Pope Francis repeats the errors of V-II and Assisi Meetings on Equality of Religions

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Pope Francis urges Buddhists, Muslims, and Shamans to promote their religions during event in Mongolia
Speaking to Buddhist, Shinto, Shaman, Jewish, Muslim, and assorted Christian religious leaders, Pope Francis praised the assembled religions for being the continuation of 'ancient schools of wisdom.'



Pope Francis greets Mongolian President Ukhnaagiin Khürelsükh, September 2023.
Vatican News

Sep 4, 2023
ULAANBAATAR, Mongolia (LifeSiteNews) – Speaking as part of an ecumenical gathering during his trip to Mongolia, Pope Francis quoted from Buddhist texts while arguing that “every religious institution” has “the right to freely express what it is and what it believes.”

He urged gathered non-Catholic religious leaders to promote their own religions, saying:

May it be so for us, as committed followers of our respective spiritual masters and faithful stewards of their teachings, ever ready to offer the beauty of those teachings to those whom we daily encounter as friends and companions on our journey. May it be so, for in a pluralistic society committed to democratic values, such as Mongolia is, every religious institution, duly recognized by civil authority, has the duty, and above all the right, to freely express what it is and what it believes, in a way respectful of the conscience of others and in view of the greater good of all.

Papal encounter with Mongolian religions

The Pope’s comments came as part of his address Sunday morning, delivered to Buddhist, Shinto, Shaman, Jewish, Muslim, and assorted Christian religious leaders. The ecumenical gathering took place during the Pontiff’s short trip to Mongolia, a nation with a strong Buddhist majority and fewer than 1,500 Catholics.

Seated in the capital’s Hun theatre, the Pope joined twelve other leaders in the event, during which speeches were shared promoting religious dialogue and co-existence.

Pope Francis introduced himself as “a brother in faith to those who believe in Christ, and as a brother to all of you in the name of our shared religious quest and our membership in the one human family.”

He outlined his perception of the assembled religious leaders’ creeds, saying that “the social significance of our religious traditions can be gauged by the extent to which we are capable of living in harmony with other pilgrims on this earth and can foster that harmony in the places where we live.”

Francis quoted from the Buddhist collection of sayings from Buddha, The Dhammapada, along with the Dutch writer and Catholic critic Soren Kierkegaard and Ghandi.

Ecumenical and Interreligious Meeting in the “Hun Theatre”


Pope Francis in the ecumenical meeting. Credit: Vatican News
“The religions are called to offer the world this harmony,” said Francis, adding that at the ecumenical event, the assembled leaders “are meeting together as the humble heirs of ancient schools of wisdom.”

In our encounter with one another, we want to share the great treasure we have received, for the sake of enriching a humanity so often led astray on its journey by the myopic pursuit of profit and material comfort.

He issued a call for “all” to “explore and appreciate” the “great patrimony of wisdom” found in the “various religions” of Asia. Among ten aspects of Mongolian culture which he praised as part of the “great patrimony,” Francis included “a healthy relationship to tradition, despite the temptations of consumerism,” which echoed his praise and approval at the numerous traditional costumes on display to honor his visit.

The pontiff also decried the mixing “of religious beliefs and violence, of holiness and oppression, of religious traditions and sectarianism.”

Consequently, Francis expressed a call for the plurality of religions to work in society, stating that this was both a “duty” and a “right.”

May it be so, for in a pluralistic society committed to democratic values, such as Mongolia is, every religious institution, duly recognized by civil authority, has the duty, and above all the right, to freely express what it is and what it believes, in a way respectful of the conscience of others and in view of the greater good of all.

While he did not cite the primacy of the Catholic Church or its teachings, Francis stated “that the Catholic Church desires to follow this path, firmly convinced of the importance of ecumenical, inter-religious and cultural dialogue.”

The Church, he added, “offers the treasure she has received to every person and culture, in a spirit of openness and in respectful consideration of what the other religious traditions have to offer.”

Pope Francis made several condemnations of “proselytism” during his various speeches on the papal trip, but while speaking to the assembled religious leaders, he argued that “dialogue, in fact, is not antithetical to proclamation: it does not gloss over differences, but helps us to understand them, to preserve them in their distinctiveness and to discuss them openly for the sake of mutual enrichment.”

He expressed a desire that the “prayers we raise to heaven and the fraternity we experience here on earth spread seeds of hope.”


Catholic Tradition on promotion of other religions

While Pope Francis advocated the “right” of other creeds to “freely express” what each believes, his predecessors in the papal throne have condemned such arguments.

Pope Pius IX’s Syllabus of Errors condemns as erroneous and heretical the notion that “every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true.”

