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- Articles -
“THE DOGMA OF FAITH”
Bishop Richard Williamson
March, 2006
Doesn’t the expression “the dogma of faith” sound a little strange? Yet it was
used by Our Lady, and it goes straight to the heart of the crisis of the Church,
which is due to afflict us for a while yet!
The expression seems strange, because the Catholic Faith contains a number of
dogmas, and not just one. In our normal way of talking, all articles of the
faith constitute dogmas and each solemn definition of the Church fixes another.
Then how can we talk of “the dogma of faith” in the singular?
The context in which Our Lady used the expression is highly significant. It was
in Fatima in 1917 that she said to Sister Lucy in between the second and third
parts of the Secret: “In Portugal the dogma of faith will always be kept”. The
second part of the Secret everybody knows. That is where Our Lady warned the
world that Russia would have to be consecrated to her Immaculate Heart, and
reparation would have to be made by means of Communion on the first Saturdays of
the month, otherwise would undergo severe punishments.
On the contrary the third part of the Secret of Fatima, usually known as the
Third Secret, which the whole Catholic world was expecting to be made known by
the Church in the year appointed by Our Lady for that purpose, 1960, has never
been revealed (the supposed “Third Secret” made public by Rome in 2000 is surely
not the same as the text awaited in 1960). But the most reliable of Fatima
scholars consider that the words “In Portugal the dogma of faith will always be
kept” are in fact the opening words of the true Third Secret, because when
Sister was once writing out the text of the Second Secret, she added “…will
always be kept, etc.”, as though she meant to indicate by the “etc.” that that
was where the text of the Third Secret followed on.
All of this seems highly likely, and that is why the slightly strange expression
of Our Lady is so interesting. For, say these scholars, if the true Third Secret
has never been made known by Rome, is that not because it denounced in advance
the crisis of the Church let loose — not to say, planned — by the innovators of
Vatican II, who did not care to be condemned beforehand by the Mother of God? So
they kept her Secret quiet in 1960, to be able to go ahead with their Council in
1962. For indeed does not saying that in Portugal will always be kept the dogma
of the Faith suggest that elsewhere it will be lost?
So Our Lady may have chosen the words “dogma of faith” to express the very heart
of the crisis of these last 40 years in the desert of Vatican II. Such seems to
be the case!
For what characterizes this crisis and makes it the worst in all Church history
is that a great number of Catholics, while they may not yet have lost the Faith
— God knows — have certainly lost all sense of the dogmatic character of the
Faith. They may still believe in every article of the Faith as such, but they no
longer believe that these articles and this Faith condemn whatever contradicts
them, in other words all the errors of all the other false religions of the
world. Then can the condition of such Catholics be better summed up than by
saying that they have lost “the dogma of the Faith”?
The crisis is appalling precisely because Catholics in this condition can
re-assure themselves that by accepting as they do every particular dogma of the
Catholic Faith, they are unquestionably Catholic, especially if they are with
the Pope! But in reality their Catholicity is becoming highly questionable,
because from the moment that they believe, with Vatican II, that every man has a
civil right, i.e. a right, to his own belief, they are undermining in general
every single dogma that they believe they hold in particular. Whether they
realize it or not, they are replacing the religion of God’s truth with the
religion of man’s liberty, because religious liberty is the underpinning of
their beliefs. It may not appear so, buy in reality they are putting man in the
place of God.
That is why, when Cardinal Castrillón so kindly invited the SSPX bishops to
lunch with him in Rome on August 11, 2000, I said to him, “Your Eminence, we
belong to two different religions”. A little later he replied — true to type —
“But you and I believe in the same Jesus Christ, the same Holy Eucharist, the
same Church!”
Your Eminence, we do and we don’t, mainly we don’t! I always resort to the same
example: — if one mathematician believes that two and two can make four or five,
while another believes they can only make four and nothing other than four, do
they have the same arithmetic in their heads? Surely not! The arithmetic of the
first mathematician may not exclude the truth (just as his Eminence does not
exclude the Holy Eucharist, etc.), but what use is that if it excludes no error
eider? True arithmetic on the contrary excludes any and every error that is out
of line with reality.
Similarly, the true Catholic Faith excludes every error of every other religion,
especially the error of religious liberty which undermines all objective truth
in order to set up the religion of man.
Your Eminence, we do belong to two different religions. The true Catholic
religion has always given birth to martyrs for the truth, because true
Catholicism condemns the errors of the world. On the contrary the religion of
religious liberty, which only seems Catholic, has given birth to no such martyrs
because it is at peace with the world and its errors.
Queen of Martyrs, pray for us!
[URL:
http://angelqueen.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6247]
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