IT IS SPRING NOW, and outside the window, yellow daffodils are pushing their dew-drenched heads through the cold drab earth, while all the birds that summer in Maine have returned with their cheerful chorus. Our hearts should be young once again, our spirits uplifted, for God is painting His annual pastel for His creatures who find soothing balm in the beauty of such simplicity. The Vicar of Christ has visited our land, has come to give America a benediction, in itself a very great thing. The mail has been mixed and so has the media response. Will Spring ever come truly anew?

My plea is centered on the natural law and the law of the sacred, for many times you referenced the first, while so much of the latter vaporized as if the last tendrils of smoke. The Masses I witnessed bore almost no resemblance to your most recent writing on the Mass.

Despite your overtures to Tradition with the Motu proprio and those of your flock who strive to nurture Sacred Tradition and safeguard it for the next generation, as only those who are Catholic must in order to remain Catholic, rejecting all novelty, I knew from what you have said and written, in the way it was presented [the extraordinary as ordinary and vice versa], and even more by what you did not say [will the Novus Ordo be infused into the Tridentine or not], that it would be "business as usual", although adorned with your gentle charm. Your Holiness, I have prayed for you, that "business as usual" would not be so, leaving all to the Providence of God. You came to thank America, to praise her championing of freedom, setting the boundaries for that gift bestowed by Almighty God among other initiatives. You were welcomed in many quarters like a beloved father, yet ... the message muted by the noise of American life multiplied in the blitz of the media cacophony and our worldly hearts, our ears and eyes without comprehension or vision. A glass darkly. A few grasped what it was you ought to have taught us, some others, with animus against Truth, hurled invective tirades, mocked the Holy Catholic Church. The single apology for these profane outbursts was anything but, for it was an opportunity to posit a mere technical correction in order to launch into another attack as heinous as the first only with a larger audience who had tuned in for the supposed apology. The only real apology came from you, repeatedly, while one of the bishops who did much to foster the scandal rests securely tonight embracing his plush sinecure at St. Mary Major in Rome, of all places! And he isn't the only one. We do not understand why, Your Holiness, we do not understand, why?

For those who have the gift of true faith in the fullest, they look only to Tradition, for those who are seeking true faith, I pray and trust they will receive it; for those who cast aside the gift, no message would do; and for those who have squandered the gift of true faith, truth was turned into fables, doctrine into opinion, political opinion into doctrine to serve the New World disorder, a complete subversion, another form of diabolical disorientation of which Pope Clement XIII expounded on. Just one more disappointment, one more rendezvous with the tragic, just one more of so many missed opportunities because of the nature of modern socio-political expediency and the dominance of mass media through which everything is filtered and sifted to merge with the contagion of the false spirit of "religion" promulgated at Vatican II concocted by the partisans of modernism in the hierarchy, infecting the hapless faithful. The Church can never formally teach error for we have Christ's promise, so the council was called "pastoral" rather than "dogmatic" but its errors and or contradictions, which were mere opinions, have been taught as if dogmatic. Most of the faithful think they are dogma and believe the heresies and lies they have been inculcated with. So now they actually say that dogma itself can change; in other words, there is no more objective truth, unchanging truth. No matter how many lofty protestions to the contrary, this is the reality, which the Church is not addressing effectively, if at all! How can it, when it permits the scandal of the New Mass in which heresy is promulgated, such as the "Mystery of Faith" which violates the sacred, dogmatic canon of the Council of Trent on the Mystery of Faith.

Those who follow Christ and take up their crosses know in what betrayal consists, that of Judas [es] and the clamoring crowd who freed Barabbas and more intimately, in our own personal sins. We have the tribunal of mercy in Confession for the latter, but where do we go to find relief from the other? There is neither justice nor mercy on these shores. It is as if we must exclaim, My God, my God, why hast Thou abandoned us?

Except for this brief mention, I purposefully set aside the mass extravaganzas, the pagan retro festival rites, such as young women dressed as if angels romping with tawdry, phony doves, the endless circus to entertain the crowd and impress the media which surely will exploit this sham. Who approved of this? Did you know of it before hand, Your Holiness? Of this I can only lament that I am filled with shame that the world which watched could think this is how Catholics prepare before Holy Mass. And that those who participated, who were subjected to it, had it imposed upon them. Where were the people en masse publicly reciting the Holy Rosary? I know it was said later in the day, and for this may God, indeed, bless America. After so many events to cover, the media managed to mention it had been prayed. The image of those dove-girls will be the lasting one, I fear. Submerged in my own tears, bewildered and alarmed, I must let this non-Apostolic episode go, for truly words fail here!

I repeat Pope Clement's admonition, emphasis added:

Diabolical error decks itself out with ease in lying colors with some appearance of truth, so that the force of pronouncement is corrupted by a very brief addition or change, and the confession of faith which should have resulted in salvation, by a subtle transition leads to death!