In his 1888 encyclical Libertas, Pope Leo XIII wrote about the Catholic Church’s relationship with other religions, stating that the Catholic Church tolerates:

certain modern liberties, not because she prefers them in themselves but because she judges it expedient to permit them, she would in happier times exercise her own liberty; and, by persuasion, exhortation, and entreaty would endeavor, as she is bound, to fulfill the duty assigned to her by God of providing for the eternal salvation of mankind.

Pope Leo XIII clearly noted, however, that “one thing, however, remains always true — that the liberty which is claimed for all to do all things is not, as We have often said, of itself desirable, inasmuch as it is contrary to reason that error and truth should have equal rights.”

Leo repeated this when he wrote in his 1896 encyclical Satis cognitum that everyone should become a child of God by taking “Christ Jesus as their Brother, and at the same time the Church as their mother.”


This was similarly taught by Pope Pius XI in his 1928 encyclical Mortalium animos. Explaining why Catholics were prohibited from participating in non-Catholic “assemblies,” Pius XI wrote:

The union of Christians can only be promoted by promoting the return to the one true Church of Christ of those who are separated from it, for in the past they have unhappily left it. To the one true Church of Christ, we say, which is visible to all, and which is to remain, according to the will of its Author, exactly the same as He instituted it.

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Archbishop Lefebvre in 1985, before the first of the infamous and scandalous Assisi meetings under Pope John Paul II, and repeated again under Benedict XVI:



The Angelus - July 1985

The Archbishop Speaks

The Sermon of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre on the Occasion of Ordinations to the Priesthood

29 June 1985 at Écône

My dear friends, we are gathered here again under the patronage of the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, martyrs. How can we not turn our thoughts and our hearts to Rome—Rome, which this first pope and this great apostle watered with their blood, along with so many other martyrs. With what feeling we read this morning in the Breviary the lessons from Pope St. Leo, who addresses this city Rome. O Roma, he says, quae eras magistra erroris, facta es discipula veritatis. "O Rome, once the teacher of error, you are now the servant of truth." What beautiful words: servant of truth. He adds that this city Rome once collected all errors of all nations. Omnium gentium erroribus serviebat: Rome seemed to be at the service of the errors of all nations, of all gods, collected in Rome. And Rome imagined she had a great religion, St. Leo goes on to say, a magnum religionem, precisely because she had brought all religions together in her bosom.

These words of St. Leo, which describe ancient, pagan Rome, make us reflect on the situation today in Rome. What does Rome think of us, gathered here together today, to celebrate, attend, and participate in these ordinations to the priesthood? We know something of this from the book that has just appeared by Cardinal Ratzinger. He speaks of us. And what does he say of us? He says he is surprised that the Society of St. Pius X should be so attached to the popes (this is really a great consolation for us) before the Council, and yet should have such serious reservations toward the popes after the Council. If we are so attached to the papacy, why do we make such distinctions among popes? But he answers his own question, in his own book. The interviewer asks him: "Your Eminence, do you think something has changed in the Church since the 1960's?" And the Cardinal answers, "Yes, something has in fact changed since the 1960's." That is to say, since Vatican II. And what is this change? It consists in adopting the values of the world, the values of liberalism. These have been adopted by the Church. That is what he says.

We reject these liberal values which have been introduced into the Church by Vatican II and the postconciliar reform. We absolutely reject them—precisely in order to obey the popes and the Church of all time. All the popes have condemned these compromises, these errors of the world, because they are contrary to our holy religion. And what is the most monumental error? The greatest error is to accept the equality of all religions, the validity of all religions.

Recall the words of St. Leo which I just quoted: "Rome was thought to have a great religion because she united all religions in the world in her bosom." So now they are hoping to go back to pagan Rome by this ecumenism which is drawing together all religions. And this is not imagination. The Vatican sent official delegates for the laying of the cornerstone of the great mosque which is being built within the city limits of Rome. The Pope himself, you remember, went to a Lutheran church in Rome, to pray with the Protestants, thus recognizing this false religion, invented by the devil. And what about the eulogy of Martin Luther at the time of his fifth centenary, the eulogy of the most abominable heresiarch that humanity has ever produced, who destroyed the unity of Christendom? There you have the situation.

