THE NEW RITE OF BAPTISM - PART II
by
W. F. Strojie
Also:
The New Priests; The Greek Heresy and John Paul 2;
Women's Mag Morality; Puerto Rico, part of the New World's oldest diocese.
In two short papers mailed recently I put together some of the main things I've written against Gnostic Vatican 2 these past ten years. With this Letter we enclose another four-page article, this one written to demonstrate the New Baptism.
As mentioned in one of these short articles, there's no need to pile facts on facts, doctrine on Catholic doctrine, to try to prove the self-evident. Our main purpose in this is to prepare and have on hand short summaries which we hope will answer, or eliminate as useless inquiry, many questions too numerous for us to reply to individually.
Bear in mind that it is one of the Gnostic pretensions that, while appearing as Catholic, they have something new; new interpretations; much more than the Catholic Church has taught in the past, and this directly from the Holy Spirit. You find it in occultist Bishop Leadbeater's book I quote from, and in the whole program of Vatican 2 writings and reform.
Why a reform of the Catholic Church which exhibits all the elements of the Protestant sects and something else besides? Ask yourself why there should be a new rite of baptism, or of any other sacrament. God is eternally the same, and human nature does not change. Why also a new rite of baptism since what we had was prescribed, matter and form, very simply, by Christ our Lord Himself? For what reason are we being told that, in a Church whose teachings have always been held to be immutable, and which has infallible teaching authority, now after nearly twenty centuries there is more to baptism, so the reformers say, than the Church has always taught? Why are the reformed clergy telling the people that the "community" baptizes? How is it that the new clergy now say St. Paul taught something different than the Church always taught about baptism? This is total fraud or the Catholic Church is such, and so is Holy Scripture. But of course it is not the nearly two-thousand years old teaching of the Popes, bishops, innumerable priests, saints and Catholic scholars who lie, but the "lying teachers" who, according to Holy Scripture, would come in the late years of the Church. We hear often enough these days, those of us who point out the total apostacy and Big Lie of the bishops, "Behold I shall be with you all days... " But there is another truth no less Catholic which teils of a great "falling away" near the End. There cannot be the slightest doubt that this general apostacy must be led by the Clergy - or how could it happen? Anyway, that it has happened - that Vatican 2 announced a "new Pentecost", a New Order founded on "Inspiration", which New Order changed radically the Mass and all the sacraments, ought to be a matter of deep concern to any friend or relative who has taken, or will do so in the future, an infant to be "initiated into the community".
In my short basic article, "The New Rite of Baptism," I noticed when the copy was ready to print that I'd repeated two or three quotations, in separate paragraphs, one of which was "The people have come together to baptize" etc., but decided to let the repetition stand, for the heresy is repeated elsewhere in the book. It appears again, for instance, as the opening sentence of Section 3: "The community has gathered to introduce the child into new life. The greeting sets the proper mood." (Note that word "mood".) "The people have come together to baptize this infant. - - " Further along: "... sharing in the priesthood through baptism and confirmation... the priesthood of all concerned," and other similar repetitions, in one of which everyone is seen as blessing everyone else, including children blessing parents. Thus is the Priest reduced to just one of a crowd, honorary officer in the community, "animator of ceremonies", as the Abbe de Nantes has said is the main function of the New Order bishops. Certainly the bishops exert no authority. Since Vatican 2 every notorious heretic (also clown and night club dance chorus priests and women's lib nuns) does his own thing.
Along with the definite heresies pointed out in "The New Rite of Baptism", are slippery little falsifications not connected with baptism - heretical lunacy, such as: "Christ was a priest and a prophet and a king. The baptized child will have to be a priest." (Male or female?) "This means that he will have the power and the right to offer the holy sacrifice of the Mass with his brethren in performing worship. Also, he will be empowered to sanctify creation, to prepare the world for its destiny with God." You see now why I mention lunacy.
