin of idolatry. The fact that Muller thinks this question is not only not important but actually non-sensical is further unassailable proof of his repudiation of the Catholic dogma of Transubstantiation. It also demonstrates his great pride, for in the past the Church has taken great pains to answer this very question, a question which according to him makes no sense to even ask. The truth is, of course, that Transubstantiation occurs as soon as the priest has finished pronouncing the words of consecration over the bread and the wine, respectively: "...immediately after the consecration the true body of our Lord and His true blood together with His soul and divinity exist under the species of bread and wine..." (Council of Trent, Session 13, Decree on the Most Holy Eucharist; Denz. 876).
A Final Piece of Evidence
For those who are still skeptical about our contention that Muller is a heretic and who are holding out hope that perhaps there is still some legitimate way that the pretend-cardinal can be said to believe in the dogma of Transubstantiation as defined, we offer one final piece of evidence from his writings that puts the last nail in the coffin:
In der Eucharistie ißt der Glaubende nicht physische Bestandteile des Leibes Jesu auf, sondern er kommuniziert in den Zeichen des konsekrierten Brotes und Weines an der Menschheit Jesu, seiner Sendung und seinem Schicksal in Kreuz und Auferstehung. [English translation:] In the Eucharist the believer does not consume the physical elements of Jesus' body, but in the signs of the consecrated bread and wine he communicates in the humanity of Jesus, his mission, and his destiny in the Cross and Resurrection. (Gerhard Ludwig Müller, Catholic Dogmatic Theology, p. 710)
It is just too bad for Mr. Muller that what he says here is diametrically opposed to the teaching of the Catechism of the Council of Trent (also known simply as the Roman Catechism):
...[I]n this Sacrament are contained not only the true body of Christ and all the constituents of a true body, such as bones and sinews, but also Christ whole and entire. He should point out that the word Christ designates the Godman, that is to say, one Person in whom are united the divine and human natures; that the Holy Eucharist, therefore, contains both, and whatever is included in the idea of both, the Divinity and humanity whole and entire, consisting of the soul, all the parts of the body and the blood, all of which must be believed to be in this Sacrament. (Catechism of the Council of Trent, "The Sacrament of the Eucharist"; underlining added.)
In addition, Muller's thesis is contrary to the teaching of Pope Clement VI: "The body of Christ after the words of consecration is numerically the same as the body born of the Virgin and immolated on the Cross" (Apostolic Letter Super Quibusdam, n. 42; Denzinger-Hünermann 1083 [Latin here]). Isn't it a real shame that the Popes, saints, doctors, and theologians of the past, not enlightened by Muller's incredible genius, only thought of the Real Presence in such dull physical terms, not realizing that consuming the Sacred Body and Blood of Christ means "communicating in the signs" of Christ's "humanity, mission, and destiny"?! To add insult to injury, the Modernist "cardinal" finishes by haughtily declaring that Catholic faith in the Real Presence is not the result of a "positivist submission to the authority of Christ" (Catholic Dogmatic Theology, p. 710)! But that is exactly what it is, as we pray in the Act of Faith: "I believe these and all the truths which the holy Catholic Church teaches, because Thou hast revealed them...." For Catholics, the matter is quite simple: "Thy word is truth" (Jn 17:17). Ladies and gentlemen, the conclusion is inescapable: Muller pertinaciously denies the dogma of Transubstantiation.
Concluding Commentary
In a recent interview with the Italian Il Foglio, "Cardinal" Muller lamented the "de-christianization" of the West, which, he claimed, "far surpasses mere secularization." The poor fellow does not seem to understand that it is precisely the kind of theology he produces that is largely responsible for the great falling away from the Faith we have witnessed in the past five decades. This theology is known as the Nouvelle Theologie ("New Theology") or ressourcement theology. Some strands of it were condemned by Pope Pius XII in the 1940s and '50s, and some of its proponents, such as Marie-Dominique Chenu and Yves Congar, were silenced. In the Nouvelle Theologie, the beautiful, edifying, and clearly-defined doctrines of Catholicism are replaced by nebulous gobbledygook that uses lots of words to say very little. This is justified under the pretext of "returning to the sources" of theology and drawing from them ever more deeply. A hallmark of this dangerous and false theology is its utter contempt and disdain for Scholasticism, among whose most exemplary fruits is the very dogma of Transubstantiation. The Nouvelle Theologie became the official theology of Vatican II. Its advocates that had been censured under Popes Pius XI and Pius XII were rehabilitated by Antipope John XXIII and were appointed to serve as theological