THE CAUSE OF THE WORST CRISIS THE CHURCH HAS EVER ENDURED
THE CAUSE OF THE WORST CRISIS THE CHURCH HAS EVER ENDURED
His Holiness Pius IX warned:
“Catholic liberalism is one foot in truth and one foot in error; one foot in the Church and one foot in the world, one foot with me and one foot with my enemies…
What afflicts your country and prevents it from meriting the blessings of Heaven is the confusion of principles. I will say the word and will not remain silent: what I fear most for you is not those wretches of the Commune, true demons escaped from hell, but Catholic liberalism, that fatal system which always dreams of reconciling two impossible things: the Church and the Revolution. I have already condemned it, but I would condemn it forty more times if necessary. Yes, I say it again out of the love I bear you; yes, that balancing act is what may ultimately destroy religion among you.”
(His Holiness Pius IX, Address to the Catholics of France, June 18, 1871).
Saint Pius X also pointed out this great danger:
“Liberal Catholics are wolves in sheep's clothing. And for that reason the priest, the true priest, must reveal to the people entrusted to his care their dangerous schemes and their evil purposes.”
(Saint Pius X, address of September 5, 1894, while a cardinal).
We now quote an interview granted by Cardinal Ratzinger to Vittorio Messori in November 1984. Concerning the challenges the Church faced at Vatican II, he said:
“The problem of the 1960s was to acquire the best values resulting from two centuries of ‘liberal’ culture. In fact, these are values which, though born outside the Church, can find their place, purified and corrected, within her vision of the world. That is what has been done.”
This clearly shows the strong influence of liberalism, of modernism within the Church in the 1960s (and long before); of the wheat already influenced and contaminated by the tares. It is the pernicious influence of Maritain. That quotation denies the papal Magisterium's radical condemnation of ALL liberalism.
The Commonitorium of Saint Vincent of Lérins (a Father of the Church) teaches:
“It belongs to Catholics to preserve the deposit of the holy Fathers, to condemn impious novelties and, as the Apostle has said time and again, to pronounce anathema (condemnation) upon anyone who proclaims a doctrine different from that received (Gal. 1:9). It follows that every Catholic who desires to prove himself a legitimate son of our Mother the Church must adhere to the holy Faith of our Fathers, hold fast to it and die for it. He must also detest impious novelties, hate them, combat them and pursue them.”
The First Vatican Council made clear that the function of the Magisterium is not to innovate, or to purify or Christianize the world's errors, but to preserve and explain the faith received:
“The Holy Spirit was not promised to Peter's successors so that they might teach new doctrines, but so that they might religiously guard and faithfully expound the revelation handed down by the Apostles.”
Is it clear what lies at the heart and is the cause of the errors that now grow like tares within the Church and provoke the worst crisis in her History?
But the moment will come when the Lord separates the tares from the wheat, so we must remain faithful to the true faith and to the Catholic Church He founded.
Original Source: published in Catolicidad on July 22, 2026. Read the original publication in Spanish.
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