There are shades of meaning stuck in here which will sound strange to Catholic ears, but which will be missed intellectually, even while conditioning Catholics to Vatican 2 New-think. Another such item (I could show you dozens of them) is where they speak of "the sacrament of water"; and among the numerous large photos, always part of the New Thing, is a surf scene, a pantheistic note, spread across two adjoining pages. Actually there are two of these ocean scenes, which of course have nothing to do with Catholic baptism. "Destiny", it is perhaps suggested, lies beyond. As to the flat assertion about this infant being baptized, having "the power and the right to offer the holy sacrifice of the Mass with his brethren. . . ", this is one of the slippery items in the New Rite of Baptism - one of those tricks of "apportioning emphasis" (John Paul 2, "Sources of Renewal") to mold the Catholic mentality into the shape desired by Gnostic reformers. It is true that at one place in the Mass the priest turns and says, "Pray brethren that my Sacrifice and yours may be acceptable to God the Father Almighty." We join our prayers - actually we do join in offering the Holy Sacrifice, but we have not the priestly power, without which there can be no Mass. But it is the work of the Gnostic reformers to muddle such things, and this particular part of the "old Mass" happens to fit in well with the new total emphasis on Community. It is also the case that, like occultist-Theosophist Bishop Leadbeater, modern Gnostics use every occasion for indoctrination into the New Things, dragging in all kinds of ideas not at all connected with the liturgy or sacramental rite they are performing. Another comment on that paragraph: Where they have a more or less conservative Catholic audience, they speak of the "holy sacrifice of the Mass" (being sure, though, to bring in community performance). In other places, they usually speak now of "Eucharistic Celebration", or Assembly. But as Hilaire Belloc notes in his biography "Cranmer", after the Cranmer Protestant reform, they continued to speak of Cranmer's liturgy as the Mass. So it goes.
I comment on these things, found in the New Baptism - for that is what it is, not merely a new ceremony - as examples of the craft of changing one religion to another, using the old rites as instruction and vehicle; the New Interpretation, which is actually a new, a totally alien thing. Theologians and Saints and Popes have recognized and warned against this ape-of-God tactic of the Devil, but not until our time has it been applied to the Catholic Church as a whole. One of the devices of reformers is to make generous use of familiar Catholic words and pious sentiments, blowing these up into a great bubble of "how great we are now... how many more insights we now have," a hot line to the Holy Spirit; simply dropping out of the picture the Deposit of the Faith. All is referred to Vatican 2, a New Pentecost.
I have mentioned the setting of a mood as part of the new rite of baptism, obviously a major importance. Mood and ceremony swallow up and give new meaning to matter and,, form. The child is "initiated" into the community", the members of which react one upon another, including the infant being baptized. There is no mention of sanctifying grace. God does not come into the action. Instead, as already mentioned, the child "will be empowered to sanctify creation". (You shall become as Gods.) "Experience" is brought in six times in one paragraph; which reminds me of what Pope St. Pius X had to say of that doctrine of the Modernists: "that all religion, the Catholic no exception, must be sought for in man;" that it begins with a "special sentiment," and, "All religion originates in man, in human experience." All that Plus X condemned in his thorough examination of Modernist -doctrine can be found in the "new mass", and in the new rites of baptism and confirmation.
In passing judgment against the validity of Anglican orders Pope Leo XIII spoke the Church's teaching, that while what is signified by the rite of a sacrament is chiefly in the form, it must also be in the rite as a whole. This is the reason for the flood of queer words and notions, the stirring up of a mood. It is intended thus to drown the Form in a sea of words. They make of ceremony, emotions, sentiment (experience) the principle of the sacrament, having an unCatholic intention in applying the form. (I write of the priest's personal intention in my short article.)
