Madiran – 6 Propositions
From the Prologue of Jean Madiran’s book The Heresy of the 20th Century, presented briefly in #of these “Comments” eight weeks ago, readers may remember Madiran’s own dismissal of the heresy concerned as being “night, emptiness, and nothingness.” Nevertheless that heresy has had in the aftermath of Vatican II, and up till today, a devastating power to wreck the Catholic Faith, liturgy, Church and souls as they were before the Council, and so Madiran gives to his readers some account of the “nothingness.” This account he presents in Parts III, IV and V of his book, where he analyses seven main Propositions of the heresy, culled by himself from writings of Bishop Schmitt, whom Madiran credits with having brought into focus the devastating nothingness of the new Conciliar religion. Here in heavy type are all seven Propositions in order, followed by a brief summary of Madiran’s comments.
1 Today’s changing world imposes a change in the very concept of salvation brought by Christ,
2 and it shows that the Church’s idea of the plan of God was, up till now, not evangelical enough.
3 Faith listens to the world.
4 Socialisation is not only an ineluctable fact of world history. It is also a grace.
5 No age before ours has ever been able better to grasp the Gospel ideal of brotherhood practised.
6 In a world turned towards the future, Christian hope takes on its full meaning.
7 Natural law is the expression of the collective consciousness of mankind. (This seventh Proposition is so devastating that Madiran will reserve for it all of Part V.)
1 The first two Propositions have already been analysed by Madiran in the preceding Part of his book, so on the first (P1) he merely adds here that it is the necessary and sufficient principle of the whole new religion. One could sum up: just as Catholicism is “all Tradition,” so modernism is “all change.”
2 P2 begins to spell out P1, i.e. it begins to specify what change is needed. Like countless systems since Protestantism protesting against Catholicism, it appeals falsely to the Gospel against the Church.
3 P3 makes clear that P1 and P2 have changed what believers are henceforth to believe in: as Catholics used to believe in God because He is God, now they are to believe in the world because it is the world.
4 And believing in the modern world means believing in its great movement of socialisation or collectivism, i.e. Communism, because not only is the movement inevitable, it is also a religious grace (!).
5 In other words “Christ’s salvation” (P1) and “God’s plan” (P2) have become merely words, kept as relics of the past, but with all supernatural meaning and reality emptied out.
6 Similarly all supernatural hope and striving for God’s Heaven are emptied out and fulfilled – better – by modernity. For never before in all 20 centuries of Church history have Christians so well understood Christian hope as we men of today, all straining forward together to the Brave New World Order (!).
Madiran’s final comment is to observe how all six Propositions hang together which he culled from Bishop Schmitt. Thus P1 is the springboard of all six. But why this mania for change, which is so clear also in all modern politicians? Because before the modern age, everything used to be based on, and to turn around, God. But now man rejects God. Therefore everything must be changed, (P2) with man instead at the centre, and (P3) with man’s world as the complete horizon. This centring on man (P4) cannot be reversed, but (P4) it is as good as a religion, and (P5) never have men been better suited than today to centring on man, or (P6) to looking forward to the human future of mankind. The synchronisation of this system with Communism is clear, with its elimination of God and deification of man. It will be even more clear with (P7) the elimination of nature and of the natural law. The summer riots in the USA were all about the final elimination of Almighty God. Lord, have mercy on us!
Kyrie eleison.
