Assuming for a moment that they were successful —which is something unthinkable, given the promise of Jesus Christ regarding which the Gates of Hell shall not prevail against the Church—then, once the Magisterium disappears or becomes completely discredited, Catholics would lack of all firm basis for their Faith. The moment that any given truth of the Faith could be questioned, without anything or anyone guaranteeing and assuring it, then it would all be tantamount to the impossibility of believing in anything transcendental and supernatural. To say it more simply: We would be facing pure atheism.

            The Church appears to find herself in that moment – or perhaps on the brink of entering it. Never before has Satan envisioned, as he does now, the moment of his Victory to be so near and complete. And never before has the Church seen Herself so severed and torn asunder as she is in this current moment; just as it happened to Jesus Christ on that Night among the Olives Trees in the Garden.

            In spite of their attempt at concealing the facts –so that they do not look like an attack but rather a matter of mere discrepancy, or of a variety of nuances or suggestions—, the disparity and even contradiction among magisterial statements, before and after the Council, even in reference to fundamental truths are such obvious facts that nobody can deny them.

            Cardinal Ratzinger (now Benedict XVI), when he was peritus in the Council, brought to notice during this Council that a fracture had taken place in the Doctrine of the Church regarding the consistent teaching of the primitive Church, the Church of the Fathers, apropos the collegiality of the Bishops. According to the Cardinal, the one responsible for such fracture had been Saint Thomas of Aquinas (and all the Scholastic or Medieval Theology along with him). The Second Vatican Council, according to the Cardinal, came to repair that breach which had remained opened in the Church for seven centuries.

            Now as Pope, Benedict XVI has denied that the Vatican Council has caused any kind of rupture regarding Tradition or the Primitive Church; an asseveration which, in relation to the previous one, deserves to be accompanied by a clarification on the part of the Holy Father. Indeed, it would be important to know whether such connection, never broken between Tradition and the Primitive Church –carried out by the Second Vatican Council and confirmed by the Pope— comprehends and includes those seven centuries of Medieval Theology as well, or, on the contrary, one should rather maintain that enormous hole or void in time and just jump over it.

            It is also difficult to explain that the Magisterium of the Church may have erred – and in fundamental questions too – during so many centuries, without the assistance, consequently, of the Holy Spirit.

            It is equally well known that Cardinal Ratzinger (never refuted by Benedict XVI) publicly maintained that the Constitution Gaudium et Spes of the Second Vatican Council, is an authentic Counter-Syllabus Document (the Syllabus, by Pius IX, was published at the same time as his Encyclical Quanta Cura).

            If one takes into account that the Syllabus, together with the Encyclical Pascendi of St. Pius X, are the Documents that solemnly condemned Modernism and attempted to nip such heresy in the bud, undoubtedly the problem of the apparent discrepancy between  Magisterial documents and declarations is clearly posed.

            And the problem still worsens if one takes into account that some declarations contained in the Documents of the Second Vatican Council which refer to fundamental truths of the Catholic Faith are in evident disagreement with the previous Magisterium; which causes an obvious concern. As it happens with the concept of Church, for instance.

            The Church has upheld during twenty centuries, without the least vacillation, that Jesus Christ founded only one Church, which is precisely the Catholic Church: Credo… in Unam Sanctam Catholicam et Apostolicam Ecclesiam. The last Magisterial Document regarding this issue, prior to Second Vatican Council, is the Encyclical of Pius XII Mystici Corporis (1943), in which the Pope expressly states –after insisting on the fact that the Church is one Body and that there is only One—that the Church of Christ ‘is’ the Church of Rome.

            Nevertheless, the Second Vatican Council (Lumen Gentium, Chapter 8, n.8, b) introduces the important change of substituting the expression ‘is’ with the phrase ‘subsists on.’ According to which the Church of Christ subsists on the Catholic Church. Something which unquestionably removes its condition of Oneness, giving way then to other religions  which are also repeatedly  given recognition as legitimate instruments of salvation.

            That this is not an arbitrary interpretation on our part is proved by the Gatherings of Assisi, where parity among all religions was granted, including those which do not profess cult to any god. On the altars of the Homeland of the Seraphim of Assisi were enthroned, on equal terms, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Brahman, and Hindu cults… even the practices of African witches and black magic of the voodoos.

            Any doubt disappears when considering that in the Encyclicals of Pope John Paul II (especially the first three, which he named Trinitarian), a legitimate salvific value is recognized for all religions. A Magisterium which, when all is said and done, completely ended the missionary activity of the Church, given that the Encyclicals of John Paul II also defend the theory of anonymous Christianity and the universal salvation of all men without exception.

            On his turn, Pope Pius XII (in his Encyclical Humani Generis, 1950) expressly condemned the theory of Henri de Lubac, according to which grace is owed to human nature, as well as the doctrines of creative evolution of Teilhard de Chardin. Both characters were later rehabilitated by Popes John XXIII and John Paul II (de Lubac was elevated to the rank of Cardinal).

The nature and the space of this Writing make impossible to add here more testimonies regarding this theme.  A task whose complete exposition would require several extensive volumes and whose bibliography exists. We have provided a few, by means of example, which nevertheless offer enough elements of judgement to consider the possibility of a rupture, referred in this case to the Magisterium prior and subsequent to the Second Vatican Council.

            That is why we will leave for the next Editorial the final commentary on the problems posed by a Magisterium that appears as not being always in harmony with itself.