Category Archives: heresy

Montanism and the Synod of Synodality – March 7, 2023

Have the Montanists returned?  

Montanism was a 2nd century heresy and sect begun by their leader Montanus.  The Montanists believed in a “New Prophecy,” as it was known, centered on the prophetic revelations of its founder.  Montanus, and two other female oracles, Prisca and Maximilla, would go into ecstatic visions to reveal “new things” from the Holy Spirit.  

Eusebius relays the manner of these new revelations, “and being suddenly in a sort of frenzy and ecstasy, he raved, and began to babble and utter strange things, prophesying in a manner contrary to the constant custom of the Church handed down by tradition from the beginning.”  

To the New Prophecy movement, the living gift of the Holy Spirit mediated the Church, not the episcopate, or Scripture and Tradition.  It was the spontaneity of the spirit for their unique times. Their heresies are murky and not entirely clear from history.  But eventually, the Montanists descended into believing Montanus’ and the priestesses’ prophetic utterances superseded even the Gospel. 

Are we witnessing a New Prophecy in our day?  

The Synod of Synodality is the Church’s ongoing three-phase dialogue begun in 2021 that will finish in its final phase in October 2024 in order to discern the universal voice of the Holy Spirit speaking to the Church. The Jesuit publication, America Magazine, assures us that, “The Holy Spirit is guiding the process.” Some of the issues they highlight coming from the synodal process concern female ordination, “LGBT issues,” and clericalism.  It remains to be seen if these are the ways they are seeking to “enlarge the space of your tent” for the Church.    

The late Cardinal Pell before his sudden death in January 2023 penned an article for the Spectator critiquing the Synod, “The Catholic Synod of Bishops is now busy constructing what they think of as ‘God’s dream’ of synodality. Unfortunately this divine dream has developed into a toxic nightmare despite the bishops’ professed good intentions.”

There is possible reason for concern. 

Some worry the Synod is democratizing the Church and making majority rule a new structure for discerning Church teaching.  There is a basis in truth for this in that the sensus fidelium of the whole body of the Church can reach a universal assent on matters of faith and morals. 

However, in a time of great ignorance of the faith and a lack of supernatural belief in the Eucharist and the sacraments, will the sensus fidelium be confused with the zeitgeist of our age?  Is the zeitgeist guiding the Synod to soften the Church’s teachings on homosexuality, contraception, a female diaconate, divorce and remarriage, and priestly celibacy?  This liberalization is being pushed by certain elements within the Church amidst the festering clerical sex abuse scandals, cover-ups, and the ongoing crackdown on traditional Catholics in restricting the Latin-rite Mass.  It’s not exactly the Golden Age of Christendom under Charlemagne.    

Only time will tell—and that time may be October 2024—if new Montanists are in our midst, and if they may try to declare a “New Prophecy” overturning the age-old truths of the Church.  Do pray for the success of the Synod.  Pray that they will adhere to the divinely revealed truths of the Church.  

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Modernism and The Trojan Horse in the City of God – September 14, 2021

Pope Pius XII called Dietrich von Hildebrand the “20th century Doctor of the Church.”  Dietrich von Hildebrand was a fierce anti-Nazi crusader.  Hitler and Himmler despised him and sought to have him assassinated.  Dietrich managed to evade the Nazis and ultimately flee to America where he taught philosophy at Fordham University.  Von Hildebrand voiced his greatest concerns, however, over the remainder of his life fighting against the Modernist heresy in the Church, especially after the Second Vatican Council.

His thought was crystallized in his famous 1967 book “Trojan Horse in the City of God.”  Von Hildebrand expressed his reason of profound lament in writing the book:  

“This book has been written out of a deep sorrow at witnessing the emergence of false prophets within the City of God.”  

The book was written in 1967 just after the close of the Vatican Council II.  It was then that the Latin Mass Liturgy was transformed into the modern Mass.  Von Hildebrand’s ire, however, was directed not at Vatican Council II, which favored the Latin Mass, but at the false prophets of Modernism who sought to undermine the 2,000 year tradition of the Church. 

Von Hildebrand attacked the “grave errors widespread among progressive Catholics.”   These are what are rotting the Church out from the inside.  Progressive Catholics would rather the Church adopt the spirit of the age than convert the spirit of the age to the Church.  This is heresy.  

And what are the Modernist heresies?  

According to von Hildebrand, they are naturalism, secularism, scientism, relativism, evolutionism, atheism, amoralism, indifferentism, Marxism, and Communism.  These are the cancers eating away at modern man, and have even seeped into the Body of Christ, eating away at doctrine, tradition, the sacraments, and the liturgy.  Particularly, materialism and science fetishism, Von Hildebrand called “the cancer of our epoch.”    

These are much like the ancient heresies that the Church has had to fight continuously to subdue in her past:  

Gnosticism (1st century) – humans are divine souls trapped in material bodies

Docetism (2nd century) – denying Christ’s human body

Arianism (4th century) – denying the divinity of Christ

Pelagianism (5th century) – denying original sin and the need for Christ’s grace

Nestorianism (5th century) – denying the divine nature of Christ

Monophystism (5th century) – denying the human nature of Christ

Monothelitism (7th century) – denying the two wills of Christ

Iconoclasm (8th century) – belief that icons are idols and must be destroyed

Albegensianism (12th century) – denying the creation by God; a form of Gnosticism where the world was created by Satan.

Protestantism (16th century) – denying the Church, the priesthood, the sacraments, Tradition, and advocating sola scriptura (scripture alone), sola fides (faith alone), sola gratia (grace alone)

The 18th, 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries have been a whole new breed of heresies altogether, and a summation of all the previous heresies combined.  It is the summation of all worldly historical heresies at our footsteps.  In our day, Darwinsim, Marxism, Freudianism, Scientism, Secularism, Easternism, Mohammadism, atheism, occultism are pervasive everywhere as well.  As Von Hildebrand suggests:

“Like a besieged city, the Church is surrounded by the errors and dangers of our time.”  

The teachings of the false prophets are everywhere.  Von Hildebrand left his most vehement attack against Teilhard de Chardin who he dubbed succinctly “a false prophet,” who preached a “theology fiction.”  Eternity concerns the individual and the individual is not absorbed into the common consciousness of an impersonal force for eternity.  This is a new age Chardin heresy blended with eastern mysticism.  

Christianity is concerned with the individual.  It is incompatible with the generic impersonalism of New Age movements as well as the collective of the Communists.  These are anathema!   He declares, ” Supernatural truths deserve vigorous defense.”  

Von Hildebrand counsels strongly that, “The Church is advised therefore to be wise and concern herself with surviving in a Communist world.”  

The modern man and the modern world seeks to depersonalize each human being created in the image of God. This is false.  This is heresy.   

Materialism and Communism are fundamentally totalitarian in nature.  They seek to depersonalize each person.  It is the cult of depersonalization!   The progressive left and Socialists are fundamentally anti-humanitarian in their outlooks.  There can be no reconciliation between Communists and Catholics.  What does Christ have to do with Satan?  

Secularization is apostasy from Christ.   Christ’s truths are eternal and do not change.   The miraculous cannot be stripped from the Gospels.  Revitalization will focus on the supernatural spirit of Christ.  

It is at this point in the 21st century that we find ourselves.  Even Von Hildebrand might have been shocked in the 1960s how quickly we have rushed down the Gerasene cliff like mad swine drowning under the water. Welcome to Sodom and Gomorrah 2021.    

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