Jesus Christ Yesterday and Today

Rev. Fr. David Sherry, District Superior, December 2024

Jesus Christ, yesterday, and today; and the same for ever. Be not led away with various and strange doctrines. (Heb 13:8–9).

As the winter of 1958 drew in, Pope John XXIII was thinking aloud to Cardinal Tardini: how to give an example of peace and unity in the modern world? He mused for a moment. ‘A Council!’ said the Pope. ‘Si, si! Un Concilio!’ replied His Eminence.

And so the conciliar project began, but it was misconceived from the start. The Catholic Church is the Body of Christ; her purpose is not to be an example of unity; She is the unity to which all men of all times and places must belong. She exists to bring all men into the one mystical body of the Divine Lord Jesus Christ. He alone who is Saviour of the world reconciles them with God.

The quest of the Council was ‘to be a sign of the unity of all mankind,’ to, the Pope said, ‘cast aside the prophets of doom and arrive at a new order of human relations, to bring the Church up to date.’ To this end, the Council adopted the errors of the Modernists. Let it be noted here that ‘Modernism’ is a technical term. It does not mean that everything modern is bad, it means that there is an error in the Faith which arose in modern times and which, for that reason, was given the precise name ‘Modernism’. In a similar way, an error which grew up in America was given the name ‘Americanism’ and an English error was given the name ‘Anglicanism’.

Neither Americanism nor Anglicanism implies a condemnation of all things to do with those countries.

Modernism (among whose fathers can be counted the Irishman and Jesuit, Fr. George Tyrell) was unmasked and condemned by our patron, Pope Saint Pius X. It consists essentially in two things: Agnosticism and Immanence.

These two things are also technical terms. ‘Agnosticism’ does not mean ‘I'm looking for God but haven't found him yet.’ It means ‘I cannot know whether there is a God or not. In fact, I cannot really know anything.’ Agnosticism is all around us. Sinners used to say, ‘it's difficult to be chaste.’ Now they say, ‘there is no such thing as chastity, I'm not a sinner.’ Men used to say, ‘finding the truth is not easy’. Now they say, ‘there is no such thing as truth to find.’ This is Agnosticism and it destroys all possibility of human happiness because we were made for Truth.

Immanence is the corollary of Agnosticism. If I can't know God — can't even really know reality — religion can’t be true, so where do all these religions come from? The answer is simple. They can’t come from the outside (because of Agnosticism), they must then come from the inside, they are immanent.

Some people think that ideas are neither here nor there. Nothing could be more false. Good ideas will have good effects, and bad ideas will have bad effects. And these two monstrous ideas, Agnosticism and Immanence have hideously deformed children. Their offspring are the conclusions that, given that no religion is true, all religions are equally true; and because none is truly good, they are all equally good. They need therefore to cease claiming unique truth or goodness. We must embrace one another and acknowledge that we are all one — not in Christ, but outside of Him.

Let those who deny that the errors of the Modernists are the offspring of the Council examine this textbook example from the mouth of Pope Francis.

‘If we start to fight amongst ourselves and say “my religion is more important than yours, my religion is true, yours is not,” where will that lead us? Where? Every religion is a way to arrive at God. There are different languages to arrive at God, but God is God for all. And how is God God for all? We are all sons and daughters of God. “But my god is more important than your god,” is that true?

‘There is only one God and each of us has a language to arrive at God. Sikh, Muslim, Hindu, Christian, they are different paths.’1

As any child who learned his catechism could tell you, this is not true. To say that every religion leads to God is to speak heresy.2 Peter himself will corroborate: Neither is there salvation in any other. For there is no other name under heaven given to men, whereby we must be saved. (Acts 4:12). Or, as Pope Pius IX put it:

‘It is false to say that every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true.

‘It is false to say that man may, in the observance of any religion whatever, find the way of eternal salvation, and arrive at eternal salvation.3

This is why the principles in the Declaration of Archbishop Lefebvre made on 21st November 1974 must be the watchwords of our combat.

‘We hold fast, with all our heart and with all our soul, to Catholic Rome, Guardian of the Catholic Faith and of the traditions necessary to preserve this Faith, to Eternal Rome, Mistress of wisdom and truth.

‘We refuse, on the other hand, and have always refused to follow the Rome of neo-Modernist and neo-Protestant tendencies which were clearly evident in the Second Vatican Council and, after the Council, in all the reforms which derived from it.’
(See pp. 23–26).

As Fr. Davide Pagliarani and his two assistants said in their statement on the fiftieth anniversary of the declaration, ‘The Society cannot deviate one iota from its content and spirit which, fifty years later, remain perfectly appropriate.’ (See pp. 19–22)

May God bless you,

Fr. David Sherry

  • 1

    Pope Francis, Address to Interreligious Meeting with Young People, 13th September 2024.

  • 2

    Let the sedevacantists resist the temptation to claim me among their number. It is incontrovertible that Pope Francis utters heresies, but this does not mean that he is not the Pope. In order for a churchman to lose his office, it is not enough that he utter a heresy; he must be warned by his superior that he is uttering a heresy and nonetheless persevere. That is why it is unjustified to conclude with certainty that Francis is not the Pope.

  • 3

    Pope Pius IX, Syllabus of Errors, 8th December 1864.

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