expert advisors (periti) to various bishops at the council. Is it any wonder that widespread apostasy has been the result? Some will surely object that perhaps we simply lack the intellectual prowess to grasp "real" Catholic theology. But this is sheer nonsense. The Catholic Church has produced genuine and highly sophisticated theology for two millennia, and while there certainly are many difficult concepts to learn and understand especially when it comes to the finer points of this sacred science, the glory of genuine Catholic theology lies in its clarity, its succinctness, and its systematic structure. For example, we can see that the Council of Trent teaches Catholic dogma very clearly, succinctly, and in such fashion that, once the reader has become familiar with some basic concepts, he can easily understand what is being taught. Are we to believe that Trent didn't present "real" Catholic theology? Similarly, we find nothing but clarity, succinctness, and a very organized presentation of real Catholic theology in the theological manuals that were in use before Vatican II. If we consult, for instance, the famous Sacrae Theologiae Summa of the Spanish Jesuits published in the mid-1950s, we find an extremely lucid and scholarly presentation of the dogma of Transubstantiation. In a mere ten pages, the truth of Transubstantiation is laid out in deductive and systematic fashion. First the thesis is stated, then its terms are defined. Then adversaries of the doctrine and their errors are identified. Then the doctrine of the Church is presented from her magisterial pronouncements, followed by proof from Holy Scripture and Sacred Tradition. Then the theological reasoning is given and objections are answered. An excursus into some false explanations of Transubstantiation concludes the treatment of the dogma. (See pp. 292-301 in Sacrae Theologiae Summa, vol. IVA, translated by Fr. Kenneth Baker [Saddle River, NJ: Keep the Faith, 2015]). Is this, too, not "real" Catholic theology? Catholicism is not Gnosticism, in which only a select few of the specially-anointed elite can know and understand the doctrine of Jesus Christ. The teaching of the Church is accessible to all: "You are the light of the world. A city seated on a mountain cannot be hid. Neither do men light a candle and put it under a bushel, but upon a candlestick, that it may shine to all that are in the house" (Mt 5:14-15). By contrast, what the Neo-Modernist Nouvelle Theologie presents is obscure, verbose, and haphazard; and of this "Cardinal" Muller is a perfect example. Read ten pages of Muller on the Real Presence and you still have no clear idea as to what the man is actually saying. Once you think you have finally grasped his point, you find it relativized, denied, or contradicted elsewhere. This phenomenon becomes even more interesting when you consider that two out of the three sources we have used in this post to expound Muller's teaching are books written by him for a popular audience, not for academic peers or university students. There is indeed method to the madness: The idea is to loosen what was secure, to twist what was straight, to make obscure what was clear, and to render doubtful what was certain, so that in the end all of Catholic theology is turned into a convoluted hodgepodge of ideas that don't mean anything definite and are subject to constant change or reinterpretation. It is for this reason that Novus Ordo theologians can, without batting an eye, go from "Thou shalt not commit adultery" (Ex 20:14) to adultery being "the most generous response which can be given to God, and ... what God himself is asking amid the concrete complexity of one's limits, while yet not fully the objective ideal" (Antipope Francis, "Apostolic" Exhortation Amoris Laetitia, n. 303). At the root of this Nouvelle Theologie is the error of historicism. The German Fr. Georg May -- incidentally from the diocese of Mainz, the same one as Muller's originally -- explains the matter well in his massive new book exploring the last 300 years of Catholic, Modernist, and Protestant theology:
A typical Modernist error is the talk about the historicity of truth. By this is not meant the (explicative) development of dogma which is guided by the Holy Ghost, but the abandonment or redefinition of dogmas. The binding (and unchanging) faith of the Church is passed off as the product of a historical period which has been overcome, and thus the faith has to adapt itself to the changed social conditions. The standard for modifying what is preached is to be the spirit of the age (Zeitgeist). The thesis about the historicity of truth provides the apparent basis for reformulating the truths of the Christian faith, to make them "acceptable" to contemporaries. One speaks so much about the [historical] circumstances of a [dogmatic] definition and the changed conditions until the original sense of a dogma is no longer recognizable. An example of this mode of procedure is the constantly repeated attacks against the sacrosanct term of Transubstantiation. (Fr. Georg May, 300 Jahre gläubige und ungläubige Theologie [Bobingen: Sarto Verlag, 2017], p. 913; our translation.)
