Pope Francis Elected,
Mystery of Iniquity Moves On
By Richard Bennett
As Pope Francis moves onto the world stage, many people are wondering how he will be generally accepted. The pleasant aura of John Paul II still lingers for many, while the shortcomings of Benedict XVI still color the current scene. More importantly, given the Pope’s exalted position in the world, many will be asking how this new Pope will change the Papacy. The fact remains, however, that since the early 19th century the Office of the Papacy has been set on a course of action that no individual pope will reverse. How can this be so?
Setting the Stage for the Mystery of Iniquity
In 330
A.D., Emperor Constantine moved the seat of the Imperial Roman Empire from Rome to Constantinople. By that time, he had decreed Christianity the
religion of the Empire in hopes that by means of its acceptance a new unifying
strength could be infused into his crumbling empire. The new “state religion” was organized much
like the Roman Empire’s military. It was divided into four major districts,
having a head over each. Without persecution,
the simple faith of the early church had declined, so that by the fifth
century, the church at Rome
was no longer a fellowship of strong believers under Christ Jesus. Rather it had become part of an institution
dominated by a hierarchy in which the Bishop of Rome eventually commanded the
most power.
Mystery of Iniquity becomes Manifest
Scripture
speaks of the “mystery of iniquity.”[1] This particular lawlessness arose gradually
within the church as the Imperial Roman Empire gave way to what became the Holy Roman Empire.
The mystery of iniquity has been visible in the form of the “man of sin”
for well over eight centuries. The
Reformers and general population of the Holy Roman Empire
in the 16th century did not recognize it, however, until the recovery of the
Gospel and the Bible.
The outcome of apostasy is the “deceivableness of unrighteousness.” Such apostasy is
marked by hypocrisy and deceit, while appearing righteous and holy, and is
aimed at deceiving even the very elect, were that possible. For centuries, the reigning Pope has assumed
to himself the titles of “Holy Father” and
“Vicar of Christ,[2]”
which fulfills in the unqualified sense the definition of Antichrist given by
the Apostle John: “who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and
the Son.”[3] The Pontiff, in taking these designations to
himself, denies the supremacy and honor due both the Father and the Son
alone.
A further qualification of “the man of sin” is that he sits
in the temple of God showing himself to be God. Since the resurrection of Jesus Christ and
the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem in 70
A.D., it is clear from Scripture that it is true Christians who are the temple of God.[4] They are scattered throughout the world. While the Pope calls true Christians
schismatics, because they are not in “his” church, he nevertheless purports to
be the head of the church
of Jesus Christ on earth
and parades himself about under the titles of Holy Father and Vicar of Christ.
Emperor Justinian I, more than anyone else, was the one to
establish the supremacy of the Bishop of Rome in the sixth century. He did it in a formal and legal manner,
bringing even things religious under the control of civil law. Le Roy Edwin Froom summarized,
“Justinian I (527-565) [was the] greatest of all the rulers
of the Eastern Roman Empire ... [His]
great achievement was the regulation of ecclesiastical and theological matters,
crowned by the imperial Decretal Letter seating the bishop of Rome in the
churches as the ‘Head of all the holy churches,’ thus laying the legal
foundation for papal ecclesiastical supremacy.”[5]
Justinian’s
decree did not create the Office of the Papacy but rather set a legal
foundation for the acquisition of civil ruling power by the bishops of Rome. Soon the bishops of Rome desired to reign like kings. The very thing that the Lord had warned
against was now transpiring, “And he said unto them, the kings of the
Gentiles exercise lordship over them…but ye shall not be so.”[6]
Vitalian
the Bishop of Rome from 657-672 A.D., was the first to actually be addressed
with the title “Pope,” when he was called in Latin, “Papa Vitalianus”;
i.e., Pope Vitialian.[7] It took time for the Pope of Rome to spread
the exercise of his state-given title over the bishops of Europe and the British Isles. For
example, even in northern Italy
in 800 A.D., Claude, the bishop of Turin, did
not recognize the bishop of Rome’s
authority.[8]
The Papacy Grows Strong via Civil Power
From
the fourth century through the eighth century, much of the growth of papal
power was acquired in trade-offs with kings throughout what had been the old
Imperial Roman Empire. To be sure, in
these centuries there was evangelism with the true Gospel throughout the
area. However, the pagan religion of
those still heathen was not so different from the religion of the Pope, which
was more easily accepted than the Gospel.