No country that willingly tolerates the murder of the innocent in their mothers' wombs, merits much grace from God Who will not be mocked---it simply cannot be a shining examplar---and no members of the Mystical Body of Christ who tolerate the disorientation away from the glory and grandeur of the Ancient and Most Holy Mass for that of a banal production by the people, for the people, of the people; the degradation of the irreplaceable, supreme role of the sacerdotal priesthood as exemplified by Ven. Michael McGivney---there is simply no way one could imagine that saintly priest willingly present at these staged "happenings"; the disregard for the Mother of God's peace plan at Fatima and her urgent appeal; the assault on innocence and purity by sex-saturated "catechism classes" and the pretense that contraception is not an objective evil, merit that grace either. Our leaders and elites are willfully blind because they have immersed themselves in the spirit of the world, preferring the pragmatic over principle, the profane over that which is holy, i.e. to not be touched. The arrogance of man discovering his powers, but not his mastery, knows no bounds. They proclaim "whatever floats our boat" while the ship of state sinks and our bishops let us "do liturgy" like the elites "do lunch". Our prelates and lay vanguard are without excuse. The most scandalous and latest example is the Catholic Senator, Sam Brownback, Republican of Kansas, who gave in to the contemptible demands of the baby-killing Democrats, led by Sen. Boxer of California that a pro-life phrase in a proclamation for the Pope be dropped or else it would not be signed. He caved, rather than heed the monitum of his Pope that it is better to have fewer priests, but holier priests, to wit: better no such resolution than comply with the will of the enemies of the sanctity of life. And the Democratic Senator, the Catholic Casey of Pennsylvania backing for President the most pro-abortion Senator in the Congress. With "pro-life" friends like this, who needs enemies? That would be redundant. The thief within is always stronger and more insidious---those who are silent before evil or who refuse to do their duty, instead, compromising and cooperating with that evil. They are traitors aiding and abetting the infernal one, who loathes the Holy Mass of Tradition and the Rosary of Our Lady and uses our love of liberty to chain us down---to bind us to the madness of license. Where was your insistence on the Social Reign of Christ the King? Every government has the duty to recognize His Reign and to do nothing that would attempt to restrain it. This is Catholic teaching!

We have the craven in Congress that we so richly merit---and the media we willingly pay homage to, the absurdity of the benighted proclaimed pundits and hailed as sages. And many of our prelates follow along like lemmings after the piper.

Holy Father, your mission to the arch nemesis of the US and the natural law---the UN---and visit to Washington and various non-Catholic entities could not fail to be anything more than symbolic psalmody that will fade into sentimental memory, ergo "business as usual". The UN has its own deadly agenda, that is certain, and such being the case, it can never serve as a peacemaker. It claims that everyone has the right to life in its Declaration on Human Rights, then promotes abortion. It asserts that the family has the right to choose what it teaches its children, but it takes that right away in its Charter on the Family, in which it grants rights to children to choose what they want to read. It also grants those same children "reproductive rights", code for abortion and contraception. So much for the family. The UN cannot grant rights, it can only recognize them, for rights come from Almighty God, which it refuses to acknowledge. The UN will not reform until we do. For now it exists to plunder, to gather the spoils of war without officially declaring war. It is content to raise puny objections while we are at war with each other, the fruit of abortion and pride and greed and self-love while our border to the south dissolves into a chimera even clowns would reject. Previous Popes have addressed the UN without fruit. I repeat, The UN will not reform until we do.

The forum over which you have any authority in the present is that of your people, the Catholic Church. The Catholic people no longer grasp the notion of the natural law, written into the hearts of men by Almighty God, for their hearts have been seduced by the corrupt idea that they can have religion and faith without sacrifice of human respect and sanction; all religions are equal now, it is "one's faith" that matters, not what the faith is in or about. The triumph of the Masonic spirit! And so religion is now purely private save an occasional speech here and there, its spark of hope dying as quickly as it is lit, resurrected into a civil religion of one size fits all with a sole exception: In our public schools Muslims can pray but Catholics cannot even mention the name of the One True God or honor His holy days with hymns. Our Catholic-dominated Supreme Court has refused to accept appeals, thereby, in effect, declaring that the public schools have the right to discriminate. Fruit of the "freedom of religion". Fruit of a "Catholic education". We have not converted America, its Masonic ethos is converting us! I am happy you Baptized the Italian Muslim who converted to the True Faith, but we, too, are in need of conversion. America is ever and again missionary territory.

The light of justice under the natural law has grown dim because we neglected to attend to it. The natural law is seldom taught in Catholic schools, it is no longer preached from the pulpits and everywhere there is mass confusion, to accompany the confusion at Mass and about the Mass. We no longer know the principles of true justice within the Church and without. Charity is now thought of as justice, and justice, an arbitrary and false charity. A monumental disaster, an utter disorientation. I did not realize the extent of the demise of the natural law and its ally and helpmate, human reason, until I began writing on these pages in exhortation of its application, the limits it justly and rightly imposes on man-made law. The e-mail, more often than not, informed me that Catholics apprehend it not except in some vague way, unable to articulate it or defend it and proclaim its necessary principles in a robust manner. They no longer know what the natural law truly is or even if exists at all. They think it quaint. We have lost so much, in just two generations.

No wonder we are an aborting, contracepting society unable to coherently address the claims of those who commit unnatural acts with one another! Until 1930 all of Western civilization, Catholic and non-Catholic alike adhered to the natural law. Without Lambeth's revolt there could have been no Hitler, as day becomes night, even with all the injustices of the First World War. The "final solution" could not have been conceived without every man first declaring that he had the right to decide for himself that he is the author of life, not God. A contracepting people will not be given the priests they need by God; they will then receive the priests they unfortunately deserve and those priests in turn will render unto their people what they first rendered unto themselves, an unclean spirit, defilement for an anti-worship, then slowly an anti-Mass [dumbed down and with shocking irreverence---utterly unworthy of worship of God as He is entitled to in so many churches] for self glorification. So few there are that recognize the folly. There was universally held the sensus fidelium that where the Church is holy, society is more good than it would have been otherwise, and it mattered not whether any particular society recognized this reality or not. It is true. You know this, Your Holiness, but too many of us no longer do.