In 1950, Pope Pius XII warned that historicism "overthrows the foundation of all truth and absolute law both on the level of philosophical speculations and especially to Christian dogmas" (Encyclical Humani Generis, n. 7), and we have tragically seen the truth and prudence of this admonition verified before our very eyes. The direct connection between the Nouvelle Theologie of Vatican II and the "de-christianization" of the West that Muller now claims to lament, is undeniable. Why should it be surprising that replacing clear Catholic teaching with Modernist gobbledygook leads to a loss of Faith? Nowhere is this more evident than on the liturgical level, where in 1969 the traditional Roman rite of Mass was replaced by the "New Mass" (Novus Ordo Missae) of Paul VI. Just as the ancient Roman rite expresses true Catholic theology, so the New Mass expresses Neo-Modernist theology. The fruits produced by that change -- shoved down everybody's throat as "renewal" -- are known only too well to require further elaboration. "By their fruits you shall know them" (Mt 7:16), our Blessed Lord told us. Always remember this: Modernists like Muller, Ratzinger, Kasper, Rahner, etc., got their way. For decades things have been done "their way" in the Vatican II Sect. They claimed to have a theology so much superior to that "unenlightened" scholastic theology of the past; they insisted that their new theology would be able to reach modern man because it speaks his language. Well, they got a chance to prove it, and they failed miserably. Just look at the results after 50+ years of their ideas at work. To call the current "Catholic" terrain a devastated vineyard would not do it justice -- it is an infernal toxic wasteland that bears no resemblance to the Roman Catholic religion as it was known throughout the globe until the death of Pope Pius XII in 1958. After reading Muller on the Real Presence, what believer of average intelligence would have the faintest idea as to the way in which our Blessed Lord is actually present in the Holy Eucharist? With the Mullerite version in your mind, just how would you approach the Blessed Sacrament in church? In what sense would you acknowledge the presence of Christ? Is Christ really there? Literally and physically? Or only "sort of"? Can you kneel down in genuine adoration before What/Who is truly present, or do you have to kneel and adore in a way similar to the way you would kneel and adore Christ before a statue or picture of Him, which is obviously not His literal presence? The simple fact of the matter is that reading Muller on the Eucharistic Presence of our Lord leaves the Christian not enlightened and edified but instead perplexed, bewildered, and filled with doubt and hesitation before the Blessed Sacrament -- a terrible state of mind that is accompanied on an emotional level by a feeling of nausea. Far from an orthodox Catholic, then, "Cardinal" Muller is exposed as a true and proper heretic. Unfortunately, many "conservatives" in the Vatican II Sect will not let this evidence affect their view of Muller. All is forgiven him because, remember, he opposes adultery. Nowadays this suffices to receive the title of "conservative Catholic" in the Novus Ordo and secular media, who have reduced "orthodox Catholicism" to little more than conservative sexual morality. This too is apostasy, albeit under a different veneer: "Whosoever revolteth, and continueth not in the doctrine of Christ, hath not God" (2 Jn 9). One of the chief causes of all this apostasy is pride, Pope St. Pius X noted in his landmark encyclical against Modernism:
...[P]ride sits in Modernism as in its own house, finding sustenance everywhere in its doctrines and lurking in its every aspect. It is pride which fills Modernists with that self-assurance by which they consider themselves and pose as the rule for all. It is pride which puffs them up with that vainglory which allows them to regard themselves as the sole possessors of knowledge, and makes them say, elated and inflated with presumption, "We are not as the rest of men," and which, lest they should seem as other men, leads them to embrace and to devise novelties even of the most absurd kind. (Pope St. Pius X, Encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis, n. 40)
What an apt description of Gerhard Ludwig Müller and his false theology! In light of all this, Muller's recent protestation to the Lefebvrist Bp. Bernard Fellay that he wants the Society of St. Pius X to be fully reconciled to Rome so that they can help "fight the Modernists" is exposed for the laughable farce that it is. The simple truth is that the Vatican's former "guardian of orthodoxy" is a heretic himself. We are indebted to the German Tradition und Glauben blog for some of the research presented here.Bovine manure alert...
Bp. Fellay says "Cardinal" Müller wants SSPX to fight the Modernists! -- An Inconvenient Reality Check
On March 3, 2017, during a visit to Poland, the Superior General of the Society of St. Pius X, Bp. Bernard Fellay, gave one of his famous "Rome update" conferences, in which he brings his followers up to speed on what's happening in the neverending story of the doctrinal-canonical negotiations between the Vatican and the Lefebvrist SSPX. In essence, these sermons typically contain the same content every time, more or less. For details on this phenomenon, see our post on Bp. Fellay's last major update in August 2016:
Fellay Tales: Bp. Fellay's Latest on SSPX-Rome Relations
However, there is always one startling bit of Vatican news the SSPX Superior shares that distinguishes one update from the next and that makes for an explosive headline every time. For example, in the past it was the announcement that the SSPX doesn't have to accept all of Vatican II, or that the Vatican approves of their ordinations, or that the Vatican had appointed Bp. Fellay a judge of the first instance for the SSPX.
This time around, Bp. Fellay had the following extaordinary anecdote to share: The prefect of the Vatican's so-called Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, "Cardinal" Gerhard Ludwig Muller, reportedly wants the Society of St. Pius X to help the Vatican fight the Modernists!
