I do not say this lightly; it is no longer the Catholic Church of our ancestors and saints. 

The Lamb of God brought a Real Peace between God and man; restoring our relationship of God, broken by sin and atoned for by the death of the God-man, Jesus Christ the Son of the Everliving God. To benefit from this sacrifice of our Savior one only need to believe in Him, acknowledge our failures in following His Commandments, true contrition for our sins and a firm purpose of amendment for our failures. He paid the price and we only need cooperate with God via free will to find reconciliation with our God. It is an unspeakable act of Divine Love and Mercy.

Now almost 2000  years later, men have attempted to take the Church and sacrifice Her on the altar of ecumenism as though this was the action of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church to repair our relationship with those who were and remain separated from the Church. Thereby they negotiated away not only our Catholic Culture but our Liturgical and other Sacramental Rites; our Mariology, our Rites of Exorcism, our Blessings and our developed Devotions especially to the angels, saints and above all Mary (they now have lost their savor as they are relegated to the periphery of our beliefs. 

Ecumenism seems to underly all of the changes of the simplified Novus Ordo church in an effort to make of us more acceptable to Christians who fell from their belief in the Catholic Church. This new Church is now both denuded of its true character, its unique culture and its moral authority. All of our post Vatican II changes seem to be fashioned in a way that will try to narrow the differences between those who abandoned the Church and the existing Church. It is a false irenicism and the new relaxed Church is now simply viewed as 1 more of many thousands of Protestant Christian denominations. This seems the point of Vatican II and its ultimate driving force. 

The fruit is a loss in our belief in defined dogmas and our support for previously condemned practices in the moral and theologically dogmatic sphere of things. It has propelled the laity to the false belief that all religions are the same, and syncretism is being taught with abandon. Our loss of understanding of our faith is also widespread, neither taught in catechism classes nor from the pulpit during the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

Where are we now? And more to the point who are we now since we have jettisoned our Catholic identity? Let us look at just the recent happenings in the Church.

1. Non Catholics given Communion by our Pope
2. The True Church of China is now forced to submit to the National Chinese Communist Church
3. Political, economic, ecological and social issues dominate our interest; personal salvation, no longer a priority etc.

Such lists could take up 100’s of pages to show where we were and where we are at present.

And again, one need only look at the evidence that presents itself to us on an almost daily basis.

1. Loss of the fast from midnight to reception
2. Loss of meatless Fridays
3. Loss of processions
4. Abysmal catechisis
5. Empty pews
6. Empty seminaries and religious orders
7. Empty confessionals
8. Everyone receives whether in a state of grace or not
9. The sanctuary is not the sanctuary, overuse of extraordinary ministers, girl altar boys, redundant blessings within Mass (its all about being ‘welcoming . . . and they are leaving in droves)
10. Holy water that is merely blessed by a priest; no blessed salt and is of no apparent use in the protection against satan etc. especially in exorcisms

It is a schism that has taken place though not made official. We are divided by political lines which have eclipsed the theological truths the Church codified over its 2000 year history. We have been plunged into the crisis that St. Athanasius witnessed against which and for which he was excommunicated. I guess we should take solace in the words he addressed to his flock:

“May God console you! … What saddens you … is the fact that others have occupied the churches by violence, while during this time you are on the outside. It is a fact that they have the premises – but you have the Apostolic Faith. They can occupy our churches, but they are outside the true Faith. You remain outside the places of worship, but the Faith dwells within you. Let us consider: what is more important, the place or the Faith? The true Faith, obviously. Who has lost and who has won in the struggle – the one who keeps the premises or the one who keeps the Faith? True, the premises are good when the Apostolic Faith is preached there; they are holy if everything takes place there in a holy way … “You are the ones who are happy; you who remain within the Church by your Faith, who hold firmly to the foundations of the Faith which has come down to you from Apostolic Tradition. And if an execrable jealousy has tried to shake it on a number of occasions, it has not succeeded. They are the ones who have broken away from it in the present crisis. No one, ever, will prevail against your Faith, beloved Brothers. And we believe that God will give us our churches back some day. “Thus, the more violently they try to occupy the places of worship, the more they separate themselves from the Church. They claim that they represent the Church; but in reality, they are the ones who are expelling themselves from it and going astray. Even if Catholics faithful to Tradition are reduced to a handful, they are the ones who are the true Church of Jesus Christ.”

(Letter of St. Athanasius to his Flock)

As a side note, it seems that Christ’s Sacrifice was a demarcation between the world and His Kingdom represented by His Church whilst ecumenism seems to be a reunification with the ways of this world. And with the upcoming Amazonian Synod it appears we have gone full circle with our ecumenism: to the Orthodox and the Protestants, to the atheistic Communists and Marxists to only return to man’s earliest animistic and pantheistic past. Perhaps ecumenism is only the acting out of the ‘spiritual evolutionary’ ideas of Teilhard de Chardin. We are gathering all religions and even atheists together in order to allow this evolution of our spiritual conscience, progress toward the ‘inevitable’ omega point; the noosphere. If so we have embarked on a new age journey that will lead to a loss of faith and most probably a lot of souls descending to hell.

 So for the sake of a false peace; they have abused the faith and the people of the Catholic faith. May God have mercy on their souls and may we all pray for our deliverance from this present captivity. St. Athanasius pray for us.