The Vatican 2 heresy and method is found in Bishop Leadbeater's "The Science of the Sacraments". Why a science of the sacraments? Obviously this Gnostic bishop was not writing of simple knowledge of ceremonies, rites, and so on. The science he and his collaborator Wedgewood meant was, first, as I said before, how to build upon the old rites a new religion, evolving the old forms and doctrine, partly by learning how to turn people on emotionally, irrationally, a devilish methodology of brain washing, what is now called sensitivity training, group dynamics, cursillo. Part of the evil thing is to make it appear, by a great flurry of togetherness and frothy sentiment, that we are now doing much more than the Church did in the past. They actually say that (section one, "The Importance of the Community"): "We have to enlarge upon the traditional idea of the sacrament... There is much more to baptism than this..." - more than the Catholic Church has always taught. The new heretics do not operate by direct denial of doctrine, but by simply dropping, changing or interpreting, and by adding to.
One last definite heresy from the booklet "Together at Baptism" (see my short paper on this), page 35: "Revealing what God is like was the whole purpose of Christ's coming." That's all just revealing what God is like. That does away with Redemption and eternal salvation too; as also original sin from which Christ's birth, life, suffering and death had its original necessity; that is, if man was to be redeemed, heaven opened to him. Will heaven be opened to a child by the New Rite of Baptism? - opened to those "initiated" into an undefined community? In other words,
IS THE CHILD REALLY BAPTIZED?
Or an adult for that matter? You may correctly reply that even a pagan can validly baptize if he uses the right matter and form and intends to do what the Catholic Church does, even though he knows little or nothing of what the Church is. But this presupposes a person of good will who baptizes at someone's request, say a mother whose child is in danger of death at birth. On the other hand, what if the minister of the sacrament be one of the "ecumenist" sect of Vatican 2 priests who harps throughout a long ceremony about baptism as initiation into an undefined community? Words are not just warm air; they have a meaning; that is their function. With regard to the new rite of baptism they express a "renewed understanding of baptism." This is followed by five paragraphs of nonsense, a banal sociological sermon, then the last big heresy mentioned above: "Revealing what God is like was the whole purpose of Christ's coming." More smoke is added to that but doesn't change it. This renewed understanding after nearly two-thousand years, of applying the simple clear meaning of the Catholic Church! So what of the necessary right intention, of a correct and clearly stated intention of the rite as a whole? What of the intention of a priest who administers the new rite - of his or the community's new concept of ecumenical church or community? The New Rite distortion-imitation of Catholic rites has been applied to the Mass and all the sacraments by the Vatican 2 innovators, which confirms the evidence and conclusions I've set down in the enclosed paper and this Letter. At some point this kind of sliding off from established doctrine and ritual must end in empty ceremony. It is my opinion that the Vatican 2 innovators long ago passed that point.
Occultist Bishop Leadbeater, too, speaks the words, "I baptize thee in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." Then he writes, "the invocation of the Three Persons of the Blessed Trinity" (constitute) "a true word of power, which calls down three kinds of forces." He writes of the soul to be baptized, that "He comes laden with the result of his past jives." The reformed Catholic clergy do not yet openly preach Reincarnation, but they are committed to the whole swarm of Eastern heresies by their "ecumenism".
***
We handed a few copies of "The New Rite of Baptism" (before mailing any to our readers) to a neighbor who passed them on. We got one back with this message: "Dear W. F. Strojie, The church is the body of Christ, Jesus, whose precious name we could not find in this entire paper, and it is guided by His Holy Spirit to its present ways of celebration and liturgy. That includes all of God's children who proclaim Jesus as their Lord and Saviour. His command to love your neighbor as yourself. Would it fit in with your opinion of your so called 'Vatican II Church', based on the principle of love? We shall pray for you! Mr. and Mrs. Rand MG"
Amazing! There go out Pope John's Open Window the teaching of St. Peter and all the other Apostles, St. Paul, the early Fathers of the Church, the Popes up to Vatican 2, St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas and a thousand other Saints and theoloQians; all the doctrinal manuals, including Catholic catechisms, printed before Vatican 2. As is usual with this kind of thing, no return address is given. But it comes from a rural area where they have had Catholic schools for more than a hundred years. I say "amazing". Yet it does appear that this letter is a true sample of the present mentality of even Catholics baptized and educated long before the Second Vatican Council. According to this kind of reformed Catholic, no different than the most foolishly sentimental of Protestants, all that remains is love, vague and general, and the Holy Spirit.