Then, too, in the eighth century, when the Pope needed defending against
the Saracens and the Lombards, the French kings provided it and presented the
Pope with ruling title to the cities they had won. As a reward, in 800 A.D., Pope Leo III famously
crowned Charlemagne Emperor and Augustus.
Thus began the Holy Roman Empire, ever
in turmoil over issues of the legal limits of jurisdiction of each sovereign:
the Pope on one hand, and the Emperor on the other. These issues could not be solved except
throughout the actual course of history.[9]
Early in the thirteenth century, as head of the state
religion, the Papacy began through its courts of Inquisition mandatory
subjection to its unbiblical doctrines enforced by the civil state. This papal killing machine worked tirelessly
for six hundred years, standing at least on par with the largest bloodbaths
that Stalin, Mao Tse Tung, Pol Pot, and other 20th century dictators managed to
inflict on humanity. Thus the form of
the mystery of iniquity, the state-ordained Roman Catholic Church with its
Office of the Papacy, grew in strength and civil power throughout the Dark and
Middle Ages. It had amassed to itself
wealth, property, and influence through the Inquisition and other cruel,
unethical, totally unbiblical means, including murder and wholesale theft.
The Reformation Brings the Rise of the Modern
Era
In
1547, the Church of Rome went fully apostate at the Council of Trent when it
formally declared,
If anyone shall say that justifying faith is nothing else
than confidence in the divine mercy which remits sins for Christ’s sake, or
that it is this confidence alone by which we are justified: let him be anathema
[cursed].[10]
From the sixth century until the Reformation of the
sixteenth century, the mystery of iniquity had acquired great political power
and earthly wealth. Nevertheless, the
murderous Inquisition of the Papacy was unable to stop the spread of the
Reformation throughout northern Europe, England,
Scotland,
and the Scandinavian countries. In the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, thousands of Bible believers were
unmercifully persecuted. Providentially,
many were able to flee to the new land
of America, a country
born out of the Reformation.
In 1648, the Treaty of Westphalia[11]
ended the Thirty Years’ War between the Catholic Church and the Lutheran and
Calvinistic princes.[12] The Reformation first of all had restored the
absolute authority of God’s written Word, the Bible.[13] Then with the widespread recovery of the
Gospel of grace, and the Bible being made available in the ordinary languages
of the people, the forms of civil government were bound to change because the
religion of many people had changed.
Thus, it was agreed that each nation was to be sovereign; there was to
be no Holy Roman Empire to which sovereign
nations bowed. With that idea manifested
in force by treaty, the Modern Era began.
Clearly, such a monumental change as the destruction of the Holy Roman Empire might have signaled the end of the
Roman Catholic Church. However, the mystery
of iniquity, the heart and soul of the Papacy, was not so easily finished.
Mystery of Iniquity’s Transition into a Modern Nation State
In
1798, after the removal of Pope Pius VI from his throne by a staff general of
Napoleon’s army,[14]
it appeared that the Papacy as an institution of the collapsed Holy Roman Empire might also be at an end. That was not the case. Rather, throughout the nineteenth century,
the Papacy was reorganizing. True, it
had lost its power in the civil arena, having now no official civil status over
the modern nation states. However, it
still had its visible institutional structure, infrastructure, and Jesuits; its
religious rituals, false gospel, and traditions; its clergy and laity. All these remained in place; oiled and functioning.