Msgr. Klaus Gamber, whose book on the Holy Mass and its history, The Reform of the Roman Liturgy, was endorsed by you as Cardinal Ratzinger wrote on page 113:

"We are living in a time when there is little faith left. The call grows louder and louder to save what we can. As strange as this may sound, the truly 'modern' forces in our Church today are not the so-called 'Progressives,' who want to abandon customs developed over time and replace them with experiments of uncertain value, but rather the 'conservatives' who recognize the value of Church tradition and are sensitive to pastoral needs.

"In the final analysis, this means that in the future the traditional rite of the Mass must be retained in the Roman Catholic Church, and not only as a means to accommodate older priests and lay people, but as the primary liturgical form for the celebration of Mass. It must become once more the norm of our faith and the symbol of Catholic unity throughout the world, a rock of stability in a period of upheaval and never-ending change."

He recognized that the Mass is a catechism not only a propitiatory sacrifice to make satisfaction for sin, in that it teaches as well as sanctifies, thus the phrase, lex orandi, lex credendi, or "as one prays, so one believes". For countless generations simple Catholic folk with little education knew well without confusion of mind and disturbance of soul their holy faith and held it rock-solid, pardon the pun, with little catechesis outside the Mass. My grandparents, who never went beyond the third grade in school, knew their faith from just the Mass, and the sound teaching found in the sermons given by a priest who knew what he believed and why. The New Mass is such a spiritual [not just a physical, spatial] disorientation that it has profoundly affected how and what we believe, priests and laity alike so that the laity seldom receive Catholic instruction from the pulpit but instead receive a polyglot of sentimentality and mass media driven ideas about Catholicism instead of actual Catholicism. After so many years they are genuine hybrids, content with unceasing change, even outright rejecting of Tradition, without which they cannot be authentically, Catholic. "Christian", perhaps, Catholic, no.

Years before the pastoral Vatican II, Ven. Pope Pius XII foresaw the coming devastation as predicted by Our Lady of Fatima in 1917. The Third Secret, which began "In Portugal the dogma of the faith will be preserved . . ." [meaning elsewhere something quite different from preserving the dogma of the faith] was read by Cardinal Chiappi, Pope John Paul II's house theologian, who said it concerned apostasy of the faith, starting with the top of the hierarchy. Pius XII had not read the Secret when he said, again emphasis in bold added by me:

"I am worried by the Blessed Virgin's messages to little Lucy of Fatima. This persistence of Mary about the dangers which menace the Church is a Divine warning against the suicide of altering the Faith, in her liturgy, her theology and her soul . . . I hear all around me innovators, who wish to dismantle the Sacred Chapel, destroy the universal flame of the Church, reject her ornaments and make her feel remorse for her historical past. A day will come when the civilized world will deny its God, when the Church will doubt as Peter doubted. She will be tempted to believe that man has become God. In our churches, Christians will search in vain for the red lamp where God awaits them. Like Mary Magdalene, weeping before the empty tomb, they will ask, 'Where have they taken Him?' "

Holy Father, you came and went so quickly. We saw you through the lens of the media but you did not see us, your little ones, the flock scattered and marginalized throughout the land. We have neither high office, nor coin of the realm. We need you, too. Come back, for your children are wretched and perish for a lack of knowledge. Come back, O St. Catherine's "Sweet Christ on earth", return to your people, come not in a cavalcade and with fanfare, return to us simply as Christ walked among His Own in the hills, return for those who cannot obtain "tickets", who dwell in tumble-down homes on the edge of poverty, walk among us, we who have our own "ground zeroes" by the thousands upon thousands---so many families torn asunder by disparate beliefs---say the Immemorial Mass for us, let Gregorian chant fill our barren sanctuaries sine guitar, speak to us and see us as we are with our hearts breaking, our parishes dwindling, obey Christ and "feed His sheep" if you love Him.

See what the policies of our country with the succor of countless Catholics have done to deplete our meager coffers and deject our spirits because the children of the illegal aliens---not the children of law-abiding immigrants---have more "rights" than we do. I place the term, rights, in quotes because you yourself said to the UN that rights as true rights have been redefined unjustly, in so many words. We ought to love our neighbor as ourselves; but we are someone else's neighbor, too, and we are not loved. There is no reciprocity of rights and respect for the property of law-abiding citizens who are struggling to feed their own families. Americans are the most generous on earth, but those who have other ideas for America are taking advantage of our generosity to destroy us from within, not so much from without. They receive driving licenses which they use to illegally vote, skewing our elections to favor national dissolution. Non-citizens voting! The Church teaches the justice of national sovereignty, this too, is part of the natural law. I cite from your speech to the UN, emphasis added:

Every State has the primary duty to protect its own population from grave and sustained violations of human rights, as well as from the consequences of humanitarian crises, whether natural or man-made.

Come to our rescue, do not give aid and comfort to those who want to destroy national sovereignty, by misplaced compassion which only serves to confirm our wayward, statist, socialist-leaning bishops that they are morally justified while they ignore many pernicious evils. They tell us to break the law, just laws, while ignoring the unjust law of abortion other than a platitude here and there. They set up sanctuaries for lawbreakers, some of them drug peddlers and members of violent, savage gangs, strip our sanctuaries of the sacred and will not lead us to protest before the sanctuaries of Satan, the altars of abortion. A contrarian spirit and the shameful inversion of truth!

Come and tell our bishops and priests in our very presence that they must preach on the evils of our day apart from the "doctrine of diversity", the evils of pornography, contraception, sex education; show them by close example why it is that we must preserve the Traditional Mass by saying it for us in our little churches. Your flock is starving. Feed us. Feed us! Restore the sacred and instill in the hearts of the faithful the willingness to foster the sanctity of life, these two are intimately related and interdependent. Do not just tell us, show us!