The web site of the SSPX's U.S. district reports as follows:
Why did Rome change [i.e. why do they no longer demand the full acceptance of all of Vatican II]? Bishop Fellay offered his opinion that it is due to the gravity of the situation in the Church; the real chaos that is now running loose within her. Bishop Fellay illustrated it by reporting the comments of Cardinal Muller asking the SSPX to join his fight against the modernists. Meanwhile, the Congregation for the Religious still considers the SSPX as schismatic and yet Pope Francis says that the SSPX is Catholic. ("Bp. Fellay Discusses Prelature Rumors", SSPX U.S. District, Mar. 7, 2017)
Bp. Fellay gave his conference in Spanish, and it was translated simultaneously into Polish. The full audio of the Spanish/Polish is available here:
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLYhXtFtb7s[/embedyt]
A transcript of the Spanish and an English translation can be found here:
Nuevo Sermón Acuerdista De Mons. Fellay (Non Possumus)
Bishop Fellay on Regularization (Suscipe Domine)
Here is the excerpt of Bp. Fellay's verbatim words corresponding to the summary quoted above:
We must ask: Why have they changed? I will give my opinion: It seems to me that the reason for this change of attitude is because of the gravity of the current situation in the Church. It is a contrast. They treat us better because the Church is getting worse. They see evil things in the Church. So they are forced to recognize what we are doing and they do not like it but it is not on the same level that what we defend is Catholic [this last part is not coherent in the original Spanish either --N.O.W.]. For example, the last time that I encountered Cardinal Muller, who is the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he said to me: "We of the Congregation of the Faith hope that you enter the Church" -- we already are of the Church -- "We wait for you so that you may help us fight the Modernists." They are very upset about all of the heresies that abound today and they look at us as a help in combating these heresies. But this is only one Congregation, although it is a very important one, the Congregation of the Faith. But at the same time, others, other Roman dicasteries, think differently. For example, the Congregation for Religious considers us schismatics. And the Pope says: "No, they are Catholics." It is chaos.
(Bp. Bernard Fellay, in "Nuevo Sermón Acuerdista De Mons. Fellay", Non Possumus, Mar. 5, 2017; translation by Novus Ordo Watch)
Now, this is just nuts. Anyone who has been following recent events can see that something doesn't add up here. The head of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) is suddenly concerned about Modernism? Really? Let's remember that we are talking here about "Cardinal" Gerhard Ludwig Muller. That's the guy who loves ecumenism and believes Protestants are part of the true Church. He loves liberation theology, denies Transubstantiation, denies the Perpetual Virginity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and denies the bodily Resurrection of Christ. That "Cardinal" Muller wants to have the SSPX in his church to fight Modernists? Which is more absurd -- for Muller to say it or for Fellay to believe it?!
In his 879-page dogmatic theology mammoth Katholische Dogmatik (1st ed. 1995), "Cardinal" Muller barely mentions Modernism at all. The word is not found at all in the index of subjects, and in the index of persons, there is only a single page referenced for the name of Pope Pius X. Muller talks about Modernism only on a handful of pages, and only in passing for the most part. Even where he has a subheading titled "Condemnation of Modernism" ("Stellungnahme gegen den Modernismus") in his section on the sacraments, he devotes only a single brief paragraph to the topic (8th edition [2010], pp. 643-644; cf. pp. 102-103). From this alone we can see: An anti-Modernist crusader, he ain't!
None of this is really surprising, though, if we consider Muller's educational history: He wrote his doctoral dissertation under the German Modernist "Cardinal" Karl Lehmann, himself a student of the Modernist Vatican II peritus Karl Rahner. To add insult to injury, Muller's doctoral dissertation was on the theology of the Protestant heretic Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Now there's the perfect man for the job of prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith -- appointed to this post, by the way, in 2012 by "Pope" Benedict XVI, another Rahner admirer, himself suspect of heresy by the Holy Office as far back as the 1950s.
When Benedict XVI called Muller to Rome to become CDF prefect on July 2, 2012, the Society of St. Pius X's German district released a press statement that accused Muller of heresy. The SSPX German district's expert on dogmatic theology, Fr. Matthias Gaudron, wrote the press release, of which the following is an English translation:
Press Statement from SSPX Germany The Church has always regarded it as one of its most important tasks to faithfully defend the deposit of the Faith entrusted to her by Christ and the Apostles and to defend it against errors, in order to be able to pass it on intact to future generations. Rightly so, the post of Prefect of the Congregation is one of the highest offices in the Church. The Priestly Fraternity of St. Pius X in Germany has therefore been taken by surprise that the Bishop of Regensburg, Gerhard Ludwig Müller, was appointed to this office. The SSPX wonders whether a man is suitable for office who has in his writings and public speeches repeatedly offended against Catholic doctrine. The following points are:
Bishop Müller denies in his book The Mass - Source of Christian Life, the real transubstantiation of bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ. According to him, bread and wine remain what they are but are the means to integrate the believer into the fellowship of life with Father and Son. This is similar to the Calvinist doctrine that the bread and wine are not changed, but are a means of grace.[1]
Contrary to the Catholic teaching that the transubstantiation of the gifts is accomplished by the utterance of the words, "This is my body ... This is the chalice of my blood,"[2] Bishop Müller says the question of the precise point at which the conversion occurs makes "no real sense theologically."[3]
In his dogmatic manual, Bishop Müller denies the dogma of the virginity of Mary at birth,[4] in other words, the doctrine that Mary gave birth to her Son without injury to her physical integrity.[5]
In a eulogy for the Protestant Bishop Dr. Johannes Friedrich, Bishop Müller said on October 11, 2011: "Those Christians too who are not in full communion with the teaching, the means of salvation and the apostolic-episcopal constitution of the Catholic Church, are justified by faith and baptism and incorporated fully into God's Church as the Body of Christ." This contradicts all of Catholic Tradition and in particular the teaching of Pope Pius XII in Mystici Corporis.
