As the Stomach Turns: the hideous common liturgical prayers approved by Rome for Quincentenary of the Protestant Revolution

Rorate Caeli has a long and detailed post examining the new prayers approved by a Lutheran commission and the Pontifical Council for Promoting Gross Religious Indifference Promoting Christian Unity, headed by the arch-modernist Kurt Cardinal Koch, including prayers meant to be offered in Masses during the 500th anniversary lamentations “celebrations” of the protestant revolution.  I’ll skip the detailed background and jump ahead directly to the stomach-turning prayers (emphasis in original, my comments):

The Lutheran World Federation (LWF) and the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity (PCPCU) have invited Lutheran churches and Catholic bishops’ conferences across the world to make use of a jointly-developed Common Prayer to prepare commemorations for the 500 years of the Reformation in 2017…… [Which should be lamented as the utter disaster they were and are, ecclesiastically, theologically, morally, politically, economically, and in just about every aspect conceivable.]

……..previous Popes always resisted Lutheran pressure for Catholic-Lutheran intercommunion to be normalized even without visible ecclesial unity. Under the present pontificate this resistance looks significantly weaker — if it exists at all. This is also the first time that the drive for Catholic-Lutheran union and the glorification of the Reformation has taken a quasi-liturgical shape, intended not just for relatively rare “ecumenical encounters” but for Catholics and Lutherans worldwide. As Traditionalists know only too well, prayer and belief go hand in hand. The dangerous implications of this step are plain for us to see. [Will we see these hideous prayers insisted upon by national conferences worldwide, for “ecumenical services” commemorating the Quincentenary of this monumental disaster?]

The opening prayer of the service prays that the Lord “help us to rejoice in the gifts that have come to the Church through the Reformation, prepare us to repent for the dividing walls that we, and our forebears, have built, and equip us for common witness and service in the world”.  [The walls that WE have built!?!?  Who the heck broke away from whom, who condemned whom as being a false religion, a “babylonian mystery cult” invented some indeterminate time after the Resurrection, even though ALL the Church Fathers confirm an unbroken line of Catholic belief from the first Gospel (St. Matthew) to the current day?!?  This is Lutheran propaganda]

Another prayer runs as follows:

Thanks be to you O God for the many guiding theological and spiritual insights that we have all received through the Reformation. [I just threw up a little bit in my mouth] Thanks be to you for the good transformations and reforms that were set in motion by the Reformation or by struggling with its challenges. Thanks be to you for the proclamation of the gospel that occurred during the Reformation and that since then has strengthened countless people to live lives of faith in Jesus Christ. [I literally do not know what to say.  This is a veritable declaration of schism, of rejection of Jesus Christ and His Church.  This is what comes from fearing men more than God.  Great job, post-conciliar modernist heretics.]

One of the readings in the “Thanksgiving” portion of the service begins thus:

“Lutherans are thankful in their hearts for what Luther and the other reformers made accessible to them: [heresy, falsity, schism, denial of the Real Presence, abolition of most Sacraments, twisting of Scripture, violent repression, becoming beholden to political power…..my stars, the wonders Luther wrought] the understanding of the gospel of Jesus Christ and faith in him; the insight into the mystery of the Triune God who gives Himself to us human beings out of grace and who can be received only in full trust in the divine promise; [What about received, literally, in the Blessed Sacrament?!?] the freedom and certainty that the gospel creates; in the love that comes from and is awakened by faith, and in the hope in life and death that faith brings with it; and in the living contact with the Holy Scripture, the catechisms, and hymns that draw faith into life.” [My these ecumenists love to hear themselves talk]

Another reading ends with:

“The ecumenical journey enables Lutherans and Catholics to appreciate together Martin Luther’s insight into and spiritual experience of the gospel of the righteousness of God, which is also God’s mercy.”

This “liturgical order” is characterized by the dominance of Protestant material, and the one-sided praise for the Reformation while nothing at all is said about — or taken from — the distinctive elements of Catholic history, theology and heritage. The Reformation and Martin Luther are repeatedly extolled, while the Counter-Reformation and the Popes and Saints of the 16th century are passed over in total silence.

The troubles that came from the Reformation are thoroughly glossed over in the “Repentance” section of the service that covers doctrinal disagreements and historical tragedies in banal generalities which equally blame Lutherans and Catholics. The overwhelming emphasis in this service is on what supposedly unites Catholics and Lutherans, while the doctrines that “divide” us — doctrines for which innumerable Catholic martyrs and confessors suffered, bled, fought and died — are left unmentioned and abandoned. [So I guess St. Margaret Clitherow, St. John Fisher, St. Thomas More, St. Peter Canisius, and hundreds more are just thrilled to be totally ignored and passed over like this.]

May God have mercy on our Church. 

Have you ever noticed the Orwellian double-thought that seems very prevalent among so many of our institutional leaders today, especially those inured in the so-called ecumenical movement?  In certain contexts, they evince fealty to the Church and even extol the virtues of Saints like those I mention above, and then they turn around and literally spit on the memory of those Saints and all they stood for.  I really believe some of the ecumaniacs somehow see no contradiction in this, because they hold the modernist belief that faith changes and that while the Saints may have made an appropriate response for their time, the world has changed and we don’t do things like that any more.

Another, I think much more accurate explanation would be that these men have simply lost the Faith and care far more for worldly applause than they do the good of souls and the Doctrine of the Faith.

Such a strange confluence of events:  a highly dubious Year of Mercy, followed by the Quincentenary of the protestant revolution, that also happens to be the 100th anniversary of the apparitions at Fatima.  Perhaps less strange, than disconcertingly ominous?  I never get into predictions about end times and things like that, but so many Marian apparitions pointed to a time in the Church when the Faith would be rejected even by those in highest authority (or especially by them).  2017 will provide an unprecedented opportunity for just such demonstrations of lack of faith.

May God have mercy on our Church, indeed.