This is why, since the Council, something has changed, something new introduced into the Church, something we reject. And we know this has been introduced especially by the Secretariat for the Unity of Christians. Cardinal Bea, President of this Secretariat, had official, public contact—known to the whole world—with the Freemasons of New York, with B'nai B'rith. The B'nai B'rith asked him to introduce into the Catholic Church the freedom of all religions. The popes have always defended religious freedom, i.e., of the true religion, of the religion of Our Lord Jesus Christ—but not the freedom of all religions, and therefore of all errors. Now this is what Cardinal Bea introduced into the Church by means of the Decree on Religious Freedom. The result is that Cardinal Bea received the gold medal for religious freedom from this Masonic group, composed entirely of Jews. I think we need no more proof; the evidence is clear enough. Freemasonry wanted to introduce into the Church this false notion of religious freedom to destroy the truth of the Church.

Why did they persecute Peter and Paul and all the martyrs? Because they were Christians, because they born the name of Christian, because they were disciples of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and because these disciples of Our Lord Jesus Christ claimed this religion to be the only true one. And it was in the process of converting all followers of false religions, false gods and false cults to the one true religion of Our Lord Jesus Christ. So the name of Christian became hated by all the disciples of these religions. And the emperors, protectors of these false religions, persecuted all Christians, because they said, "We are the only true religion." If anyone wants to go to heaven, to save his soul, he must be converted to Our Lord Jesus Christ. This is the first and most fundamental truth that Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself taught us. And because Jesus Christ is God, this is our religion. This is our truth.

And this is our trouble with Rome, dear friends. If you want to know why these troubles with Rome, it is because we reject ecumenism, because we reject the freedom of all religions, because we have only one God, Our Lord Jesus Christ, Who reigns with the Father and the Holy Ghost, world without end. We repeat this in all our prayers: there is only one God, Jesus Christ, Who lives and reigns with God the Father in the unity of the Holy Ghost, world without end. And clearly for this reason we are persecuted by all the devotees of false religions. We are persecuted today—we, you— members of the Society or not of the Society—who defend these truths, who defend this truth of the Christian religion. You are not ecumenical, so you are not allowed in our Catholic churches, which were built for the Christian religion, to honor Our Lord Jesus Christ, the only God, the only Savior, by His Cross, by His Sacrifice. We are driven out of these churches because we reject the idea that all religions are equal. You know perfectly well this is true. They receive Protestants, Moslems, in our churches. They receive Freemasons, they give Communion to anyone at all, in our churches, in Catholic churches, built for the one true religion. So it is now normal that we are driven out of our churches. We can no longer pray there and continue worshipping as we once did in our churches. And so if we cannot go into the churches, we will keep the faith! We will keep the faith of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

And now I address a few words to you, my dear friends, who will in a few minutes receive the grace of ordination to the priesthood. You know you will receive three powers reserved to priests: potestas praedicandi (docendi), potestas sanctificandi, potestas regendi: the power to preach the truth of the gospel, the power to sanctify, and the power to direct and guide souls, like shepherds. These are the three powers you are going to receive. And these three powers will make you into other Christs. Whom do you preach? Jesus Christ. By whom do you sanctify? By Jesus Christ. How, by whom do you direct souls? By Christ, like Christ, in Christ. Totally united to Our Lord Jesus Christ. From now on your whole life will be united to His: no gray areas, no compromises with error, no compromises with false religions. You are the shepherds who must lead souls to eternal life by Our Lord Jesus Christ. These are the powers of Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself you are about to receive. To preach Our Lord Jesus Christ. This is just what the apostles and all Christians did, but especially those who were anointed as priests and charged with preaching the gospel of truth. And what is the truth. It is Christ Himself. There is no other truth than that Jesus Christ is the Son of God—the only way to salvation, the only means of saving souls. You will preach Our Lord, Whom you have come to know in these years at the seminary. All your studies have been directed to knowledge of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Philosophy, theology, canon law, liturgy, the Fathers of the Church—all the studies you have pursued, whatever they have been, have been to help you know, love and serve Our Lord Jesus Christ better.

You have prayed before the altar, prayed to Our Lord Jesus Christ, to share in His life, by the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, by Holy Communion. Now you have been chosen by Our Lord Himself, to pronounce the words of consecration. What a sublime and extraordinary power! This is the joy and consolation of your priestly life, the power of your priestly souls—to have power over the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself. When you encounter suffering, when you have doubts, hesitations, trials—because perhaps your preaching does not bear the fruits you hoped for—look to Our Lord Jesus Christ. Look at His Cross, look at His Passion. He too suffered. He endured the desertion, the total abandonment of His disciples. He endured courageously, and God rewarded Him by raising Him up. He raised Him by the power of His divinity.

And then you will sanctify, particularly by the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, source of all sanctification, continuation of the salvific sacrifice of Our Lord Jesus Christ. This is what the Mass is, and this is why you are being ordained, to lead souls to Christ, to celebrate this sacrifice, to pour grace out in abundance to save souls. This is a great mystery, this power given to us, creatures that we are, to be able to speak to God, to bring God down on the altar—Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, Who is God.