Contrary to the Catholic doctrine of the necessity of conversion to the Catholic Church, as it is still taught explicitly in the Second Vatican Council,[6] Bishop Müller in the same speech referred to the so-called "ecumenism of return" as "absurd".
The SSPX would urgently ask Bishop Müller to make a statement on these controversial positions and to correct them. There are no personal aversions which lead the SSPX to take this attitude but simply the desire for an unadulterated proclamation of the doctrine of the Faith. In addition, since Bishop Müller has made no secret of his negative attitude towards the SSPX in recent years, the SSPX sees [in this appointment of Bishop Mueller] no positive signal for the willingness to discuss the question of the canonical recognition for the time being. The SSPX hopes that the new prefect may - in the context of discussions within the universal Church - find a more positive attitude towards the SSPX. Father Matthias Gaudron, SSPX dogmatic theologian [Footnotes:] [1] "In reality, the body and blood of Christ does not mean the physical components of the man Jesus during his lifetime or in the glorified corporeality. Body and blood of Christ's presence here means rather having the character of the medium of bread and wine. "... We have" fellowship with Jesus Christ now, mediated by the food and drink of the bread and wine. Alone in inter-personal relations can something like a letter of friendship between the people be established and at the reception, one can say the affection of the addressee can be seen and embodied." (The Mass - Source of Christian Life, Augsburg, St. Ulrich Publishing Co.: 2002, pp. 139f.) [2] Cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, nn. 1375, 1377 [3] The Mass - Source of Christian Life, p. 142 [4] Cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, nn. 499, 510 [5] "It's not about different physiological features in the natural process of birth (something such as the non-opening of the birth canal, non-infringement of the hymen and the non-occurrence of labor pains), but the healing and redeeming influence of the grace of the Saviour on human nature, which was injured by original sin. The content of the dogmatic assertion, then, does not concern physiological or empirically verifiable somatic details" (Catholic Dogma, Freiburg, 2003, p. 498). In truth, the traditional teaching does refer to precisely such physiological peculiarities. [6] "Hence they could not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it, or to remain in it" (Lumen Gentium 14). ("SSPX calls on new head of CDF to retract his heretical positions", Catholic Conclave, July 5, 2002; formatting adjusted; minor improvements to translation made by Novus Ordo Watch.)
The SSPX German district has since removed this press release from its web site, but a cached copy of the original can still be viewed at this link.
This is an incredibly damning indictment of the Vatican's "enforcer of orthodoxy"! This makes all the more shocking the fact that so many supposedly "traditional" Catholic web sites and blogs now treat "Cardinal" Muller as though he were a defender of orthodoxy simply because he opposes the idea of permitting publicly unrepentant adulterers to receive "Communion"! He is as much of a Modernist as all the rest! In fact, he is even more dangerous than the more open ones because he cloaks his heresy under an appearance of orthodoxy: "There can be nothing more dangerous than those heretics who admit nearly the whole cycle of doctrine, and yet by one word, as with a drop of poison, infect the real and simple faith taught by our Lord and handed down by Apostolic tradition" (Pope Leo XIII, Encyclical Satis Cognitum, n. 9).
In addition to the press release penned by Fr. Gaudron on the appointment of Gerhard Ludwig Muller, the German SSPX district superior himself weighed in as well. At the time, this was Fr. Franz Schmidberger, who had once been the Superior General of the SSPX (1982-1994). In a video interview published on Sep. 18, 2012, Fr. Schmidberger commented on the latest developments in their negotiations with Rome, and he used the opportunity to accuse the new CDF prefect, "Archbishop" Muller, of "heterodox teaching". The video is only available in German, but for those who understand the language, we make it available here:
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9Y3B75l1VA[/embedyt]
A brief summary of the interview in English can be accessed here.
In addition to accusing Benedict XVI's newly-appointed "orthodoxy enforcer" of heresy, Fr. Schmidberger also lamented that Muller was "almost antagonistic" towards the SSPX, based on the first-hand experience the Lefebvrists had had with him in his diocese of Regensburg.
Such are the facts about Gerhard Ludwig Muller.
But, not to worry -- Bishop Fellay assures us now that this "Cardinal" Muller is concerned about Modernism in the church and wants to enlist the help of the SSPX to fight it! After all, he is "very upset about all of the heresies that abound today" that he himself has spent a lifetime spreading! Who could say no to such an invitation, especially when the "Pope" himself, whom Bp. Fellay denounced as a "genuine Modernist" in 2013 and who has been causing all the chaos Muller and Fellay are bemoaning, has confirmed that the members of the SSPX indeed "are Catholics"? After all, Francis would know, because, as Bp. Fellay himself acknowledged in an interview in May 2016, "doctrine is not that important to him". What could possibly go wrong?!