But most of all, Papa Benedetto, come and see us in those parishes and dioceses where we ask for bread from our bishops and we receive but stones, where Tradition and the Holy Mass of Tradition come only at the price of a king's ransom.

Your Holiness,
most sincerely in the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary,
Mrs. Pauly Fongemie
Maine, USA
and
Peter Yzaguirre
Omaha, Nebraska

April 20, in the Year of Our Lord, 2008

An Open Letter to a Heretic
Pauly Fongemie

You said that "No one can tell me what to do, the righteous might think they can tell me, the Church might try to tell me, but no one can tell me, only Christ can tell me."

For a long time now I have been fervently exhorting you to abandon the way of pride when an opportunity presents itself, and always I have prayed for you, just as fervently, and still do. Others are also. You will not respond save to denounce me and to deny the evidence plainly before our eyes---we who love you and have tried to turn you around. Holy Mother Church commands us to stay away after the third plea goes unheeded and to treat the heretic as an anathema. Perhaps the Church means a heretic with a capital H, that is, one who obstinately persists in error and knows what the truth is; a material heretic is one who is in error but is subjectively ignorant. I do not know your heart, so I am taking the only Catholic approach I know how: I will presume you are but a material heretic while continuing to pray for you and to plead with you one last time. Your errors and scandalous comments to your friends, including children, such as the statement that "those who only believe that Christ was a good man and not Divine" are also Catholic are so numerous and grievous, I scarcely know where to begin; so I will start with the last comment I had from you and with which I opened this open letter. It matters not what you think of me, it never did by the way, for I am only concerned about the eternal verities and have no respect for "human respect" as presently constituted by today's standards: however, I want you to know that I consider you a friend, a friend in need, on every Rosary, my "Friend in Prayer".

Our Savior, Jesus Christ speaks to us through His Holy Church which He established as the only Ark of Salvation, prefigured by the Ark that He instructed Noah to build. So the Church not only expects to speak to you in the name of Jesus Christ, She has an absolute duty to do so and you as a member of the Catholic Church have an obligation to listen. And just as the Ark of Noah was the only vessel of salvation or safety, so is the Ark of Holy Mother Church. Those who refused to believe what God told Noah to say, or disdained God's word, perished in the flood. So likewise with those who hear the voice of God through His Church recorded in Sacred Tradition, Sacred Scripture and Sacred Magisterium, and refuse to adhere to it whole and entire. They will perish in the flames of Hell unless they repent and believe and make restitution for sin.

Three of the spiritual works of mercy are:

To counsel the doubtful, to instruct the ignorant and to admonish the sinner. Now if we have no right "to tell you anything" concerning the faith, then these commanding beatitudes are meaningless and a waste of time for Christ Who gave them to us through His Church. In other words, a form of blasphemy, actually! It is sinful to say such scandalous things in the presence of impressionable children. Not to say a bad example as it suggests that "no one can tell them what to do either, not even their parents."

Moreover, there are nine ways of being an accessory to another's sin:

By counsel, command, consent, provocation, praise or flattery, concealment, partaking, silence, and defense of the evil done. I cannot be silent, I refuse to flatter you by pretending that your maceration of Church doctrine is acceptable, I refuse to consent by silence and will not partake of your [objectively speaking] sin of apostasy and denial by listening to it without objection; I too am setting a bad example, one for which I am liable to answer for at my particular judgment, since my presence might suggest that I at least tolerate your damnable ideas. I must for my sake and yours withdraw from your company unless absolutely necessary. For your good because by withdrawing myself you and the others will know that I most decidedly do not approve of your brand of "Catholicism" and because you know that I mean what I say when I uphold the dogmas of the faith without bending: perhaps providing the proverbial food for thought. It is no good denying that you do not care, for it has been reliably reported to me that when someone offered you a compliment when I was absent, you asked, "But what does Pauly think?"

I know that you are profoundly confused and for this I really cannot blame you entirely. In 1986 Pope John Paul II wrote in his encyclical, Dominum et Vivificantem, regarding the fruits of Vatican II, "one must learn how to 'discern' them carefully from everything that may instead come from the 'prince of this world.' This discernment in implementing the Council's work is especially necessary in view of the fact that the Council opened itself widely to the contemporary world, as is clearly seen from the important Conciliar Constitutions Gaudium et Spes and Lumen Gentium." How extraordinary that a Pope would say such a thing about a Church council that he himself participated approvingly in. In fact this is unprecedented because no other council [all but Vatican II being dogmatic-----Vatican II being merely pastoral] has had to have such a cautionary note. And surely Pope John Paul II ought to know. Another time he referred to what was left of once Catholic Europe as living in "silent apostasy." Since that time the silent apostasy is here, too, it is widespread, infecting the Church in America.

I included these paragraphs in another Open Letter, and since they are more valid today than when they were written, I add them here, also. Over a decade ago Msgr. Klaus Gamber, whose book on the Holy Mass and its history, The Reform of the Roman Liturgy, was endorsed by Cardinal Ratzinger now Pope Benedict XVI, wrote on page 113:

"Great is the confusion! Who can still see clearly in this darkness? Where in our Church are the leaders who can show us the right path? Where are the bishops courageous enough to cut out the cancerous growth of modernist theology that has implanted itself and is festering within the celebration of even the most sacred mysteries, before the cancer spreads and causes even greater damage?

"What we need today is a new Athanasius, a new Basil, bishops like those who in the fourth century courageously fought against Arianism when almost the whole of Christendom had succumbed to the heresy. We need Saints today who can unite those whose faith has remained firm so that we might fight error and rouse the weak and vacillating from their apathy."

