Keys of This Blood

by Malachi Martin

  Here is where disillusionment set in for Judas. More in touch with practical affairs than the others, more alive to the politics of his land, he could only grow in disillusionment each time Jesus repudiated attempt after attempt to crown him leader and king. There were more than two such occasions; each time, Jesus sounded those very unworldly sentiments of suffering and death. Further, each time the intermittent clashes with the Hierosolymite authorities dug a deeper gap between Jesus and the political ascendancy of Israel—now concentrated in the Jerusalem council of state, the Sanhedrin—the sense of disillusionment in Judas would grow that much deeper.

  Remark that at any given moment Judas could have left Jesus and “walked with him no more,” as many indeed did. But no, Judas wanted to stay. He believed, after his own fashion, in Jesus and his group and their ideals. He just wanted Jesus and the others to conform to political and social realities, to follow his plan, not whatever plans Jesus may have had. We can be sure that the last thing he thought of doing was quitting the group.

  But he had formed his own ideas about the sensible way Jesus should go about seizing supreme power. Now, in the heady atmosphere of collaboration with the authorities, he saw his way opening out to vistas of greatness, a chief position in the future Kingdom of Israel, once the Romans were driven out and the local Jewish powers-that-were, with the help of Jesus, utterly defeated the hated Romans. Even when Jesus told him plainly and frankly during that last Passover meal that, yes, he knew it was Judas who would betray him, that made no dent in Judas’ resolution. He probably did not understand the use of the word “betray” by Jesus. Many times in the past, he had “betrayed” Jesus in the sense that he had done the opposite of Jesus’ express will, and things had always turned out just fine. That compromise plan still seemed the best to Judas. The ultimate blindness closed in on his soul like a steel trapdoor. “Satan,” the Gospel says, “entered his heart.” Judas was now under the control of the one personality who stood to lose most by any success Jesus might have. And Judas could, without any scruple and always fully persuaded that his plan was fine, go and find the Temple authorities, his “high-level contacts,” and pinpoint the place where Jesus would be at a certain hour, and identify Jesus to the armed force sent out to bring him in, bound and manacled like a hunted animal.

  Every single event that followed on Judas’ decision was made possible and evoked directly by that act of malfeasance on the part of Judas, the chosen Apostle of Jesus and his trusted official. All was Judas’ responsibility. The terrible agony in Gethsemane; the violence done to Jesus at his arrest and at his mock trials during the night; the hours of imprisonment and abuse by Roman soldiers; the crowning with thorns and the scornful mocking of his person, which we can be sure violated his dignity in every possible way; his arraignment before Pilate and Herod; his scourging; the painful, agonizing path to Golgotha; the searing pain of crucifixion, followed by three hours of death agony, hours divided into weakening efforts not to suffocate, and not to be overwhelmed by the cruelty of the nails pinning his wrists and feet to the cross. All this as well as the final result: the death of Jesus.

  All of it, evil and sacrilegious beyond human telling, was a direct consequence of that Judas complex. While the ultimate result of Judas’ choice was gross betrayal and treachery, his specific sin was compromise—what really seemed to him a wise and prudent compromise given the otherwise impossible situation into which Jesus had boxed himself and his loyal group by his violent attacks on the status quo and by his refusal to meet Jewish authorities halfway in order to satisfy the needs and questions of men who, after all, were in a position to know what they were talking about when it came to the national cause and the continued existence of Judaism. They were, after all, the Keepers of the Flame.

  For Jesus and his doctrine must have been classified in Judas’ practical and worldly-wise mind as utterly unsuitable to the social consensus and political mentality of his day. Actually, it was both unsuitable and unacceptable. Unacceptable to the point of provoking its adversaries to a political assassination. It was, after all, a matter of state security and national survival.

  This, then, is the essence of the Judas complex: the compromise of one’s basic principles in order to fit in with the modes of thought and behavior that the world regards as necessary for its vital interests. The principle of that special group was Jesus—his physical existence, his authority, his teaching. Judas had been persuaded by his tempters and corrupters that all that Jesus stood for had to be modified by a decent and sensible compromise.