And you will sanctify by all the sacraments. You will prepare souls to receive the sacraments worthily. You will not give Communion to those who are not worthy. You will prepare souls so that they may be worthy to be united to Our Lord Jesus Christ. By the sacrament of baptism, the sacrament of the Eucharist, by the sacrament of penance, by confirmation, by all the sacraments, prepare souls to sanctify themselves in the Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ, to keep the Commandments, Commandments which are only the love of God and love of neighbor. What a beautiful vocation! To bring souls nearer to Our Lord Jesus Christ, to incorporate them into the Body of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the mystical body of the Church, and to prepare them to share some day in the glory of God, in the glory of Our Lord.

And finally, you will guide souls in their anxieties, in their difficulties; in their darkness, you will be their light. Vos estis lux mundi. You are the light of the world. And so you will be light—in charity, in patience, in generosity, in gentleness. You will listen to souls who come to you to receive light. Do not reject them. Be patient. Be kindly. Be solicitous. Be fathers to your people. These souls who come to you will seem to be coming to Our Lord Jesus Christ, and will look for an answer for the good of their souls. So you will do good throughout your life.

You are about to separate and go to your assignments all over the world. May the Blessed Virgin Mary go with you. May she be your mother. May she nourish in you this unique, profound and all-sufficient love, with no more hesitations—this love of Our Lord Jesus Christ—as apostles of Christ.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.


[Emphasis - The Catacombs]

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Quotes of Archbishop Lefebvre - On Ecumenism

• “Ecumenism is not the Church’s mission. The Church is not ecumenical, she is missionary. The goal of the missionary Church is to convert. The goal of the ecumenical Church is to find what is true in errors and to remain at this level. It is to deny the truth of the Church.” (April 14, 1978)
  

• “… and this, it is really the modern heresy, that we can really designate under this new term, for it really seems that there is a new heresy in addition to modernism, liberalism, and all those old errors, it seems to me that we can define this modern error: ecumenism, this false ecumenism.” (Conference at Econe, May 16, 1978)
  

• “Then came this abominable ecumenism which is nothing but the means to penetrate liberal ideas within the Church, because it is the principle of Religious Liberty, a principle which is in the constitution, in the Declaration of Human Rights.” (Conference, December 21, 1984)
  

• "We want to be in perfect unity with the Holy Father, but in the unity of the Catholic Faith, because there is only this unity that can unite us. But not this kind of ecumenical union, a sort of liberal ecumenism, because I think this is what best defines modern tendencies and what we could almost express as the 'modern heresy.' As I had the occasion to say in Essen, I think that what best defines the whole crisis in the Church is really this liberal ecumenical spirit. I say liberal ecumenism because there is a certain ecumenism that, if properly defined, could be acceptable. But liberal ecumenism, such as is practiced by the present Church and especially since Vatican II, necessarily carries true heresies." (Conference of April 14, 1978)
  

• “The Church, in the course of the 1960's, thus during the Council, acquired values that have come from outside the Church, from the liberal culture - due secoli - from two centuries of liberal culture. It is clear: these are the "rights" of man, it is Religious Freedom, it is Ecumenism. It is Satanic.” (Conference, December 13, 1984)
  

• “In this world, there are forces opposed to Our Lord, and to his reign. Satan and all the auxiliaries of Satan, conscious or unconscious, refuse this reign, this way of salvation and fight for the destruction of the Church. Thus the Church is engaged by her Divine Founder in a gigantic combat. All means were and are employed by Satan to triumph. One of the last, extremely efficacious stratagems is to destroy the combative spirit of the Church by persuading her that there are no more enemies, and that we must put down our arms and enter into a dialogue of peace and cordiality. This fallacious truce will permit the enemy to penetrate everywhere and corrupt the forces of the Church. This truce is liberal ecumenism, a diabolical instrument of auto-destruction of the Church. This liberal ecumenism will result in the neutralisation of the arms which are the liturgy with the Sacrifice of the Mass, the Sacraments, the breviary, the liturgical feasts, the neutralisation and ceasing of the seminaries…” (Archbishop Lefebvre to Cardinal Seper)
  

• "The enemy of Ecône is not Such-and-Such, at the Vatican or elsewhere. The enemy of Ecône is Liberalism, the destroyer of the Church. And as to the men who serve this liberalism and who aim to cut us down, these are not our personal enemies – they are only pawns of liberalism. One must understand this: Our battle is not a confrontation between persons and characters. It goes well beyond: it is the battle of faith against error." (Vatican Encounter: Conversations with Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, by José Hanu)
  

