HERE is a thought to cheer pilgrims this year as they march again from Ballarat to Bendigo: Ecumenism is dead! Long live Christ the King!

Mind, the evidence for the failure of ecumenism hardly bears contemplating. But the pain of so doing is rewarding and hugely freeing.

We know that the Mass of the Roman Rite was "reformed" mainly because of ecumenical considerations.

We also know what the fruit of this"reform" has been: the disintegration of Catholic identity; the break down of Catholic communities; the loss of the weak and luke-warm; and the conversion of a good number of the remaining devout to material Protestantism.

We also know that the liturgical revolution is not yet over. Instead, there are Trotsky-like figures who aim for continuous revolution and ever more radical objectives. These have been spelt out in the USA by Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles. The course His Eminence has chartered is toward a form of politically correct Congregationalism.

We are, moreover, confident about where the revolution is headed because some dioceses have already arrived. In the Swiss diocese of Chur, for instance, we see the ultimate consequences of ecumenising traditional Catholic worship: its bishop (Wolfgang Haas) and his few remaining loyal priests exiles in their own diocese; the parishes run by lay soviets; and, at their behest, the cowered clergy preaching a Protestantism otherwise dead in Switzerland. Meanwhile, a new Missa Simplex has been proposed for German speaking Catholics: an unashamedly Protestant form of prayer, it merely mirrors - for ecumenical reasons, naturally - liturgical practice in places like Chur.

While in the West the leaders of the Catholic Church have bowed to Protestantism, toward the Orthodox Churches of the East, Catholic ecumenical postures have been frankly insulting.

The Church of the West has entered into "dialogue" with our Orthodox brethren with an attitude of open contempt for the very traditionalism which characterises those Churches. Notwithstanding officially proclaimed desires for unity with the Orthodox East, the Western campaign to destroy its own liturgical tradition - and thereby to compromise its Apostolic doctrine - have rendered hypocritical the Catholic ecumenical claims.

We should not, of course, view the Orthodox Churches through rose-tinted glasses. One Church is often set against another and sometimes their leaders are sadly stamped - though not without reason - by bitter anti-westernism and by other, less worthy, influences, such as ethnic chauvinism and erastianism. Notwithstanding, we cannot treat our authentic seven-sacramented brothers as blind and stupid. Whatever failings on the Orthodox side might have contributed to the present East-West ecumenical impasse, these have been matched on the Western side by a betrayal of tradition, and by an accompanying pride in that sin, which rightly offends the finely tuned sensibilities of the East.

Finally, we must add to this picture religious syncretism: the mature fruit of modern ecumenism. Here we recall Assisi 1986 when both bonze and shaman were deemed fit to pray upon a sanctuary from which the traditional worship of Catholics had been banned. This single act destroyed what credibility remained to the "pastoral orientations" advocated since Vatican II.

We need, then, to speak clearly.

First, there can be no prayer or worship in common with those who do not believe in God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Secondly, there can be no union of the Protestant churches with the Catholic Church chiefly because they do not believe in its authoritative teaching tradition, in all of its Sacraments, and in the Sacrifice of the Mass. What we are talking about, therefore, is not union, but conversion of hearts and minds. All attempts at healing these divisions must begin, with charity and humility, at that point.

Finally, the only prospect - however far off - of a union of Churches is that between Catholic and Orthodox. On the Catholic side the sine qua non of such a venture has to be an admission of faithlessness to tradition in the matter of worship, and a firm resolution of amendment.

Once we understand all this, we become suddenly free from the dead hand of ecumenism. We become Catholics again, just like our ancestors, especially the saints. And like them we can devote ourselves again to the interests of Christ the King: the conquest of the World and its dominion over us and over our neighbour.

In short, we are talking about a new missionary era whose objective is the reconversion of our homelands in the West - from Tasmania to Scotland; from California to Bohemia: a wave of new missions to the peoples of the West who have abandoned God.

To do it, we need new missionaries: lay and religious. We need missionary orders new and old. We need new foundations; new learning; new fervour; new devotion; new simplicity; new trust in Providence; new joy; new saints.

Ecumenism is dead!

Long Live Christ the King!

Return to Oriens, Spring, 1997

Return to Oriens home page