  This provides us with a sure norm by which we can identify the members of the anti-Church now sitting foursquare within the Roman Catholic institutional organization. While the last twenty years of that organization’s history is littered with compromises and hundreds of misfeasances by Churchmen, we must seek out and identify the major compromises that can be accurately described as acts of genuine malfeasance in high ecclesiastical and ecclesial office.

  An act of malfeasance has been aptly described as “the doing by a public official, under color of authority of his office, of something that is unwarranted, that he contracted not to do, and that is legally unjustified and positively wrongful or contrary to law,” according to Webster.

  Both “misfeasance” and “malfeasance” are used to describe abuse of office. The appreciable difference between the terms seems to lie in the extent and effect of the abuse. Misfeasance seems to be particular and limited. For instance, using the authority of one’s office in obtaining incidental pleasures. Malfeasance subverts the office itself, converting it into something totally different from and contrary to what the office was meant to be.

  A survey of the past twenty-five years of Roman Catholic history leads one to the conclusion that the greatest single act of malfeasance in high ecclesiastical and ecclesial office has been the tolerance and propagation of confusion about key beliefs among the Catholic rank and file, this tolerated confusion being a direct result of a tolerated dissidence by Catholic theologians and bishops concerning those same key beliefs. For to tolerate confusion is to propagate confusion. A primary and fundamental duty of every ecclesiastical office and the ecclesial responsibility attached to all offices in the Church comprise the clear, unmistakable teaching and enforcement of the basic rules and fundamental beliefs the Church holds and declares to be necessary for eternal salvation. There can be no compromise on both points: teaching and enforcement. If Roman Catholics have any rights in the Church, they have a primary right to receive such unequivocal teaching and to be the subjects of such forthright and unhesitating enforcement.

  Furthermore, it is relatively easy to identify the four key areas in which ecclesiastics and ecclesial members have tolerated and propagated the maleficent confusion that affects Roman Catholics today. These areas are: the Eucharist, the oneness and trueness of the Roman Catholic Church, the Petrine Office of the Bishop of Rome, and the morality of human reproductive activity.

  When you talk of the Eucharist, you are talking about the Roman Mass, which has been and still is the central act of worship for Roman Catholics. The value of the Mass for Catholics is twofold. A Mass, in Catholic belief, presents the real live Sacrifice of the body and the blood and physical life of Jesus consummated on Calvary. It is not a commemoration of that sacrifice, nor a reenactment after the fashion of a historical drama, nor a symbolic performance.

  Therein lies the mystery of the Mass. When a Roman Mass is said to be valid, it is believed to achieve that mysterious presentation of Christ’s sacrifice of his bodily life. It has validity; and Roman Catholics can then literally adore their Savior under the physical appearance of bread and wine.

  In the Roman Church, this mystery was celebrated in the Roman Mass, a liturgical ceremony that attained its traditional form in the early Middle Ages, was confirmed as perpetual law in 1570 by Pope Pius V, and was recognized again by the Council of Trent in that same century. It remained the same in all details, except for the addition or
substitution of single prayers and invocations, until the mid-1960s.

  At that time, a momentous change sanctioned by Vatican officials took place: That traditional Roman Mass was removed, and a new form, known as the Novus Ordo or the Conciliar Mass, was substituted for it by order of Pope Paul VI, on March 26, 1970. By 1974, this Novus Ordo, in vernacular translations, had been spread by decree all over the Church Universal. The traditional Roman Mass was never forbidden, never abrogated, and never declared illegal, by any competent Roman official. But, all over the Church, there was an active and sometimes a violent policy of suppressing any trace of the traditional Roman Mass.

  For a number of years, there was an official pretense on the part of Roman authorities and many bishops that this Novus Ordo merely implemented the recommendations of the Second Vatican Council. But nowadays that pretense has fallen away. It now is undeniable that the Novus Ordo in its various forms violates the explicit precepts of the Vatican Council concerning the changes in the Roman Mass.

