The Collect for the Feast of the Most Holy Trinity in the Traditional Roman Rite provides compelling evidence (or should I say, more evidence still) that the Mass of Ages is incompatible with the conciliar church and its aims. It reads, as commonly translated in English, as follows:
O Almighty and everlasting God, who hast enabled Thy servants, in confessing the true Faith, to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity, and in the power of Majesty to adore its Unity: we beseech Thee, that by steadfastness in the same Faith, we may ever be defended against all adversity.
What may stand out to readers, as it did to me two Sundays ago, is the expression “the true Faith,” a designation that belongs to the Holy Roman Catholic Church alone, and one that necessarily places all other such societies squarely into the crowded category known as “false religions.” Needless to say, this phrase has largely fallen into disuse in conciliar circles thanks to the counterfeit church’s fervent commitment to ecumenism and interreligious dialogue, activities by which those outside the Church are routinely confirmed in their religious errors.
The context in which “the true faith” is mentioned in the Collect above is especially verboten among those who are devoted to diplomatic discourse with the non-Christian religions – the official playbook for which is Nostra Aetate of Vatican II – for the simple reason that it equates acknowledgement of the eternal Trinity with the true faith.
As a perhaps interesting aside, among the many thousands of words of which the sixteen conciliar documents are comprised, “the true faith” is not to be found. One will find, however, a singular reference to “true faith” – that is, concerning what the Council considers to be truly Catholic – and this when cautioning against “gross exaggerations” in the field of Marian devotion! (cf LG 67)
According to the Council, “men expect from the various religions answers to the unsolved riddles of the human condition” (NA 1). As for whether or not that expectation is well-founded, the Council goes on to offer certain specific reassurances.
For example, the Council proposes that “the divine mystery” is “contemplated and expressed” in Hinduism, which even affords one the opportunity to embark upon “a flight to God with love and trust.”
Many among us have understandably grown numb this sort of flowery interreligious prose, but let us stop for a moment to reflect on just how utterly scandalous this proposition truly is. The Council is stating as a matter of fact that Hinduism expresses the divine mystery, i.e., the suggestion being that this polytheistic religion is an instrument of Divine Revelation!
If this is not proof positive enough that Vatican II is not an act of the Holy Roman Catholic Church, the Council even goes on to declare that Hinduism provides a flight to God, as if it is a legitimate pathway to eternal bliss, i.e., salvific.
We are further informed in Nostra Aetate that Buddhism “teaches a way by which men may be able to acquire the state of perfect liberation through higher help, supreme illumination.”
Supreme illumination… The implication once again is Divine Revelation.
Furthermore, the attentive Catholic reader is moved to ask (rhetorically): How is perfect liberation actually acquired?
Our Lord told us: The truth will set you free. I am the Truth. And yet, the Council is pleased to validate the false religion, Buddhism, as another means.
Defenders of Vatican II will swiftly point out that the Council added some context and caveats as well. For example, in reference to Hinduism, Buddhism, and “other religions found everywhere” (which more or less covers them all), the Council states:
The Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true and holy in these religions. She regards with sincere reverence those ways of conduct and of life, those precepts and teachings which, though differing in many aspects from the ones she holds and sets forth, nonetheless often reflect a ray of that Truth which enlightens all men. (ibid.)
While the naïve may protest that this puts the Council’s esteem for false religions in context, it does no such thing. The Catholic Church has never rejected any religious truth, nor has she ever rejected anything that is truly holy as this would be tantamount to attacking herself. She alone, led by the Holy Ghost, has the God-given authority to identify such things as religious truth and holiness. She alone was given the Divine commission to teach religious truth to the nations and to lead all men to holiness.
This mission, given to her by Christ the King, prevents her from flattering the false religions, for the good of souls, regardless of how many fragments of truth they may seem to hold. Afterall, it is not for nothing that Sacred Scripture twice warns that “a little leaven corrupts the whole lump.” (See Galatians and 1 Corinthians)
Even as the Council expresses its high regard for the false religions, it declares out of the other side of its hyperactive mouth:
Indeed, she [the Church] proclaims, and ever must proclaim Christ “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6), in whom men may find the fullness of religious life, in whom God has reconciled all things to Himself.
While the naïve may protest that this serves as the Council’s commitment to the Divine commission, the well-formed Catholic isn’t fooled. Proclaiming “the way, the truth, and the life” requires the Catholic Church to warn against the false religions and to call those who are being led astray by them to conversion. The conciliar church, by contrast, has no interest in doing such things, in fact, it does the exact opposite.
Nostra Aetate even goes so far as to declare that the Muslims “adore the one God, living and subsisting in Himself; merciful and all- powerful, the Creator of heaven and earth, who has spoken to men” (NA 3), and this roughly one year after stating that the Muslims “along with us adore the one and merciful God, who on the last day will judge mankind” (LG 16).