He also wrote [Loc. cit.] emphasis in bold added by me:

"We can only pray and hope that the Roman Church will return to Tradition and allow once more the celebration of that liturgy of the Mass which is well over 1,000 years old.  . . .

"We are living in a time when there is little faith left. The call grows louder and louder to save what we can. As strange as this may sound, the truly 'modern' forces in our Church today are not the so-called 'Progressives,' who want to abandon customs developed over time and replace them with experiments of uncertain value, but rather the 'conservatives' who recognize the value of Church tradition and are sensitive to pastoral needs.

"In the final analysis, this means that in the future the traditional rite of the Mass must be retained in the Roman Catholic Church, and not only as a means to accommodate older priests and lay people, but as the primary liturgical form for the celebration of Mass. It must become once more the norm of our faith and the symbol of Catholic unity throughout the world, a rock of stability in a period of upheaval and never-ending change."

He recognized that the Mass is a catechism not only a propitiatory sacrifice to make satisfaction for sin, in that it teaches as well as sanctifies, thus the phrase, lex orandi, lex credendi, or "as one prays, so one believes". For countless generations simple Catholic folk with little education knew well without confusion of mind and disturbance of soul their holy faith and held it rock-solid, pardon the pun, with little catechesis outside the Mass. My grandparents knew their faith from just the Mass, their Roman Missal, and the sound teaching found in the sermons given by a priest who knew what he believed and why. The New Mass is such a spiritual [not just a physical, spatial] disorientation that it has profoundly affected how and what we believe, priests and laity alike so that the laity seldom receive Catholic catechesis from the pulpit but instead receive a polyglot of sentimentality and mass media driven ideas about Catholicism instead of actual Catholicism. After so many years they are genuinely confused and even outright rejecting of Tradition, without which they cannot be truly, really, Catholic.

Years before the pastoral Vatican II, Ven. Pope Pius XII foresaw the coming devastation as predicted by Our Lady of Fatima in 1917. The Third Secret, which began "In Portugal the dogma of the faith will be preserved . . ." [meaning elsewhere something quite different from preserving the dogma of the faith] was read by Cardinal Chiappi, Pope John Paul II's house theologian, who said it concerned apostasy of the faith, starting with the top of the hierarchy. So it seems that Mother Angelica who is no longer in charge of EWTN which has now fallen into apostasy itself, was prescient when she said that the Vatican was not exactly giving us the whole story a few years ago. Pius XII had not read the Secret when he said, again emphasis in bold added by me:

"I am worried by the Blessed Virgin's messages to little Lucy of Fatima. This persistence of Mary about the dangers which menace the Church is a Divine warning against the suicide of altering the Faith, in her liturgy, her theology and her soul . . . I hear all around me innovators, who wish to dismantle the Sacred Chapel, destroy the universal flame of the Church, reject her ornaments and make her feel remorse for her historical past. A day will come when the civilized world will deny its God, when the Church will doubt as Peter doubted. She will be tempted to believe that man has become God. In our churches, Christians will search in vain for the red lamp where God awaits them. Like Mary Magdalene, weeping before the empty tomb, they will ask, 'Where have they taken Him?' "

Well, he was certainly prophetic! The source for this citation of the late Pontiff is Roche, Pie XII Devant L'Histoire, p. 52.

You have been badly affected by this diabolical turmoil that entered into a crack in the Church through Vatican II as Pope Paul VI said in a speech, November 23, 1973:

" . . . [the Church] is in a disturbed period of self-criticism, or what could be better be called self-demolition."

A year before in another speech, I forget the date, he said "from somewhere or other the smoke of Satan has entered the temple of God."

Although the Church has never formally, that is dogmatically, altered one iota of Her teachings, as she cannot change truth which is eternal and unchanging and because the Holy Spirit will not permit Her to, there is no such Divine protection or guarantee from bad decisions, poor governance and laxity in discipline. The Conciliar or modern Popes have all broken with Tradition in their discipline and regulations and in their informal speeches and non-infallible personal books of theological opinion, the utterances from theologians who are not disciplined, which were not intended to bind the laity to formal assent, but promulgated in such a way that a generation of ignorant Catholics think this nonsense is binding. So it is no surprise that most Catholics today believe that the Jews do not need to convert and thus when they attend Mass at their local Novus Ordo parish they sometimes encounter a Prayer of the Faithful that includes, "For the intentions at the Wailing Wall,  . . ." with no idea what those intentions may be, they are taught to affirm the Jews as their own entity with their own viable covenant on an equal basis with Christ's Church, prayer as propaganda for the "new theology". Thus they are indoctrinated without realizing it, Sunday after Sunday in so many insidious ways. Their priests are also indoctrinated in the seminaries and inoculated against Tradition. Cold, without charity, for we must pray for the conversion of each and every Jew.

All of the Church Fathers and the Saints and Martyrs who wrote upheld the necessity of Tradition, but I will quote St. Vincent of Lerins who taught that Tradition is our only refuge at a time of confusion in the Church, as it happened in his day also:

"And if some new contagion should seek to poison, not only a little part of the Church, but the whole Church at once then his [the Catholic's] greatest care should once again be to adhere to antiquity, which obviously cannot be seduced by any deceitful novelty."

This can be found in Commonitorium, Chapter 3, section 7.

The infallible decrees, declarations and definitions of the dogmatic Councils of the Church and the Pontiffs along with them or alone, can never be abrogated, although informally they are being dismantled by faulty catechesis and outright denial that is taught as if a doctrine itself. It is indeed like "a contagion".