  Such violation and departure from the explicit will of the Council would be bad enough. What has done untold damage to the Eucharist, belief and doctrine, is the fact that, without some special care, not indicated in the official text and instructions of the Novus Ordo, the ceremony of the Novus Ordo does not ensure its validity: i.e., that it achieves that presentation of Christ’s Sacrifice on Calvary. As a general fact, nowadays throughout the Church such special care is rare. Consequently, the celebration of the Novus Ordo does not always result in a valid Mass. Indirectly, this result can be seen mirrored in the overall lack of sacramental reverence for the Eucharist among the clergy and the laity. For the Novus Ordo, which aims to be a communal spectacle composed of communal actions, has removed all due emphasis on the presence of the Sacrifice to the presence of the congregation praying and gesturing. The Roman Mass was a “vertical” act of worship. The Novus Ordo is strictly “horizontal.”

  Of course, this attempted destruction of the traditional Roman Mass and the inadequate formulas of the Novus Ordo were part and parcel of the hijacking of the Second Vatican Council by the anti-Church members, who have successfully used that Council’s ambiguous and general statements to devise a method of dismantling the specifically Roman Catholic character both of the Mass and of other basic Roman Catholic elements—beliefs and practices. In the wake of their success with the Novus Ordo and the consequent diminishment of the priest as official celebrant in the presentation of Christ’s Sacrifice on Calvary, the anti-Church members are logically proposing the priestly ordination of women, the use of altar girls for altar boys, of Eucharistic ministers, male and female, instead of the priest. It is a single integral plan to reduce specifically Roman Catholic worship and practice to such a low common denominator that any non-Catholic can participate and not feel in an alien atmosphere.

  But the total result has been confusion. There thus has arisen among the clergy and the people various groups that refuse the Novus Ordo and insist on maintaining the traditional Roman Mass. At first, the anti-Church thought that these would fade away with time. But time has only increased their importance, their preponderance and their number. Many, many more millions of Roman Catholics than Catholic officialdom will admit are in severe doubt as to the religious value of the Novus Ordo. Roman authorities themselves under the anti-Church influence did their best, by ecclesiastical punishment, by ostracism, even by outright lies, to do away completely with the traditional Roman rite. “The traditional Roman Mass has been forbidden by the Pope”; “The Roman Mass has been officially abolished and abrogated”; “The Novus Ordo is the very same as the traditional Latin Mass, only modernized”—such were and still are some of the deceptions and lies used.

  None of all this resolved anything. In the meantime, attendance at the Novus Ordo liturgy dropped drastically throughout the Church. The local habits of the clergy and of the bishops and the people made it quite clear to Rome that belief in the Real Presence of Jesus at the Novus Ordo celebration was strictly on the wane.

  The general confusion grows only greater with every year, because Roman authorities now give the traditional Mass their grudging approval and because the vagaries of the Novus Ordo in its various vernacular forms throughout the world are such—ludicrous, unseemly, naturalistic, even sacrilegious—that a tiny note of alarm is sounding in the Church.

  But now the anti-Church animosity—really a species of hatred—for the traditional Roman Mass is so great, while the obstinacy of the traditionalists has become a proven fact of Roman Catholic life, that only the supreme teaching authority of the Church as embodied personally in the Holy Father as head of the Church can, in a solemn, infallible statement, set the clergy and the people aright. Such a statement is lacking. Meanwhile, the members of the Church continue fractionating and dividing and doubting and deserting the practice of a sacramental life.

  The present Holy Father has done a little in this regard. He did grant an indult that facilitated the introduction of the traditional Roman rite into the dioceses of his Church. But the opposition to his recommendations—that is all the Pope made, recommendations—successfully stifled all the traditionalist attempts to take advantage of this perfectly legal means of reintroducing the lost traditional Roman rite. His Holiness is quite aware of what has happened to the sacramental life of the Church. In an extraordinary passage in a letter he wrote in 1980 to all the bishops of his Church, he apologized and asked forgiveness from God, in the name of all his bishops, “for everything which, for whatever reason, impatience or negligence, and also through the at times partial, one-sided and erroneous application of the directives of the Second Vatican Council, may have caused scandal and disturbance concerning the interpretation of the doctrine and the veneration of this great Sacrament” of the Eucharist.