"It is chaos", Bp. Fellay says. He is right. But let's remember what he himself said on December 26, 2016 in Lima, Peru: "...more and more confusion is established in the Church, and beginning with the Sovereign Pontiff. It is he who really -- I do not know why, but the ideas he has -- it is he who actually establishes this chaos" (source). This echoes what Bp. Fellay said about Francis three years before: "...the situation of the Church is a real disaster. And the present Pope is making it 10,000 times worse" (source).
Given all this, how much sense does it make for Bp. Fellay to give any credence to Francis' assertion that "the SSPX is Catholic"? And how can the head of the Lefebvrists possibly believe that "Cardinal" Muller is opposed to Modernism and genuinely seeks the assistance of the SSPX to counteract the chaos? Hello?
"Bp." Muller fighting the Modernists at World Youth Day 2005
Let's look at what else Bp. Fellay had to say in his conference given on March 3, 2017:
Therefore there is much contradiction and we see that there is a great struggle between the bishops, between the cardinals, all of this is a new situation. We are used to seeing ourselves on one side and Rome on the other: We the conservative Catholics, they the Modernists. But today the situation is different. Rome is no longer one, it is divided. And in such a way that some see that things have gone too far. And they say "we must do something, we must resist." Also, at this moment, since two years ago, I receive messages from bishops that tell me: "Do not change, do not change, resist!" Few dare say it in public but there are others. I visit bishops, and a certain number, a lot really, tell me this, that they agree with us. One wrote to me: "We are many in the hierarchy that think like you." Regarding religious liberty, ecumenism, Nostra Aetate. I encountered an archbishop who said to me: "I discovered the Traditional Mass with Pope Benedict, before that I was totally modern. But now I see that the New Mass has touched upon the substance of the rite." Another archbishop said to me: "I have a generation of priests that I have lost, I cannot do anything. Therefore I work on the formation of new priests." And he has two principles: for theology, St. Thomas, the Summa of St. Thomas. And for spirituality, the Traditional Mass. These bishops want the diocesan priests to teach the Traditional Mass. They are few compared to the others. But the number is growing. This is something that is not seen but that exists.
This is the kind of thing that Bp. Fellay says every single time he gives an update on the dealings with Rome. Don't believe it? Then have a look at what Bp. Fellay said in a conference given at the end of 2002:
...There are our friends in the Vatican who are strengthening a movement in favor of the old Mass. How strong is it right now? - Not strong enough yet, but it is encouraging that the idea of granting this Mass as a necessary means to relieve this terrible crisis of the Church is winning favor even in the Vatican. And so we have to nurture it. This summer a French bishop brought to Rome 250 petitions from the French diocesan priests asking for the liberation of the old Mass. Wise enough to know the peril of the situation, the bishop did not provide the names, especially of the young priests, well knowing that if he did they would be persecuted. So, there are bishops, not only in Rome but also in the field, who are starting to think rightly. From France, I'm aware of a vicar general who brought this petition before his bishop and inquired what he thought about it. The bishop said, "Give it to all our priests so they can sign it." There is a whole work being carried on which is not yet visible, but which is growing slowly and steadily. Certain people in Rome say, "Stick to it. Don't give up; don't give in." Amazing. Yes, even after the agreement of Campos, our friends in the Roman Curia are not asking us, "Why don't you sign it?" On the contrary, they say, "Don't sign it! ...Ask for more." We have to persevere; we have to pray. Any victory is one of grace, a victory of the supernatural. The resolution of this crisis will not be accomplished sheerly by the abilities of human diplomacy. We have many friends, but not only friends. The enemies of the Church who are within her know what they are doing, and we have to realize that. ("SSPX Update: Conference by Bishop Fellay", SSPX U.S. District, Dec. 19, 2002; italics removed; underlining added.)
Sound familiar? His Excellency spoke these words on December 19, 2002. That's over 14 years ago! Ladies and gentlemen: Bp. Fellay has been telling these same anecdotes for over fourteen years! With some variations here and there, the essence of the story is always the same: "There are clergy in Rome and in the world who think like us! We have friends inside and outside the Vatican! They say we need to keep fighting! They tell us not to change! They want us to resist! They say we have to be careful! They want us to help them fight against heresy!" etc. It's always the same story, and look at where the SSPX is now after all these years: The situation in the Vatican and the church at large is worse than ever, the "Pope" is the driving force behind all the heresies and chaos, and yet the SSPX has never been closer to "full communion" with them and is now enticed by a feigned assurance that they are needed to "fight the Modernists"!
What is this if not complete madness?
