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Fr. AM's avatar

Thank you, Dr. Kwasniewski, for another excellent article! I'd like to share some thoughts with you and your readers on this subject.

A world that rejects God will necessarily worship and set up false gods (i.e. idols), since the need for worship is inscribed in the very nature of man. Similarly, I believe that man has the innate desire to worship Jesus Christ, God made incarnate, and if a society rejects Christ and His Gospel, it will necessarily set up and worship pseudo-christs and a pseudo-gospels. We know of course, from Divine Revelation, that another word for pseudo-Christus is anti-Christus. The antichrist is a false Christ, a new and fake Jesus who claims to be the Messiah, the Saviour of the human race. It is sad and rather tragic that even in the Church today, even within the bosom of the immaculate Bride of Christ, there are individuals (often high up in the Church hierarchy) who are promoting a false Jesus, one who is created in the image of modern(ist) man and by modern(ist) man.

This "new Jesus" will necessarily have to retain some of the traits of the true Jesus Christ, otherwise no one would ever believe in him. Is this not the classic tactic of modernism: to retain some element of the truth while injecting a sufficient amount of error so as to poison that same truth? Even a "new Jesus" that is 95% the true Jesus and 5% an impostor is not Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. It cannot be.

Liturgically, I believe that this is one of the reasons why the Novus Ordo, while valid, is a dangerous rite. I thank God for the elements in the Novus Ordo that are true and authentic Catholicism; but it is the novelties that lead away from the true Catholic Faith and true worship that make the Novus Ordo so dangerous.

If a man were told to eat a platter placed in front of him because it contains 99% wholesome food and only 1% poison, I doubt that anyone sain would acquiesce. And this is why we cannot accept a new Jesus, even if he were 99% "the real Jesus," or a new church, even if it were to retain most of the elements of the traditional Catholic Church founded by Our Lord.

A new church needs a new Jesus because it insists on calling itself Christian, and so it cannot completely throw away Christ Himself; if it were to do that, no one would be led astray and no one would follow it.

Authentic Catholicism requires authentic dogmas, authentic moral teachings, authentic discipline, and a true and authentic form of divine worship. Only the "real Jesus" can provide us with the above.

Anyway, these are just a few thoughts I wanted to share with you and your readers. I welcome any corrections if anything I said was unorthodox.

Thank you, Dr. Kwasniewski, for the excellent article, and for your holy work in defence of the Truth.

Benedicat te Omnipotens Deus + ....

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Jennifer W's avatar

I normally read your posts. But tonight I listened to your audio version while sweeping and mopping my floors. (Great way to make a chore more bearable.) I loved hearing you read the excerpt from Wise Blood. You have quite a knack for voicing characters!

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