Externally, the Papacy lost no time in attacking England, which
had produced so many strong and staunch Puritans in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries. In the nineteenth
century, England
was still in the forefront of sending forth many Evangelical missionaries to
far corners of the earth. Thus, in 1844,
the Papacy launched the Oxford Movement through John Henry Newman to bring the
Church of England back under its thumb.
The strategy was to gradually remove by stealth the teaching of the
Gospel and the great doctrines of faith from the Bible. These were to be replaced with rituals and
personal testimonials. If the Papacy
could accomplish this, England
could again be a Catholic country.
Internally, to
strengthen the hold on ordinary Catholics, the Papacy in 1854 declared Mary to
have been immaculately conceived.[15] With
their elevated Mary, the Papacy had manufactured an alternate but “visible” figurehead
to which the Catholic faithful could be united in prayer. The attention of the faithful was thus
deflected away from the “invisible” Lord Jesus Christ and His Written
Word. Without these, their attention
naturally focused on the visible image in front of them as the center of their
prayers.
Further, Pope Pius IX was highly instrumental in bringing
about the declaration of “papal infallibility.”[16] With remarkable ingenuity, against not only
the Scriptural absurdity of the concept, but also in spite of the historical
fact of popes declared heretical by the same Roman Catholic Church, this was
made doctrine at Vatican Council I in 1870.[17] This doctrine consolidated in the hands of
the reigning pope dictatorial powers heretofore unknown within the Catholic
Church. Succeeding popes reestablished
the Papacy internally by reorganizing Roman Catholic law into the 1917 Code
of Canon Law.
Vatican Achieves Civil
Status in the Modern Era
The
apparent mortal wound of 1798[18]
was healed in 1929, when, under Mussolini, the Vatican was again recognized as
a sovereign civil power, known as the Holy See, where Vatican City is seated
geographically within the city of Rome that encompasses all seven hills. The concordat with Mussolini was only the
beginning of many civil concordats, one of the most infamous being that between
Pope Pius XII and Adolf Hitler.[19] Thus, the Papacy had consolidated its power
from within by the 1917 Code of Canon Law and from without by legal concordats
with various nations. Consequently, the Vatican has a
growing civil power with which to be reckoned—for it has its own faithful
living within most sovereign nations around the world while its civil
agreements with the same nations allow the Catholic Church to teach the faith
to its people. This is a double cord of
power. The individual Catholic fearing
for his salvation, and laden with his first allegiance being to “Holy Mother Church,” becomes a pliable pawn in the
hand of the Papacy.
Mystery of Iniquity Makes Strategic Change
Vatican
Council II (1962-1965) formally declared the Papacy’s strategic change of
tactics regarding the reunification of Protestants under Catholicism, along
with incorporating other faiths under its rule.
Therefore, the Council moved from a position of “separation from other
religions” to one of an all-encompassing ecumenism, not only with the religions
of the world, but also with Bible believers in particular. “Separated brethren” was the new term for
these Bible believers who previously were called heretics. Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism previously
called pagan religions were now accepted as religions that contain, “what is
true and holy.”[20] This new approach was established by the Roman
Catholic Church to win the world to herself, primarily by means of
dialogue. The Council formulated its
rules and goals of dialogue, which are carefully spelled out in her
post-Conciliar Document No. 42, on ecumenism.
It states that, “dialogue is not an end in itself ... it is not just an
academic discussion.”[21] Rather, “ecumenical dialogue…serves to
transform modes of thought and behavior and the daily life of those
[non-Catholic] communities. In this way,
it aims at preparing the way for their
unity of faith in the bosom of a Church one and visible.”[22]
Unlike the Body of Christ, whose
unity is in Jesus Christ, the unity for which the Roman Church strives is an
outward, visible unity, and one that will be enforceable through civil law – as
her “Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church” spells out by means of
many deceptive words.