Image source: composite with elements from Wikimedia Commons (Dr. Meierhofer; cropped / KUW; cropped) / amazon.de / unknown Licenses: CC BY-SA 3.0 and CC BY-SA 4.0 / fair use / fair use
A Heretic Leads the Vatican's Office of "Orthodoxy":
A Prefect for the Destruction of the Faith: "Archbishop" Gerhard Ludwig Müller Denies the Dogma of Transubstantiation in 2002 Book on the Mass
The CDF's Archheretic Gehard L. Mueller
In his 2002 book Die Messe: Quelle Christlichen Lebens ("The Mass: Source of Christian Life"), the head of the Vatican's so-called Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, "Archbishop" Gerhard Ludwig Muller, appointed to the post by "Pope" Benedict XVI, denies the Catholic dogma of Transubstantiation, defined by the Council of Trent. The Semi-Traditionalist site Tradition In Action provides the evidence. See here:
"Archbishop Müller Denies Transubstantiation"
Against Muller's heresy, the Council of Trent defined infallibly:
If any one denieth, that, in the sacrament of the most holy Eucharist, are contained truly, really, and substantially, the body and blood together with the soul and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ, and consequently the whole Christ; but saith that He is only therein as in a sign, or in figure, or virtue; let him be anathema. If any one saith, that, in the sacred and holy sacrament of the Eucharist, the substance of the bread and wine remains conjointly with the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, and denieth that wonderful and singular conversion of the whole substance of the bread into the Body, and of the whole substance of the wine into the Blood-the species Only of the bread and wine remaining-which conversion indeed the Catholic Church most aptly calls Transubstantiation; let him be anathema. If any one denieth, that, in the venerable sacrament of the Eucharist, the whole Christ is contained under each species, and under every part of each species, when separated; let him be anathema. If any one saith, that, after the consecration is completed, the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ are not in the admirable sacrament of the Eucharist, but (are there) only during the use, whilst it is being taken, and not either before or after; and that, in the hosts, or consecrated particles, which are reserved or which remain after communion, the true Body of the Lord remaineth not; let him be anathema. (Council of Trent, Session 13, Canons on the Most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist, nn. 1-4)
Do not let yourself be hoodwinked if someone points out that Muller has acknowledged the dogma of Transubstantiation elsewhere. This is an old trick, once exposed and condemned by Pope Pius VI:
"[The Ancient Doctors] knew the capacity of innovators in the art of deception. In order not to shock the ears of Catholics, they sought to hide the subtleties of their tortuous maneuvers by the use of seemingly innocuous words such as would allow them to insinuate error into souls in the most gentle manner. Once the truth had been compromised, they could, by means of slight changes or additions in phraseology, distort the confession of the faith which is necessary for our salvation, and lead the faithful by subtle errors to their eternal damnation. This manner of dissimulating and lying is vicious, regardless of the circumstances under which it is used. For very good reasons it can never be tolerated in a synod of which the principal glory consists above all in teaching the truth with clarity and excluding all danger of error. "Morever, if all this is sinful, it cannot be excused in the way that one sees it being done, under the erroneous pretext that the seemingly shocking affirmations in one place are further developed along orthodox lines in other places, and even in yet other places corrected; as if allowing for the possibility of either affirming or denying the statement, or of leaving it up the personal inclinations of the individual – such has always been the fraudulent and daring method used by innovators to establish error. It allows for both the possibility of promoting error and of excusing it. "It is as if the innovators pretended that they always intended to present the alternative passages, especially to those of simple faith who eventually come to know only some part of the conclusions of such discussions which are published in the common language for everyone's use. Or again, as if the same faithful had the ability on examining such documents to judge such matters for themselves without getting confused and avoiding all risk of error. It is a most reprehensible technique for the insinuation of doctrinal errors and one condemned long ago by our predecessor Saint Celestine who found it used in the writings of Nestorius, Bishop of Constantinople, and which he exposed in order to condemn it with the greatest possible severity. Once these texts were examined carefully, the impostor was exposed and confounded, for he expressed himself in a plethora of words, mixing true things with others that were obscure; mixing at times one with the other in such a way that he was also able to confess those things which were denied while at the same time possessing a basis for denying those very sentences which he confessed. "In order to expose such snares, something which becomes necessary with a certain frequency in every century, no other method is required than the following: Whenever it becomes necessary to expose statements which disguise some suspected error or danger under the veil of ambiguity, one must denounce the perverse meaning under which the error opposed to Catholic truth is camouflaged." (Pope Pius VI, Apostolic Constitution Auctorem Fidei, 1794)
So, the Vatican once again has a heretic overseeing "orthodoxy" the world over. Congratulations.
Posts Tagged: Transubstantiation
On Francis' Denial of Transubstantiation: A Rejoinder to Dave Armstrong
A 'phenomenal' argument goes up in smoke…
On Francis' Denial of Transubstantiation:
A Rejoinder to Dave Armstrong
When he's not promoting the "wisdom" of Methodist founder John Wesley or the "glorious sounds" of rock bands like The Beatles, Novus Ordo apologist Dave Armstrong carries the water for another beacon of faith and virtue: the Argentinian apostate Jorge Bergoglio, who has been starring as "Pope Francis" in the ongoing theological comedy act that is the Vatican II religion.
