Mel Gibson’s film, “The Passion of the Christ,” has prompted much of the mainstream American press to depict Traditional Catholics as anti-Semitic rebels who do not follow Vatican Two because of their official statement declaring that the Jews of today do not have any responsibility for the death of Jesus. The Vatican’s stance on the culpability of Jews, living or dead, in the Crucifixion of Christ has absolutely nothing to do with why Traditional Catholics have chosen to renounce the changes in the modern so-called Catholic’ church.
I feel it is important for the public to know that Traditional Catholics are also not an oppressed fundamentalist sect who merely have a peculiar fondness for head coverings, a fetish for the Latin language, and a need to cling to old traditions, like not eating meat on Fridays. Traditional Catholicism is not a splinter, schismatic Catholic offshoot. It is what the Roman Catholic Apostolic Church had taught for centuries before Vatican Two changed The Mass, changed the liturgy, changed The Sacraments, changed the very words of Jesus, promulgated heresy, and defied 2000 years of apostolic doctrine. Jesus Christ gave us an infallible way to recognize what is true and what is false and to know who are His own. He told us “By their fruits ye shall know them.” The fruits of Vatican Two have caused the greatest schism since Luther and Protestantism, the loss of faith by millions, huge declines in nuns, priests, and infant baptisms, the closure of thousands of Catholic schools. Catholic annulments skyrocketed. Vatican Two also created an environment of abuses, irreverence, and a focus on man, not God.
Those who possess church buildings and call themselves the church authority do not define the Catholic Church. There have been at least 41 anti-popes throughout the history of the Roman Catholic Church, so for one to question if all of the popes since (and including) John 23rd are anti-popes is nothing new. The press makes it sound as though this is some strange new “conspiracy-minded” idea. I find it curious and at times hypocritical that organizations, so-called religious scholars and many mainstream newspapers willingly accept that Traditional Catholicism is a “schismatic” religion and that the modern church is the true Catholic Church, yet the fruits of Vatican Two have been made evident in the cases of child sexual abuse perpetrated by the modern church’s wolves disguised as priests and in the cover-ups and denial of responsibility by the modern church authority.
Alethea Guthrie