We have too at hand a recent complaint from an older pastor (Oregon, 28 August 1981) which I present here:
"Mr. W. F. Strojie,
Your inspiring pamphlet 'A New Kind of Pope' showed up in one of the pews of my Parish. I keep thinking of the joy that must fill your life, the satisfaction at the end of each day as you mail out these brochures of the Good News, so filled with the joy and the love of Christ, so full of hope and trust. I think of the total happiness that must flow through your readers as they read the inspiring, positive messages. Eternity for you will probably be filled with an equal joy and hope and love. I have a hard time not hoping so."
End of that bit. Joy, inspiration, love, total happiness, and so on - my presumed lack of these things, but nothing about the grave matters of fact and false doctrine (or of the scandal) which this short brochure exposes.
No one should object that I am misrepresenting by citing only a few local examples of the reformed Catholic; for these only reflect the vapid religiosity found in all the New Order diocesan papers - in all that we see of the Reformed Religion of the 1960s. My priest friend (Oregon) ought not to grab onto my four little pages of fact and doctrine, which someone left in one of his pews. I'm quite sure that he can find plenty in those pews - the new Mockery of the Mass booklets - which ought to be far more disturbing to a man ordained many years ago as a Catholic priest.
I have tried to understand how the older Catholic priests could so turn away from Catholic doctrine, as they have done since the Second Vatican Council. Two years ago I expressed my feeling of sympathy with priests caught in the Vatican 2 trap, in a story called "A Visit With Father Wolf." But the more I look at the now-so-open disregard of the Catholic Faith and practice by the Ecumenist clergy, the less I believe in my beleagured Father Wolf. It was fitting, as I see now, that at the end of my story Father Wolf dies and is disposed of with a gung ho liturgy by Father Skinny and Miss Frantic.
Incidentally, if as the New Order clergy believe, their present burial rite is one of resurrection, then they have done away with hell and purgatory. This being so, what is this "resurrection" of theirs? Quite surely, while not yet consciously held by many of the older priests, this "resurrection" of the New Order liturgy is that Reincarnation occultist Bishop Leadbeater refers to - his reference to "past lives", quoted above. Again I remind our readers of the prayer meeting of Cardinal Cook with Reincarnationists in St. Patrick's Cathedral. None of our supposedly Catholic clergy protested this "ecumenical" affair; nor of course did Pope Wojtyla do anything about the cardinal who conducted it.
There is something mysterious in all this, truly a mystery of iniquity. We see men-who were born and raised Catholics, who attended Catholic schools and seminary, acting and apparently believing as Catholics until a certain point in time, close to Vatican 2. They then fall not into a single heresy but throw off or leave aside as secondary or of no consequence Catholic doctrine and reason. Approached by a few lay persons about this strange behavior of theirs, they answer irritably (those who haven't lost entirely their Catholic belief), or smoothly (those who have accepted the New Things willingly and entirely), or they remain silent. Whichever class these reformed priests fit into, "They will not endure sound doctrine." Like my priest critic, they have no Catholic answers but spout "peace, joy, inspiration, brotherhood"; or "I follow the pope," a papal usurper, Communist and no Catholic. Aside from the actual "errors of the Modernists" and their propaganda Pope St. Plus X exposed in his time (which is also our time, really, the evil thing having only gone underground for awhile) there is something extraordinary at work today. I am certain that in trying to analyze the matter we must (unless we are to "fight as one beating the air") pay close attention to such terms as St. Paul's "mystery of iniquity", his prediction of a general "spiritual blindness", and the prophecy of St. John the Apostle that in the latter days Satan "must be loosed for a time". As I show in "The New Rite of Baptism", the current insanity has been carried so far as to justify grave doubts about the validity of baptisms administered by Vatican 2 reformed clergy. None of the early Protestants had gone so far as to make up so strange a baptismal rite; of collective ministry, of initiation into "community".