In re the Necessity of the Church for salvation including the Jews:

The Official and Infallible teaching of the Catholic Church on Salvation

     Ex Cathedra: There is but one universal Church of the faithful, outside of which no one at all is saved. [Pope Innocent III, Fourth Lateran Council, 1215]

     Ex Cathedra: We declare, say, define, and pronounce that it is absolutely necessary for the salvation of every human creature to be subject to the Roman Pontiff. [Pope Boniface VIII, the Bull Unam Sanctam, 1302]

     Ex Cathedra: The most Holy Roman Church firmly believes, professes and preaches that none of those existing outside the Catholic Church, not only pagans, but also Jews and heretics and schismatics, can have a share in life eternal; but that they will go into the eternal fire which was prepared for the devil and his Angels, unless before death they are joined with Her; and that so important is the unity of this ecclesiastical body that only those remaining within this unity can profit by the Sacraments of the Church unto salvation, and they alone can receive an eternal recompense for their fasts, their almsgivings, their other works of Christian piety and the duties of a Christian soldier. No one, let his almsgiving be as great as it may, no one, even if he pour out his blood for the Name of Christ, can be saved, unless he remain within the bosom and the unity of the Catholic Church. [Pope Eugene IV, the Bull Cantate Domino, 1441]

Furthermore, the Church's infallible teaching on the doing away of the Old Covenant and the sole validity of the New is declared in the encyclical Mystici Corporis, issued in 1943 by Ven. Pius XII who teaches thus, with references to both Pope Leo the Great and Saint Thomas Aquinas, emphasis in bold added by me: Note that because he is teaching to the whole Church and is saying what the Church has always taught at all times that the encyclical is infallible, not just an encyclical per se, such as one issuing a probable opinion to a group of bishops in a country:

"And first of all, by the death of our Redeemer, the New Testament took the place of the Old Law, which had been abolished; then the Law of Christ together with its mysteries, enactments, institutions, and sacred rites was ratified for the whole world in the blood of Jesus Christ. For, while our Divine Savior was preaching in a restricted area----He was not sent but to the sheep that were lost of the House of Israel----the Law and the Gospel were together in force; but on the gibbet of His death Jesus made void the Law with its decrees [referring to Judaism] and fastened the handwriting of the Old Testament to the Cross, establishing the New Testament in His blood shed for the whole human race. 'To such an extent, then,' says St. Leo the Great, speaking of the Cross of our Lord, 'was there effected a transfer from the Law to the Gospel, from the Synagogue to the Church, from the many sacrifices to one Victim, that, as Our Lord expired, that mystical veil which shut off the innermost part of the temple and its sacred secret was rent violently from top to bottom.' "

As to any other religion but the Catholic faith saving others:

Pope Gregory XVI condemned in Mirari Vos, as "the deadly error of indifferentism"----an error His Holiness said consisted of:

"This perverse opinion is spread on all sides by the fraud of the wicked who claim that it is possible to obtain the eternal salvation of the soul by the profession of any kind of religion, as long as morality is maintained. Surely, in so clear a matter, you will drive this deadly error far from the people committed to your care. With the admonition of the Apostle that 'there is one Lord, one faith, one Baptism,' may those fear who contrive the notion that the safe harbor of salvation is open to persons of any religion whatever. They should consider the testimony of Christ Himself that 'those who are not with Christ are against Him,' and that they disperse unhappily who do not gather with Him. Therefore 'without a doubt, they will perish forever, unless they hold the Catholic Faith whole and inviolate.' "

It is at the very least reckless to disregard --- as no longer relevant --- the constant teaching of the Church on salvation. I say least because we have a moral duty binding under pain of mortal sin to form our conscience with the perennial mind of the Church, not just what is popular at the moment and which is too easily confused with dogma. You say that dogma can change. This is itself a heresy, whether formal or material. It is not as if you were uneducated and have no time to read. I know you are capable because of your formal education and that you have the time: you discuss all the television shows you watch. It is that you do not take time to read actual Catholic doctrine and the lives of the Saints; and because you are not totally consecrated to Mary that you so easily blinded and swayed by modern "theologians". The Roman Mass taught us that Mary is the vanquisher of all heresies; indeed God sent her as His ambassador in these latter days, as Our Lady of Fatima, to warn us and to provide a plan of Divine protection through devotion to her Immaculate Heart.

You are thus partly responsible for your own confusion or loss of Catholic sense of the faith because you cast your pearls before swine by indulging hedonistic media outlets which are the enemy of salvation. How often have you told me of the Protestant programming you view, commenting favorably on it. You go there at your own peril. One of the paths of peril was reading the Da Vinci Code, boasting of it as "a good read" before impressionable teenagers, acknowledging that it is fiction, yet okay to read, neglecting to point out that it is blasphemous to the core. It is incomprehensible to me how any one with even a minimal sense of the Catholic faith and true devotion to the Immaculate and Sacred Hearts could say in all honesty, "it is a good read." Blasphemy, in the form of fiction is still blasphemy!