• Jesus is not optional. “Qui non est mecum, contra me est—He that is not with Me is against Me” (Mt. 12:30). To deny this is the fundamental error of religious liberty and ecumenism. Lefebvre, Marcel, Spiritual Journey. Kansas City: Angelus Press, E-Book
  

• And by this very fact, this “Mystery of our Faith” [the traditional Mass] overwhelms all the errors of Protestantism, Islam, Judaism, Modernism, and materialistic, socialist and communist secularism. No error can withstand our holy Catholic Mass. The Mass is anti ecumenical, in the sense of ecumenism practiced since the Council: namely, the union of all religions in an amalgam of prayer without dogma, without morality, without specific laws, and agreement based on a few ambiguous slogans like “the rights of man,” “the dignity of man,” “religious liberty.”  On the contrary, the Novus Ordo is precisely the banner of this false ecumenism, representing the annihilation of the Catholic religion and the Catholic priesthood. (Letter to Friends and Benefactors, February 1982)
  

• Satan, the father of lies, as Our Lord Jesus calls him, has the extraordinary talent of finding out some words, to which he assigns a new meaning so that from their ambiguity, he achieves acceptance of the destructive falsehood which overthrows the best established societies. He found it in this “ecumenism” of the Council which has created an ecumenical liturgy, an ecumenical Bible, and ecumenical catechism, uniting truth and falsehood – marrying the true and the false. The most disastrous result of this marriage is the Catholic-Protestant Mass, the poisoned source afterwards yielding countless ravages: relinquishment of the Church, of the true Faith, sacrileges, tearing of the unity of the Church, proliferation of diverse sorts of creeds unworthy of the Church.
  
  But, there exists a consequence of which one does not often enough ponder on. It is the destruction of the Catholic nations which no longer find in the Holy Mass, the source of political unity based on the unity of the Catholic Faith. Therefore, the Catholic nation hereafter must, in like manner, convert itself to an ecumenical state – pluralistic, very soon finding itself securalized and neutral, if not atheistic. The ecumencial Mass leads logically to apostasy. One cannot serve two masters, one cannot nourish oneself indifferently from truth or falsehood. It is falsehood that flatters our evil inclinations which will prevail over truth which is more austere and more demanding. One must, at all costs, remain bound to truth without mingling. Pope Pius IX vigorously denounced these liberal Catholics who believe they can unite falsehood and truth, good and evil, in order to please their contemporary fellowmen. Whether this poisoned ecumenism reaches us through the hierarchy or not, the channel is not important – it is the poison that one must refuse to swallow. It is a matter of strict obedience to our Lord Jesus Christ, to the Church of all times, to all the successors of Peter. We will, therefore, keep the Catholic liturgy, the Catholic Bible and catechism. ... Each one, at his time in the Church, must endeavour to remain Catholic and to maintain the Catholic Church. It is upon this resolution and its realisation that we will be judged by Our Divine Lord. (Letter to Friends and Benefactors, March 1978)
  

• Because we are surrounded by the ruins caused by the corruption of minds and hearts, the evidence of the vitality of the Church of all time takes on a priceless value. We are permitted to hope that we can restore destroyed altars, that we can offer again the true Sacrifice of the Mass. By contrast, when one lives with an ecumenical Eucharist, democratic and liberal, the auto-destruction continues, despite all the calls to order, the statements most worthy of respect and the most spectacular of ceremonies. “Nisi Dominus aedificaverit domum in vanum laboraverunt qui aedificant eam – If the Lord does not construct the building, the builders work in vain.” Therefore, the altar of sacrifice of propitiation, the heritage of the new and eternal testament; the Body and Blood of Jesus are the foundation stone of the Church from whence gush the waters of eternal life. (Letter to Friends and Benefactors, October 1979)
  

• Through Religious Liberty we’ve ended up with Ecumenism, and through that all the ‘reforms’ which have been carried out in the Church, the introduction of Collegiality to please the Protestants and the democratic spirit of our age. Everything came through this acceptance of Religious Liberty and the principles of the modern world. It’s clear, and if we don’t keep that in mind, we cannot understand what took place behind the scenes at the Council, nor what happens today behind the scenes in the Vatican. ... Our Lord came to earth to institute the true religion. There is only one religion. Those who have not converted to it will not be able to enter heaven. Our Lord said to His Apostles: “Go, teach all nations.” He didn’t say: leave the Buddhists alone, the Muslims, the pagans, leave them be. They each have their own religion, no need to bother them. The missionaries went out, they were killed, they shed their blood, they became martyrs. (Archbishop Lefebvre, Conference in Madrid, 1986)