The Pope’s official position is that “ecumenical encounter
is not merely an individual work, but also a task of the Roman Church, which takes precedence over all individual
opinions.”[23] The Papacy expects this process of dialogue
to take time. The Roman Catholic
Church’s aim of bringing “all Christian churches” under her authority is her
clearly stated goal. She says, “…little
by little, as the obstacles to perfect ecclesial communion are overcome, all Christians will be gathered, in a common
celebration of the Eucharist [the Mass] into that unity of the one and only
Church…This unity, we believe, dwells in the Catholic Church as something
we can never lose.”[24]
Pope John Paul II, while initially
having been thought to be liberal and modern, further consolidated the
dictatorial powers afforded him by the 1917 Code of Canon Law and by his
purported infallibility, bequeathed him by Vatican Council I. This he did by revising the 1917 Code,
making it even more conservative than it had been, and he was careful to
appoint new bishops in line with his centralized way of thinking.
Like another Hildebrand, John Paul II was
determined to build, by both Church and civil law, the structure by which the
Papacy can again wield might and authority among the nations at the appropriate
time. This same Pope John Paul II was
adamant in his efforts to update the laws of the Roman Catholic Church. Since the days of Hildebrand, popes have seen
the necessity of making iron-like, inflexible church laws before attempting to
control their subjects, and those not Catholic, by compulsion if necessary. In 1983, John Paul II’s revision of the 1917 Code
of Canon Law added to the Roman Catholic laws. For example, “The Church has an innate and
proper right to coerce offending members of the Christian faithful by means of
penal sanctions.”[25]
Examination of these laws shows them to be even more absolute and
totalitarian than those of the past. If
one rejects submission of his intellect and will to the Pope, or rejects some
doctrines of the Papacy, by church law he can be severely punished. For example, Canon 1312 Para 2 states, “The
law can establish other expiatory penalties which deprive a believer of some
spiritual or temporal good and are consistent with the supernatural end of the
Church.”[26]
Mystery of Iniquity: Power Player in the Post-Modern Era
The Roman Catholic Church is not content to rule only over her own
faithful. Rather, now with the dawn of
the Post-Modern era, globalism[27] is the manifesting idea of the day, a day
for which the Papacy throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has been
preparing. The “Compendium of Social
Doctrine of the [Catholic] Church,” which began to be collected by the end of
the nineteenth century under Pope Leo, is a catalog of Catholic law. It lays out the Papal ideas and strategies
for restructuring the current civil political world and extends the application
of its laws and dictates to all individuals worldwide. For instance, it states that all human
individuals worldwide are part of “the common good.” Everybody has a share in the common good and
everybody has something to contribute to the common good. The rallying cry of the Compendium is for
“fairness, equality, social justice, economic justice, etc.,” which defined by
them means that everyone must participate in sharing what he has with whomever
the state says he must, regardless of whether or not one agrees with this
view. For a while, those who maintain
such backward and recalcitrant attitudes will be tolerated; then individuals
will be coerced into taking part.[28]
Both John Paul II and Benedict XVI called
for a new governmental structure to rule over the General Assembly of the
United Nations (UN). This new
governmental body, conferring among themselves, is to hand down laws and
dictates which the nation states of the UN would then enforce – in other words,
a new sovereign world empire in which the nation states are simply to enforce
the laws and dictates of a higher, unelected body. All goods, resources, and property of any
kind would be subject to management by the UN and the nations. In a word, the Papacy wants a totally
centralized world government, one in which the Roman Catholic Church will be
the moral and juridical authority. To
that end, the Roman Church has been increasingly bold in infusing into national
and international public forums her agenda for restructuring the civil secular
world. Regardless of the type of persona Pope Francis displays, he will
not change this central objective of the Papacy.
The Compendium is constantly being updated
as information is gathered, collated, and taught to individual lay
Catholics. Most Catholics have not
recognized the agenda that is behind the change in what they are being
taught. Yet, it is the specific duty of
all lay Catholics to change the thinking within their societies to align with the
Papal understanding of church and civil government.[29] In
the fifty years since Vatican Council II, dutiful lay Catholics in every walk
of life have been quite successful at rolling Catholic social doctrine like a
new Trojan horse into all sorts of religious, political, and social
groups. The Evangelical church, for the
most part, has felt honored to receive such a prize.