What to do, then about Baptism? I quote here Canon law from Woywod, vol. 1, page 330, "Private Baptism... may be given by any one who uses the proper matter and form and has the right intention. In so far as possible, two witnesses, or at least one, should be present, by whom the conferring of Baptism can be proved. A priest who happens to be present, shall be preferred to a deacon; a deacon to a subdeacon; a cleric to a lay person, and a man to a woman, unless decency demand that a woman be preferred, or the woman is more conversant with the form and matter of baptizing. The father or mother are not allowed to baptize their own child except in danger of death when there is no one else at hand who can baptize (Canon 742)."
"Private Baptism may be given... " (to show here the Church's sense of compassion and liberty in this matter) "when the infant cannot without danger be brought to the church on account of the distance, stormy weather or other serious reasons... An heretical or schismatic minister may not be called even in danger of death to baptize, unless there is nobody else who knows how to baptize and is willing to do so. A Catholic lay person is to be preferred to a priest who is suspended, personally interdicted, or excommunicated... " End of excerpts from Canon law. I have given, in this Letter and in my "The New Rite of Baptism", clear and surely compelling reasons why the New Order priest with his Initiation into the Community must not be called upon. Prepare your own baptismal certificate, to be signed by the person who baptizes, the godparents or other two witnesses, and the parents.
THE SACRAMENT OF MATRIMONY AND THE NEW ORDER
While I'm on the subject of what to do in these times of priests of a New Order, I have thought it well, since we hear of some confusion about the matter, and receive occasional inquiries, to pass on information about marriage. The church has not left us orphans, but provides doctrine, laws, and means, covering all that is essential - not the least of which is provision for carrying on both physical and spiritual life in extraordinary times and circumstances.
From Woywod again, page 664, with regard to Canons 1098 and 1099. "While there was no general law making the celebration of marriage before an authorized priest necessary for validity, the Church had since the early days of its existence forbidden secret marriages and insisted that they be celebrated publicly before the Church." Comment: The principle still stands: marriage should not be secret; but we have a New Order (counter) Church whose priests are at least material heretics, from whom, for that reason, and because they lay down conditions unacceptable to faithful Catholics, we must not receive any sacrament. (See my short article on the New Rite of Baptism; where St. Thomas is quoted on this.) Page 683, "In danger of death, marriage may be validly and licitly contracted in the presence of two witnesses; even apart from the danger of death marriage may be thus contracted, if it can be prudently foreseen that this state of affairs (namely, the great difficulty of getting an authorized priest to witness the marriage) wil continue for a month." Bottom of the page: "That this difficulty of securing the presence of the priest at the marriage need not be a general or common difficulty... is quite generally admitted by commentators on the Code, and rightly so, for, where the Code does not distinguish, we should not distinguish." More evidence of the Church's great concern not to place obstacles in the way, but rather to make things as easy as possible in extraordinary circumstances. Certainly we are not within a month going to see a turn-around of our counter-church clergy.
Page 685: "It need scarcely be remarked here that, when the parties are entitled to contract marriage without the presence of the priest, they are justified in going to a justice of the peace, or any other official of the government who is entitled to witness marriages, so that their marriage may have the recognition of the civil law. They can also marry before a non-Catholic minister, not as a minister of religion but as an official entitled by civil law to witness marriages; they must not allow him to use any religious ceremony... " And from Berth ler-Raemers, "Compendium of Theology", vol. II, page 477, concerning marriage: "The contracting parties themselves are the ministers of the Sacrament. This is certain (emphasis as in the original); it follows from what we have said regarding matter and form' of the Sacraments in no. 1513. And since Matrimony is nothing more than the original contract, raised to the dignity of a Sacrament, the contracting parties are the efficient cause of both the contract and the Sacrament." Thus any marriage contracted between two Catholics free to marry, is a sacramental marriage, binding until the death of husband or wife.