Apparently our post exposing the false pope's denial of dogma on the Feast of Corpus Christi caused enough of a ruckus for Armstrong to take notice.
in Novus Ordo Wire Dave Armstrong, Francis, Heresy, New Theology, Phenomenology, Pope Pius VI, Pope Pius XII, Robert Sokolowski, Transubstantiation	0
"Jesus becomes Bread", "God contained in a Piece of Bread": Francis' Lutheran Corpus Christi
God in migrants, God in the poor, God in bread!
[UPDATE: See our Rejoinder to Dave Armstrong's Rebuttal here]
This past Thursday was the Feast of Corpus Christi, the annual festival on the Roman calendar that celebrates the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar, the Holy Eucharist. In this sacrament, which is the literal and true Body, Blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus Christ, our Blessed Lord remains with us unto the end of time under the appearance of bread and wine. This sacrament is confected during the Holy Catholic Mass, when the priest consecrates bread and wine.
in Novus Ordo Wire Francis, Heresy, Martin Luther, Transubstantiation	0
"Cardinal" Kasper says Protestant Spouses who are given Novus Ordo Communion don't need to believe in Transubstantiation
Walt weighs in on current "Communion" controversy…
A lot of adherents of the Novus Ordo Sect are not aware that their church already officially permits Protestants to receive "Holy Communion", under certain conditions, without them renouncing their false religion and converting to Catholicism.
This topic is of the greatest importance, as it proves definitively that the Vatican II Sect is not the Catholic Church, because according to traditional Catholic teaching, the Catholic Church is incapable of universally legislating disciplinary laws that are in themselves evil, harmful, or heretical:
The Church is infallible in her general discipline.
in Novus Ordo Wire Ecumenism, Heresy, John Paul II, New Mass, New Sacraments, Pope Pius VI, Sacrilege, Transubstantiation, Vatican II, Walter Kasper	0
The Heresies of "Cardinal" Muller, Part 1: Denial of Transubstantiation
Oops: The former "Guardian of Orthodoxy" is a Heretic himself!
The Heresies of "Cardinal" Müller, Part 1:
His Denial of Transubstantiation
Time and again the secular and Novus Ordo media have portrayed "Cardinal" Gerhard Ludwig Müller (b. 1947) as a conservative Catholic theologian and, especially in his recently-completed five-year role as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, that is, as the Vatican's chief "guardian of orthodoxy".
What many people do not realize and some appear to deliberately ignore is the fact that there is copious evidence to show that the 69-year-old German theologian is in fact a heretic himself.
in Novus Ordo Wire Benedict XVI, Edward Schillebeeckx, Georg May, Gerhard Ludwig Muller, Heresy, Karl Rahner, New Theology, Paul VI, Pope Pius VI, Transubstantiation	10
"Cardinal" Muller wants SSPX to fight Modernists? Bovine Manure Alert!
Bovine manure alert…
Bp. Fellay says "Cardinal" Müller wants SSPX to fight the Modernists! — An Inconvenient Reality Check
On March 3, 2017, during a visit to Poland, the Superior General of the Society of St. Pius X, Bp. Bernard Fellay, gave one of his famous "Rome update" conferences, in which he brings his followers up to speed on what's happening in the neverending story of the doctrinal-canonical negotiations between the Vatican and the Lefebvrist SSPX. In essence, these sermons typically contain the same content every time, more or less. For details on this phenomenon, see our post on Bp. Fellay's last major update in August 2016:
Fellay Tales: Bp.
in Novus Ordo Wire Bernard Fellay, Ecumenism, Francis, Gerhard Ludwig Muller, Heresy, SSPX, Transubstantiation, Vatican II	12
Vatican's Abp. Gerhard Muller Denies Dogma of Transubstantiation
A Heretic Leads the Vatican's Office of "Orthodoxy":
A Prefect for the Destruction of the Faith: "Archbishop" Gerhard Ludwig Müller Denies the Dogma of Transubstantiation in 2002 Book on the Mass
The CDF's Archheretic Gehard L. Mueller
In his 2002 book Die Messe: Quelle Christlichen Lebens ("The Mass: Source of Christian Life"), the head of the Vatican's so-called Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, "Archbishop" Gerhard Ludwig Muller, appointed to the post by "Pope" Benedict XVI, denies the Catholic dogma of Transubstantiation, defined by the Council of Trent. The Semi-Traditionalist site Tradition In Action provides the evidence. See here:
"Archbishop Müller Denies Transubstantiation"
Against Muller's heresy, the Council of Trent defined infallibly:
If any one denieth, that, in the sacrament of the most holy Eucharist, are contained truly, really, and substantially, the body and blood together with the soul and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ, and consequently the whole Christ; but saith that He is only therein as in a sign, or in figure, or virtue; let him be anathema.
in Novus Ordo Wire Gerhard Ludwig Muller, Heresy, Transubstantiation	0
Munich Protest Requests 'Clarity and Coherence' From Pope Francis, German Bishops https://www.ncregister.com/blog/edward-pentin/munich-protest-requests-clarity-and-coherence-from-pope-francis-german-bish @NCRegister