For at least seventy years, Catholic
social doctrine has been mainstreamed into the political arena. Witness the buzzwords of today, coined not by
Muslims, Hindus or Buddhists, but by the Roman Catholic Church: phrases such as “redistribution of wealth,”
“social justice,” “economic justice,” “dignity of the human person,” “the
common good,” “fairness,” and the “right to life, food, clothing, shelter,
rest, medical care, education, and employment.”
Catholic social doctrine is pushed worldwide by individual Catholics and
Catholic groups, as the latest addenda to what the Papacy says are included in
evangelization. The Papacy says this is
the particular duty of the Catholic laity.
Thus, the “mystery of iniquity,” made manifest in the institution of the
Roman Catholic Church and its Office of the Papacy, has for the last century
been moving effectively into the civil governmental sphere, everywhere pressing
its own unbiblical ideas into the public forum.
These ideas are to be formulated into ruinous and unjust laws to the
enslavement of those living under them.
Utopianism, socialism, communism, totalitarianism – these are children
of the Papacy’s doctrine and practice.
These ungodly ideas are found in the Compendium as integral parts of
Roman Catholic social doctrine.
Under the civil title of Holy See, the
Catholic Church has ambassadors in many nations. Declining to come under the dominion of the
United Nations, she preferred to take an official place as observer rather than
member. The Holy See has observer status
in many other international bodies as well.
Moreover, the Roman Church has a viable infrastructure in most countries
of the world. Therefore, she is in an
excellent position to take advantage of the burgeoning idea of globalism in
every sector of life that the statists, utopians, and totalitarians intend to harness
to their own ends. She, with her “fifth
column” in every nation, is able to pervert the Gospel, sideline the truths
taught in the Scripture as irrelevant or false, and deceptively divert Bible
believers away from the love of the truth.
What then is to stop her from once again making wholesale merchandise of
men’s souls in deals with modern leaders of the nations to the glory of her own
power?
Conclusion
The
“mystery of iniquity” arose under the Imperial Roman Empire and survived
the empire’s demise. In 537 A.D., Justinian
gave the legal base for it to acquire civil power, which it did throughout the
course of the next ten centuries. Its
temporal power was arrested by the recovery of the Bible and the Gospel during
the Reformation of the sixteenth century.
It was held at bay by the Puritans of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries. Nevertheless, it survived the
demise of the Holy Roman Empire to become a
sovereign nation in the 20th century and is now set to be a major
power player in the Post Modern Era.
Currently
Pope Francis is the visible head of the Roman church; but the mystery of iniquity is still the power behind the
throne. The mystery of iniquity is nothing less than the satanic
counterfeit of the mystery of
godliness. The Scripture states, “without controversy great is the mystery
of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of
angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into
glory.”[30]
The “mystery of godliness” is
the great revelation of God, which had its full manifestation in the Person of
the Christ of God. Thus,
Scripture proclaims, “God, who at sundry times and in divers manners
spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days
spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom
also he made the worlds; Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express
image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he
had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on
high.”[31]
As we
behold the power, wisdom, and goodness of the Father, we also behold the power,
wisdom, and goodness of the Lord Jesus Christ; for as mediator, He has the nature
and perfections of God in Himself. The
Lord Jesus Christ alone can satisfy our hearts. There is absolutely no church system that
satisfies; it is only our personal relationship with our Lord that truly
satisfies. Thus, His Word expresses it, “Whom
have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside
thee.”[32] How trivial and vain are the promises of the
Papal system compared to the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ, Who is revealed
as the “chiefest among ten thousand.”[33]
Were it
not for the recovery of the absolute authority of the Bible alone and the
Gospel of grace in salvation during the Reformation of the sixteenth century,
the “mystery of iniquity” might still be undetected. Contrary to this, and in spite of the mystery
of iniquity being so rampantly displayed in the world today, the Holy Spirit
still convicts individual men of their sin before Holy God, sends them
repentance unto life in Christ Jesus. “For by grace are ye saved, through faith;
and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man
should boast.”[34] The true believer is thus “accepted in the beloved, in whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins,
according to the riches of his grace.”[35]
The frightening words of the Lord
in Matthew 7:21 ought to ring in the ears of those who have spent their whole
lives believing a religious system, “not every one that saith unto me, Lord,
Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my
Father which is in heaven.”
