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When Archbishop Lefebvre thought of the future of the Society of St Pius X, he used to hope that it would contribute to studies of the 16 documents of the Second Vatican Council, because that was the main archway through which arrived in the 1960’s the unprecedented multitude of problems with which Church and world have been afflicted ever since. No doubt the Society has contributed to some extent to such studies, but would it be itself afflicted today as it is, some think unto death, if its priests had had a better grasp of the sickness of Vatican II, attractive, highly contagious, and deadly for the true Faith? One may well ask.

However, in 2010 there did appear in Spanish a full-blooded study of the problem by an Argentinian priest of the Society, Fr Alvaro Calderón, a fully qualified thomist, teaching philosophy and theology at the Society’s seminary in Argentina. His book’s title is “Prometheus, the Religion of Man,” and it is subtitled “An Essay to Interpret Vatican II.” Its 320 pages conclude with the dramatic accusation that Vatican II is idolatry, already in its documents and not just in its aftermath. Apparently the book has been translated into French, but if such a translation exists, certainly it has never appeared, most likely to protect the Council’s Newchurch and its bastard offspring, the Newsociety. In fact the book needs to be translated and to appear in a multitude of languages.

To help explain why these “Comments” so often blame Vatican II, they will offer to readers an overview of the book in a series of issues. It is a hazardous undertaking to present in a few articles of some 750 words each a densely argued book of 320 pages, but it is far too important that Catholics get at least a handle on the full malice of Vatican II for the effort not to be made. So these articles will be less for professional theologians requiring rather more depth and precision to be persuaded, than they will be for ordinary souls seeking some explanation for the devastation of Church and world being wrought all around them. To wreak such devastation, Vatican II had to be deep and coherent. Let these issues of the “Comments” be at least enough to suggest the thomistic depth and coherence of Fr. Calderón’s book.

The accusation that Vatican II is idolatry could hardly be more serious, but in his book it is backed up by a series of references to the 16 documents of Vatican II itself, especially Gaudium et Spes and Lumen Gentium. The problem is, as he will explain, that for historical reasons the authors of Vatican II took special care to disguise their idolatrous doctrine so that it would not appear to be out of line with Catholic Tradition. Archbishop Lefebvre himself at the time signed on to 14 of the 16 documents, as he would never have done a few years later when the fruits of the disguise had become clear. Therefore the documents are skilfully ambiguous, having one letter and quite another spirit. Therefore to this day both Catholics sincerely loyal to the Church and modernists seeking to transform the Church can and do claim that the letter of the documents is Catholic, but the great advantage of an analysis like Fr. Calderón’s is to argue from the documents themselves that their spirit is to fabricate an entirely new religion centred on man. Thus in reality the neo-modernism of Vatican II is quite especially slippery and perfidious.

Is the Spanish edition of such a book still available? One hopes so. In any case the printer is listed as Luis Maria Campos 1592, Morón, Bs. As., Argentina, Tel. 4696–2094. At the Internet site https://www.scribd.com/document/116861810/PRH can be found in 132 pages the text in Spanish of Fr. Calderón’s book.

The book is in four Parts: Part I, what Vatican II was, a definition; Parts II-IV, what Vatican II did: it made: Part II a new MAN, Part III a new CHURCH, Part IV a new RELIGION. In these “Eleison Comments should follow four articles (perhaps interrupted), corresponding to the four Parts.

Kyrie eleison.