  This is the nearest John Paul II has dared to approach a recognition of the gross damage done to the sacramental life of his Church and of the anti-Church’s destruction of the Roman Catholic Mass.

  The second vital Roman Catholic belief about which confusion reigns and is daily nourished concerns the oneness and trueness of the Roman Catholic Church. The essence of the confusion is this: Since the Second Vatican Council, and because of one of its official documents concerning religious liberty, the persuasion is now commonly abroad among bishops, theologians, priests and laity that membership in the Roman Catholic Church is not essential for salvation; that there are many equivalent roads to Heaven—non-Catholic and non-Christian; that everyone must be granted a moral and religious equivalence as regards the attainment of eternal salvation; even, according to some, that one can be saved without benefiting from the sacrifice that Jesus made of his life. Jesus, in other words, is (for some Roman Catholics) one Savior, and there are other saviors—Buddha, Mohammed, Abraham, even Martin Luther King. That the Roman Catholic Church is the one and the true Church in which and through which exclusively eternal salvation can be achieved—this is now in severe doubt and wrapped in confusion.

  There has thus grown up, due to the febrile attention of the anti-Church, an entire panoply of ecumenical “gatherings,” “contracts,” “celebrations,” “liturgies,” “documents of agreement,” the keynote idea of these being that “we are all sons of God” and “brothers in the human family,” so we all set out on “our common pilgrimage,” nobody claiming to be solely right (or the one, true Church of Christ) and nobody declared to be wrong.

  By an obvious misreading of yet another text from the Second Vatican Council documents, it is declared that the “people of God” includes the Roman Catholic Church but also many, many others who are not and will never be (because they don’t want to be) Roman Catholic. In most of the dioceses of Europe, North America and Australia, for instance, any attitude other than the new “ecumenical” attitude will effectively close all doors.

  The confusion among the Catholic faithful is enormous under these circumstances. Because the Vatican Council document on religious liberty condemns any attempt to force any
body to adopt a religious belief against his will, it is assumed and understood thereby that any human being has an innate right to choose and believe in a false religion. This is tantamount to saying that anyone has an innate right to be religiously in error. This is not only false as a religious proposition; it is a contradiction in terms for anyone who is supposed to believe in the one, true Church of Christ. For if the proposition is true, then no religion is right, no religion is wrong; in fact, there is no way that a human being can arrive at religious truth.

  Nothing has contributed more effectively to the decadence of Roman Catholic religious unity and identity than the pervasiveness of the idea that suddenly, as of the mid-1960s, Roman Catholics found out that they as Catholics belong to “the general mainstream of religious feeling and belief among all men and women.” Likewise, nothing has contributed more effectively to the confusion of the Catholic rank and file. For when they see and hear their prelates and their priests acting and talking as if there were no specifically Catholic uniqueness and truth, immediately their logical instinct is to regard the moral laws of the Church and its dogmas as optional. (“If others are not required to believe those dogmas and obey those laws, why should I?”) There thus arise the “cafeteria” Catholics, with a pick-and-choose attitude to Roman Catholic dogma and moral law. They insist on remaining in the Church and calling themselves Catholic, but stoutly maintain that they need not believe this, that or the other dogma, need not observe this, that or the other moral law. Their numbers teem in the Catholic Church today and include single individuals and organized groups.

  The confusion in this matter continues unabated. Most of the initiatives for the new “ecumenism” and most of the theorizing about it and the false idea of religious liberty have come from Roman Catholic prelates and their theologians, and from minor diocesan officials who engage in an ecumenical network organized at the diocesan level and implemented at the parish level.