John Paul Xxiii Quotes

The foundation of the liturgy must remain the search for God. We can only be dismayed by the fact that this intention of Popes John XXIII and Paul VI, and of the Council Fathers as well, is often obscured and, worse yet, betrayed. . . .

When Pope John's successors — Paul VI, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI — adamantly refused to alter anything having to do with the patriarchal and deeply misogynistic structure of Catholic power, and when they shored up a broad Catholic suspicion of every erotic impulse, the Church sacrificed the ongoing project of a humanely reformed Catholicism. Even under Francis, the us-against-them bipolarity that John XXIII stood against remains firmly in place, and it is still epitomized by men against women.

It is obvious that if many bishops had acted like Msgr. de Castro Mayer, Bishop of Campos in Brazil, the ideological revolution within the Church could have been limited, because we must not be afraid to affirm that the current Roman authorities, since John XXIII and Paul VI, have made themselves active collaborators of international Freemasonry and of world socialism. John Paul II is above all a communist-loving politician at the service of a world communism retaining a hint of religion. He openly attacks all of the anti-communist governments and does not bring, by his travels, any Catholic revival. These conciliar Roman authorities cannot but oppose savagely and violently any reaffirmation of the traditional Magisterium. The errors of the Council and its reforms remain the official standard consecrated by the Profession of Faith of Cardinal Ratzinger in March 1989.

The question of the teaching authority of the bishops in general was followed by that of Vatican II in particular, upon which the judgment of Fr. Pierre Marie, editor of the French Traditional Dominicans' quarterly magazine, Le Sol de la Torre, was quite severe. Proceeding in logical order, he examined first whether the Council documents come under the Church's extraordinary or ordinary infallibility - not under extraordinary infallibility, he argued, because both Pope John XXIII and Paul VI explicitly said the Council was making no definitive declarations; nor under ordinary infallibility, both because (see above) the Church's bishops were no longer scattered at Vatican II, but gathered together in such a group as to expose them to group pressures which could and did falsify their judgments; and because the bishops of Vatican II presented none of their doctrines as requiring defectively to be believed. Nor, Fr. Pierre Marie went on to argue, are these doctrines even part of the Church's authentic (i.e. ordinary, non-universal) teaching, because the bishops expressed no intention to hand down the Deposit of the Faith, on the contrary their spokesmen (e.g. Paul VI) expressed their intention to come to terms with the modern world and its values, long condemned by true Catholic churchmen as being intrinsically uncatholic. Therefore, concluded Fr. Pierre Marie, the documents of Vatican II have only a Conciliar authority, the authority of that Council, but no Catholic authority at all, and no Catholic need take seriously anything Vatican II said, unless it was already Church doctrine beforehand. Letter #148 March 1996

The principal task entrusted to the Council by Pope John XXIII was to guard and present better the precious deposit of Christian doctrine in order to make it more accessible to the Christian faithful and to all people of good will.

I found it encouraging the way Pope Francis in his homily emphasized God’s mercy in referring to both of the new saints, John Paul II and John XXIII: “May both of them teach us not to be scandalized by the wounds of Christ and to enter ever more deeply into the mystery of Divine Mercy, which always hopes and always forgives, because it always loves.

Bishop Mamie made clear the reason for his action: ". . . we shall continue to demand that the faithful as well as the clergy accept and apply all the orientation and decisions of the Second Vatican Council, all the teachings of John XXIII and of Paul VI, all the directives of the secretariats instituted by the Council, including the new liturgy." What of the "orientations and teachings" of earlier Councils? What of all the "teachings" of earlier popes and the "directives" of previous secretariats? What of the tradition liturgy, the prayer of the Church for many centuries? Into the dust bin of history with them and do not look back. No Marxist committed to historical inevitability and the utopia future could be more exacting. The new belief was rooted in progress, the only truth was the necessity of change. Onward! Out with the Old Church, in with the New!