An easy, inexpensive way to begin Catholic devotional reading is the Apostolic Digest, purchasable from Tan Books. You may borrow mine anytime for as long as you need to. It is a compendium of the faith through the writings of the Saints, Fathers and Doctors and Popes of the Church. This one book prepares a lukewarm Catholic for wanting to do spiritual combat, leading him to the book of the same name, The Spiritual Combat, also sold by Tan. Ibid. On the necessity of maintaining Tradition here are but a few quotes from the Digest, which I add within this letter, rather than give the links for them on line, so that in order to avoid reading them you will at least have to scroll through them and perhaps catch a glimpse at least: Please note that I include the first few citations especially for you because you say that you pick and choose what you believe in Scripture and that there are errors in Scripture, another blasphemy:

THE DOGMAS OF FAITH ADMIT NO CHANGE WHATSOEVER

Nothing may be taken away, or added.------Ecclesiasticus 18:5
 
For I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this Book: if any man shall add to these things, God shall add unto him the plagues written in this Book. And if any man shall take away from the words of the Book, God shall take away his part out of the Book of Life and out of the Holy City.
Apocalypse 22: 18-19
You shall not add to the word that I speak to you, neither shall you take away from it.
Deuteronomy 4: 2
To the Testament once confirmed, no one adds anything further. Shall another writing change God's writing?
St. Pacian
It is unlawful to add anything to the words of Holy Scripture regarding the sense.
St. Thomas Aquinas
Speak all the words I have commanded you . . . Do not leave out one word!
Jeremias 26: 2
Nothing can ever pass away from the words of Christ, nor can anything be changed in the doctrine which the Catholic Church received from Christ to guard, protect, and preach.
Ven. Pope Pius IX
It is therefore necessary to receive these Divine oracles integrally, in the same sense in which they have been kept, and are still being kept, by this Roman Chair of Blessed Peter. Mother and Mistress of all the churches, She has always kept whole and inviolate, and taught to the faithful, the faith given by the Lord Jesus Christ, showing all the faithful the way of salvation and the doctrine of uncorrupted truth. Ven. Pope Pius IX
The Church must persist in the teaching transmitted to her by Christ.
Pope John Paul II
Our teaching may contain nothing impious, nothing diluted.
St. Gregory Nazianzen
I cannot sufficiently be astonished that such is the insanity of some men, such the impiety of their blinded understanding, such, finally, their lust after error, that they will not be content with the rule of faith delivered once and for all from antiquity, but must daily seek after something new, and even newer still, and are always longing to add something to religion, or to change it, or to subtract from it!
St. Vincent of Lerins
The nature of the Catholic faith is such that nothing can be added to it, nothing taken away. Either it is held in its entirety or it is rejected totally. This is the Catholic faith which, unless a man believes faithfully and firmly, he cannot be saved.
Pope Benedict XV
Fly to the Catholic Church! Adhere to the only faith which continues to exist from the beginning, that faith which was preached by Paul and is upheld by the Chair of Peter.
St. Hippolytus of Rome
This Apostolic Church never turned from the way of truth nor held any kind of error. It is imperative that nothing of the truths which have been defined be lessened, nothing altered, nothing added, but that they be preserved intact in word and meaning. This is the true rule of faith.
Pope St. Agatho the Wonderworker
And I hold it not with the understanding that a thing can be held which seems better and more suited to the culture of a certain age, but in such a way that nothing else is to be believed than by the words; and I hold that this absolute and unchangeable truth preached by the Apostles from the earliest times is to be understood in no way other than by the words.
Oath Against Modernism
Diabolical error decks itself out with ease in lying colors with some appearance of truth, so that the force of pronouncement is corrupted by a very brief addition or change, and the confession of faith which should have resulted in salvation, by a subtle transition leads to death!
Pope Clement XIII
With the Father of Lights, there is no change nor shadow of alteration.
St. James 1: 17
God's Word is one and the same, and, as it is written, "The Word of God endures forever" unchanged, not before or after another, but existing the same always.
St. Athanasius
My words that I have put in thy mouth shall not depart out of thy mouth nor out of the mouth of thy seed nor out of the mouth of thy seed's seed, saith the Lord, from henceforth and forever.
Isaias 59: 21
Add not anything to His words, lest you be reproved and be found a liar.
Proverbs 30: 6
The present or "current" teaching of the Church does not admit of a development that is either a reversal or a contradiction.
Pope John Paul II
For it is not now that the canons and statutes have been given to the churches; on the contrary, they have been well-transmitted and steadfastly handed down from our fathers. Neither is it now that the faith has begun, but it has come down to us from the Lord through His disciples.
St. Athanasius
Let us regard the tradition of the Church also as worthy of belief. Is it a tradition? Seek no further!
St. John Chrysostom
Change nothing; be content with tradition.
St. Cyprian
The preaching of the Church truly continues without change and is everywhere the same. It has the testimony of the Prophets and Apostles and all their disciples.
St. Irenaeus of Lyons
Therefore, no one is allowed to profess or to write up or compose or devise or teach a different faith.
Council of Chalcedon
God forbid we should falsify our faith!
St. Aithalas
Heretical teachers pervert Scripture and try to get into Heaven with a false key, for they have formed their human assemblies later than the Catholic Church. From this previously-existing and most true Church, it is very clear that these later heresies, and others which have come into being since then, are counterfeit and novel inventions.
Pope St. Clement I
Let nothing novel be introduced!
Pope Pius XII
"Avoid the profane novelty of words," St. Paul says (1 Timothy 6: 20) . . . For if novelty is to be avoided, antiquity is to be held tight to; and if novelty is profane, antiquity is sacred.
St. Vincent of Lerins
The ancient doctrines must be confirmed, but novel and absurd inventions must be condemned and cast aside.
St. Cyril of Alexandria
Why cast yourself over a cliff, deciding in your writings about things of which you are ignorant? Why do you not keep to what you have received from the Fathers and Doctors of the Church? You introduce novelties!
St. Eusebius of Caesaria
The devil is always discovering something novel against the truth.
Pope St. Leo the Great
To announce, therefore, to Catholic Christians anything besides that which they have received has never been lawful, is lawful nowhere, and never will be lawful; and to anathematize those who announce anything besides that which has been once received has always been necessary. This being the case, is there anyone of such audacity as to teach other than that which has already been taught in the Church, or anyone of such levity as to receive anything besides that which he has once received from the Church? St. Paul, the teacher of the Gentiles, cries aloud, and he cries out loud again and again, to all men, to all times, and to all places that, if anyone announces a new dogma, let him be anathematized!
St. Vincent of Lerins
Wherefore, by the authority of Apostolic power, We declare inventors of novel notions, which as the Apostle Paul has said are of no edification, but rather are practiced to beget most foolish questions, are to be deprived of the communion of the Church.
Pope St. Innocent I
I have neither permitted, nor shall I permit, the things which have been settled by the holy fathers to be violated by any innovation.
Pope St. Leo the Great
This custom has always prevailed in the Church: that, the more religious a man was, the more promptly did he withstand novel inventions.
St. Vincent of Lerins
We do not innovate anything . . . How is it that novelties are introduced which were never even thought of by our predecessors?
St. Ambrose
All novelty in faith is a sure mark of heresy.
St. Vincent of Lerins
It is impossible that I sanction any novelty against the faith.
St. Germanus of Constantinople