This brings us back to the traditional Collect for Trinity Sunday: The true Faith necessarily entails acknowledgement of the eternal Trinity. This means that Islam, despite “taking pleasure in linking itself to the God of Abraham” (cf NA 3) most certainly does not adore the one true God with us; it is a false religion.
The same goes for so-called Judaism and self-described Jews of whom the Council boldly declared in Nostra Aetate 4:
Nor can she forget that she draws sustenance from the root of that well-cultivated olive tree onto which have been grafted the wild shoots, the Gentiles. Indeed, the Church believes that by His cross Christ, Our Peace, reconciled Jews and Gentiles, making both one in Himself.
Bear well in mind that the Council is here speaking not of men like the Apostles, Jews who accepted Christ, rather, it is very specifically speaking about the Jews of “our time” (in Latin, “Nostra Aetate”), i.e., those who plainly reject Jesus Christ and scoff at His Cross! And yet, it proposes that the Church believes that we are one with them?
[See HERE and HERE for more details about the Council’s misappropriation of Sacred Scripture in service to modern day Jews.]
No, we are not one with present day “Jews” in Christ. Not even close. Let us not forget what Our Lord said:
“He who rejects me rejects Him who sent me” (Luke 10:16).
Unless we are willing to brand Our Lord a liar (God forbid!) we must insist that they have abandoned Almighty God, even if unknowingly on a personal individual level. Furthermore, the Jews adamantly reject the Blessed Trinity. As such, it cannot be said that they worship the one true God along with us. The Church – the one true Church – is duty bound to teach the Jews these bitter truths, just as she always has, beginning with the preaching of St. Peter on the day of Pentecost.
Judaism, such as it claims to exist in our day, is a false religion, just as to the Collect for Trinity Sunday makes plain.
Upon hearing the Collect that day, I wondered what the missal for the Novus Ordo might have to say, fully expecting the words “the true Faith” to be missing altogether. But, alas, Satan is “more subtle than any of the beasts of the earth” (Gen 3:1).
What I discovered, at first, surprised me:
God our Father, who by sending into the world the Word of truth and the Spirit of sanctification made known to the human race your wondrous mystery, grant us, we pray, that in professing the true faith, we may acknowledge the Trinity of eternal glory and adore your Unity, powerful in majesty. Through our Lord. (Novus Ordo Collect for Trinity Sunday)
At first glance, it may appear that the two Collects – TLM and Novus Ordo – are more or less the same. On closer consideration, however, they are not.
The traditional Collect indicates that confessing the true faith enables one to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity. It therefore naturally follows that one who does not confess the true faith (i.e., one who is entrenched in a false faith or otherwise opposes the true faith), is not necessarily even able to recognize, much less acknowledge, that Almighty God is a Trinity of Persons existing in Unity.
The Novus Ordo Collect, by contrast, prays that we may acknowledge, not the glory of the Trinity itself (as in the TLM), but rather what one can reasonably interpret as a Trinity of “God our Father’s” attributes, namely, His “eternal glory, power of Majesty, Unity.”
Yes, the difference is subtle, but a Muslim or self-described Jew could easily make his peace with the Novus Ordo Collect, while the same cannot be said for the traditional text.
Investigating this further, I was very pleased to find that I’m not alone in seeing the two Collects as far less than equal. Conducting a much more enlightened comparison between the two texts, Catholic theologian Dr. Michael P. Foley, Professor of Patristics at Baylor University, writes:
It [the Novus Ordo text] reverses what we acknowledge. Before we acknowledged the glory of the Trinity; now we acknowledge the “Trinity of glory.” The latter is theologically ambivalent, and it weakens the allusion to our doxological.
Dr. Foley, whose article is well worth reading in its fullness, made a further observation, one that underscores the very point I had hoped to make, doing so far better than I could have done so myself. He writes:
The three [TLM] hand Missals I consulted–St. Andrew Daily, St. Joseph, and Baronius Press– translate the word [advérsis] as “adversities,” but I think they are missing the point. First, there is a Latin word for adversity and it is adversitas, not adversis. The Roman Collects sometimes pray for deliverance from adversitas, but here I believe that the author has in mind the people that war against our confession of the true Faith…
Brilliant! This clarification makes it all the more clear why the traditional Collect – and more to the point, the Mass from which it comes – is incompatible with the interreligious aims of the conciliar church.
You see, unlike the Catholic Church, the Novus Ordo sect sees those who refuse to acknowledge the Blessed Trinity, who reject Jesus Christ and war against the true faith, not as adversaries in any sense of the word, but rather as co-pilgrims from whom we have much to learn as we journey together toward the selfsame God, albeit along diverse pathways.
In closing, let us give credit where credit is due:
As the above indicates, Jorge Bergoglio was speaking the plain truth when he declared in Traditionis Cojones that the Novus Ordo is “the unique expression of the lex orandi” of the church over which he reigns, a man and a church, neither of which are Catholic.
