Of Modernism, Heresy within the Church, Aliens, and Father Longnecker

Fr. Longnecker over at Standing on my Head hits another one out of the park. A sample,

"Realize that there are many Catholics who are not really Catholics at all. They are aliens in the church who wear all the right clothes and say all the right things but they follow a Christianity without a cross, sacraments without sacrifice and believe in a truth that has now boundaries so it is not truth at all. The will have heaven without hell and redemption without repentance. I suggest you learn to spot them..."

What Father is describing is Modernism, what Pope Pius X called "the synthesis of all heresies." 

A Modernist says they believe in Catholicism, but they really don't. They aren't even really Christian. They take the words that express the Faith and "reinterpret" them, "demythologize" them. They read that Christ fed 5,000 with "but five loaves, and two fishes" (Matthew 14:17) and say, "Aha! How great of Jesus. He got everyone to share the food they had hidden away. That's the real miracle." Of course, that isn't a miracle at all, my son's first grade teacher can do that. Which is the point for the Modernist, for the Modernist dogmatically rejects miracles. They want to "say all the right things" but they reinterpret them. They say the Creed, "I believe in One God" but they mean "I believe in the objective value of the idea of God," as the nineteenth century Modernist Marcel Hébert ¹ once put it. 

They profess the same terms we do, but believe in entirely different, and often diametrically opposed, concepts. In the end, the Modernists have done more to rob Christendom of the Holy Faith than Roman persecutions, Islamic invasions, Viking hoards, protesting Augustinian monks, French guillotines, and State persecution ever could. The Modernist is an anti-Christ, turning miracles into commonplaces, wine into water, and ultimately reducing Jesus to a "good teacher" (apparently the only man ever tortured to death for just wanting people to be kind). 

This diluted "faith" must be opposed and exposed for the fraud it is at every turn. For the Modernists make up a "Fifth Column" in the Church. They are heretics who refuse to be honest enough to admit they don't believe in the Faith Catholic. They refuse to drift into atheism or to form their own watered-down version of the Church, like all other heretics have had the decency to do ². Immune to the possibility of finding themselves in an eternal hell (for they have "demythologized" away all the language about hell ³), they spread their errors in universities, colleges, seminaries, and even occasionally from the pulpit. Truly fearsome are the words of Jesus for such teachers as these, 

But he that shall scandalize one of these little ones that believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone should be hanged about his neck, and that he should be drowned in the depth of the sea. (Matthew 18:6)

Unfortunately, these words too are dismissed and reinterpreted, leaving the Modernist without even the warning Christ intended those spreading error to have.

With so much confusion being spread over the meaning behind the words both faithful Catholics and Modernists profess, we might wonder if we haven't swallowed some their bile. Father Longnecker provides a remedy, distilling the Gospel to it's essence and a laying forth the underlying vision of the Faith which Modernism detests. To the faithful Catholic he says,

“You believe the old, old story of a loving God and a rebellious humanity. You think the church’s main goal is to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ, to heal the broken hearted and set the prisoners of sin free. You believe in the saving, precious blood of Jesus and the threat of hell and the hope of heaven."

I hope you can wholeheartedly say "credo," I believe, to that "old, old story - without the need to "reinterpret" the words.    

Read Father's whole article there: Is there a Split in the Catholic Church. It is worth your time.

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1. See A Variety of Catholic Modernists for more on Hébert and his ilk.

2. Not that we want anyone to leave the Church, outside of which there is no salvation. I'm simply pointing out the moral degeneracy of modernism. Other heresies, from the Gnostics and Arians to Protestants and Sedevacantists, have the moral rectitude to leave the Church and found a society to promote their views. The Modernist, on the other hand, lurks within the heart of the Church, sowing confusion among the faithful.

3. Which brings to mind the fearsome vision which St. Faustina had of hell. Most of the souls there, she relates, are those who didn't believe hell existed. See more here: St. Faustina Sees Hell