No
person, by merely acknowledging Christ’s authority, believing in His divinity,
professing faith in His perfection and in the infinite merit of His atonement,
shall have any part with God in His glory, but only he who does the will of His
Father. The Lord put the command to believe
in a nutshell when He said, “this is the work of God, that ye believe on Him whom He hath
sent.”[36] Likewise, the Apostle Paul and Silas
declared, “believe on the Lord
Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house.”[37]
The godliness of Jesus Christ
stands, so also is His call on your life.
Before you the question stands, have you tasted of “the mystery of godliness”?
To personally know Christ Jesus is to know the everlasting arms of the
All-Holy God. Does your very heart and
soul cry out to Him, “Abba, Father”?[38] The water of life is offered to you in the abundance of grace, which far surpasses the
evils of sin. Thus, the Lord’s call in
Scripture says, “the Spirit and the bride say, come. And let
him that heareth say, come. And let him
that is athirst come. And whosoever
will, let him take the water of life freely.”[39]
Once a convicted sinner believes on
Christ Jesus alone, by grace alone, through faith alone, as his only surety and
refuge before the All-Holy God, he finds himself not only freed from his sins,
but made to “reign in life ... for if by one man’s offence death reigned by one;
much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of
righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ.”[40] Those who
receive the abundant grace given by Christ are not only redeemed from the
dominion of death, they live and reign with Christ as they are sanctified daily
through His Word by the Holy Spirit, and by constant fellowship with Him. With Him, they shall reign forever and
glorify Him for all eternity. Believe on Him alone and you will be
secure in Him, “to the praise of the glory of his grace, his
free gift to us in the Beloved.”[41] Then you will behold “the mystery of godliness.” “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a
new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.”[42]
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[1] II Thessalonians 2:7b
[2]
From Latin: Vicarius
Christi, meaning acting or taking the place of Christ; a substitute. It is
a title of the Pope implying his supreme and universal primacy, both of honor
and of jurisdiction, over the Church
of Christ, which title,
honor, and jurisdiction belongs to Christ only.
[3] I John 2:22
[4] II Corinthians 6:16, Hebrews 3:6
[5] Le Roy Edwin Froom, The
Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers: The
Historical Development of Prophetic Interpretation (Washington, DC: Review and Herald Publishing Assn., 1950)
Vol. I, pp. 507-508
[6] Luke 22:25-26
[7]
www.answers.com/topic/Pope-vitalian
[8] It was
only after Bishop Claude’s death, as the Gospel and the Bible were removed,
that this area fell to the Roman bishop’s authority. Similarly, in our own day, it is only by the
watering down of the Gospel and the removal of preaching the whole counsel of
God from the Bible, that the Roman Catholic ecumenical movement has been able
to infiltrate hitherto sound churches.
From there it is not a big step into the new Emergent
Church movement; and the Emergent Church is simply a route back to the
folds of the Roman Catholic Church.
[9] Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church
(Hendrickson Publishers,1885) Vol. 4, pp. 250 – 253
[10] Henry Denzinger, The Sources of Catholic Dogma, (B.