To any young person arranging to marry, we will send free on request a nicely printed copy of a pre-nuptial Mass discourse.
THE GREEK HERESY AND JOHN PAUL 2
Filioque (From the Latin meaning "And from the Son") The clause in the Nicene Creed which affirms the double "procession of the Holy Ghost" - from the Father and the Son. The Greek Orthodox omit this doctrine, defined by the Catholic Church, from their Creed. I mention it here because John Paul 2 while weak with fever from his recent injuries, went to St. Peters to say the Creed, not as Roman Catholics say it, but as do the Greek Orthodox. The same act was carried out at the same time in other churches in Rome. We hear of the Greeks as schismatics, but they are heretics also, holding to the "Greek heresy", that of the filioque. They are heretical, too, in their denial of the Papacy as Supreme Teacher. And they run a slack Church, part of which, the Russian Orthodox (as I've mentioned in one of my Letters) gave synodal approval to divorce more than a hundred years ago; the Vatican only recently following in this with 'Annulments' of true marriages. Many Orthodox bishops have been available to confer Orders on Anglican ministers who wanted to be "real priests". The New Order of Roncalli and Montini has been getting together with the Anglicans since even before Vatican 2, as did Montini when Archbishop of Milan. What these crooks intend is to form a Universal Church of Man, against God. To this end both Montini and Wojtyla appealed abjectly to Soviet Russia, Islam, Red China, and the Greeks. The Greek and other Eastern heads of Church have since way back been subservient to their civil rulers. It is the work of Vatican 2, particularly John Paul 2, to get established this kind of servility in the West. This largely explains the appearance of Paul 6 and John Paul 2 before the UNO Assembly in New York.
WOMEN'S MAG MORALITY
I mentioned in Letter 47 a piece of atrocious poetry, every one of its twelve lines beginning with "Man" - Man, Man, Man. It had been written by Father Wojtyla, now John Paul 2. This stuff appeared in "Ladies' Home Journal". In an earlier issue of the same magazine (March 1970) appears Paul 6, who is quoted as exhorting everyone to spend twenty or so minutes a week praying with the "Church community" (whatever that is!). Canonized (March 1980) by "McCall's" is "The World's Most Saintly Woman". You guessed it, Mother Teresa. Appearing too in this issue of "McCall's" is "The Case Against Motherhood After 30", and "Sexual Jealousy, How it Destroys Friendships Between Men and Women." In this article the wife is advised to put aside her feelings about her husband and his woman friend; maybe take up hobbies, occasionally join husband and his "friend" for lunch. There's a lot of claptrap about such things as jealousy having perhaps started way back with "siblings" - a detestable word! The general pitch is that the wife has no rights as wife but only as competitor for her husband's attention. Stirring up discontent with their women's lib preaching, these publications are worse than pagan.
PUERTO RICO
Since World War II Americans have been hearing much more than in previous years about Puerto Rico and its people, so many thousands having come to the mainland, mostly at first to New York City. How many U.S. Catholics know that these people have come from what was the first Catholic diocese established in the New World, first on the island of Hispaniola, 15 November 1504; the island of San Juan (the name is applied now only to the city of San Juan, P.R.) becoming a separate diocese 8 August 1511. Two churches had been erected on San Juan Island before construction of a cathedral at the city of San Juan. According to the old Catholic encyclopedia (1907), "The present cathedral, which is comparatively modern in its principal part, dates from the early part of the eighteenth century. The rear portion, however, gives eyidence of a distinct style of architecture of a much more remote period. On August 12, 1880, the remains of Don Juan Ponce de Leon were solemnly conveyed from the church of San Jose (our daughter was baptized in that nearly five-centuries old church) to the cathedral, where a suitable monument now marks the resting place of the intrepid soldier and Christian cavalier." Since World War 11 the Protestant sects have been making inroads among the Puerto Ricans. But none more effectively protestantizing than our Vatican 2 reformed clergy.
W. F. Strojie, 41695 Clark Smith Dr., Lebanon, OR 97355.
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