Herder Book Co., 1957), #822, Canon 12
[11]
www.milestonedocuments.com/documents/view/treaty-of-westphalia
[12] Le Roy Edwin Froom, The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers “in it
[the Peace of Westphalia] Catholic, Calvinistic, and Lutheran princes agreed to
tolerate each other – within carefully defined limits. Suppressed evangelical truth had at last
emerged from papal dominance.” Vol. II,
p. 599
[13] Christ Jesus also said that
Scripture could not be broken. John 10:35 The Bible testifies to its own
essential truth, e.g., “The sum of Thy word is truth.” Psalm
119: 160 The written Word of God is the “word
of truth.” Psalms 119:43; II Corinthians 6:7 God says of His written word,
“These words are faithful and true.” Revelation 21:5 The written word
of God is infallible and inerrant in all areas, earthly as well as spiritual.
John 3:12
[14] General Louis-Alexandre Berthier,
a chief of staff under Napoleon, entered Rome
unopposed on February 10, 1798 and proclaimed a Roman Republic. He demanded of the Pope a renunciation of his
temporal power. The Pope refused and he
was taken captive to France
where he died not long after an arduous trip.
[15] Most
of the other traditional dogmas on Mary are founded on the teaching of “The
Immaculate Conception.”
Superlative worship
of Mary is now standard practice. For
example, the Catechism of the Catholic
Church, Para 2677
officially states, “By asking Mary to pray for us, we acknowledge ourselves to
be poor sinners and we address ourselves to the ‘Mother of Mercy,’ the All Holy
One.”
[16] Attributing Papal Tradition to the leading of the Holy Spirit, and
presumptuously assuming such preposterous claims as papal infallibility, is in
the strict sense of the term a blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.
[17]
Pope Honorious (625-638)
was condemned as a heretic by the Sixth Ecumenical Council (680-681 A.D.). He was also condemned as a heretic by Pope
Leo II, as well as by every other Pope until the eleventh century. Thus there were “infallible” Popes condemning
another “infallible” Pope as a heretic.
[18] See first sentence under
heading: Mystery of
Iniquity’s Transition into a Modern Nation State
[19] John Cornwell, Hitler’s
Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII
(NY 10014: Viking, 1999) p. 7
“In 1933 Pacelli found a successful negotiating partner for his Reich
Concordat in the person of Adolf Hitler.
Their treaty authorized the papacy to impose the new Church law on
German Catholics and granted generous privileges to Catholic schools and the
clergy. In exchange, the Catholic Church
in Germany,
its parliamentary political party, and its many hundreds of associations and
newspapers ‘voluntarily’ withdrew, following Pacelli’s initiative, from social and
political action. The abdication of
German political Catholicism in 1933, negotiated and imposed from the Vatican
by Pacelli with the agreement of Pope Pius XI, ensured that Nazism could rise
unopposed by the most powerful Catholic community in the world…”
[20] The Conciliar and Post
Conciliar Documents No. 56, Nostra Aetate, 1965, Vatican
Council II
[21] Vatican
Council II Document Reflections and Suggestions Concerning Ecumenical Dialogue”
p. 549
[22] Ibid. No.
42, pp. 540-1
[24] Ibid. 541
[25] Code of Canon Law Latin-English
ed. ( Canon Law Society of America, 1983) Canon 1311
[26]
Canon 1336 Section 2
[27] The policy of placing the
interests of the entire world above those of individual sovereign nations
[28] Compendium, Sect. 167, 173, 177
– 179, 191
[29] Ibid. Sect. 83, 80; Catechism of the Catholic Church (1994), Para. 168, 169, 181
[30] I Timothy 3:16
[31] Hebrews 1:1-2
[32] Psalm 73:25
[33] Song
of Songs 5:10
[34] Ephesians 2:8-9
[35] Ephesians 1:6-7
[36] John
6:29
[37] Acts
16:31
[38] Romans 8:15, “For
ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received
the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father!’”
[39] Revelation 22:17
[40] Romans 5:17
[41] Ephesians 1:6
[42] II
Corinthians 5:17
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