You also provide scandal by saying how wrong the Church and past Popes were and how right they are now. This is also irrational, for if Tradition and past Popes taught error, then the "new non traditional 'Tradition'" you devise can also be wrong: you cannot have it both ways, that is that those sainted Popes, some even Martyrs, had no infallibility but all of a sudden the modern Popes did. This mocks the words of Christ. Now since Tradition is necessarily true for salvation and cannot change, then anyone who says differently is wrong always and ever. Popes are only without error when they uphold, safeguard and pass on Tradition, period. Otherwise we are not obligated to give assent. In fact Tradition is the measure we use when Popes' statements appear to conflict with what the Church has always and ever will teach through her dogmatic councils and from what he has received from the Apostles. All revelation per se finished with the death of St. John but dogmas are truths revealed by Almighty God to the Church through "Peter".

God's Word is holy and true and any apparent contradiction is in our lack as interpreters or taking verses out of context. The Popes have written extensively, dogmatically on this too, condemning those who believe the things you do. Suffice it to say you know I have the encyclicals, etc. on hand but this is already too long, so the quotes above should be more than adequate.

Time is short and every passing moment, actuarially speaking, brings us closer to death and our particular judgment. Last week an acquaintance went abroad and was killed in a motor accident, just like that! This can happen to you and me right here in Maine. None of us knows the hour or day. I fear for your salvation, as I do mine, given the perilous times we live in-----so fraught with temptation and easy access to sin along every step, every day. I abandon myself wholly to Our Lady of Mercy as my refuge, along with St. Alphonsus Liguori, one of my mentors and St. Gertrude the Great, my special patron. We live in a culture of death and pure apostasy, that is, in alien territory, which you aid and abet with your careless and erroneous remarks, which serve to demoralize and confuse those less well-informed, and those with tender consciences who are easily swayed. Please realize the danger to your soul before it is too late. Pray to Our Lady for once more the gift of faith because without it you cannot see what is so clearly there to see. Reading in of itself, hearing in of itself is without fruit because we have to listen with the ears of faith as a child on his Mother's lap. Pray for the grace to be totally consecrated to her, to become enrolled in her Brown Scapular, come back to Tradition which is eternal, thus not going backward but forward. Without Tradition and Our Lady you are lost. I will close with another section from the Apostolic Digest, I hope and pray you do not quickly scroll down, please, I beseech you, read of Our Lady and the importance of devotion to her:

CHAPTER ONE
DEVOTION TO OUR LADY
IS NECESSARY FOR SALVATION

In me is all hope of life and virtue, in me is all grace of the way and the truth.
Ecclesiasticus 24:25
O chosen Queen of Heaven! You alone are the refuge of guilty mortals to whom so many a tearful eye, so many a wounded and miserable heart is raised . . . You, O elect Queen, are the gate of all grace, the door of compassion that has never yet been shut!
Bl. Henry Suso
Mary is the key to the gates of Heaven.
St. Ephrem
Open to us, O Mary, the gate of Paradise, since you have its keys!
St. Ambrose
God has entrusted the keys and treasures of Heaven to Mary.
St. Thomas Aquinas
No one can enter into Heaven except through Mary, as entering through a gate.
  St. Bonaventure
Mary is called "The Gate of Heaven" because no one can enter Heaven but through her means.
St. Alphonsus Maria Liguori
Holy Scripture was written for Mary, about Mary, and on account of Mary.
St. Bernard
We had closed Paradise; you, O Mary, opened the entryway to the tree of life again . . . You are the bridge to life, the staircase to Heaven!
St. John Damascene
All the Saints have a great devotion to Our Lady: no grace comes from Heaven without passing through her hands. We cannot go into a house without speaking to the doorkeeper. Well, the Holy Virgin is the doorkeeper of Heaven.
St. John Mary Vianney
All gifts, virtues, and graces of the Holy Ghost are administered by the hands of Mary to whomsoever she desires, when she desires, and in the manner she desires, and to whatever degree she desires.
St. Bernardine of Siena
She opens the abyss of God's mercy to whomsoever she wills, when she wills, and as she wills, so that there is no sinner however great who is lost if Mary protects him . . . All men: past, present, and to come, should look upon Mary as the means and negotiator of the salvation of all ages.
St. Bernard
For, since it is the will of Divine Providence that we should have the God-Man through Mary, there is no other way for us to receive Christ except from her hands.
Pope St. Pius X
Our sanctity depends on the degree of our nearness to Mary. She is the nearest to God, and if we are the nearest to her then we therefore will be nearest, through her, to God Himself.
St. Maximilian Mary Kolbe
No one ever finds Christ but with and through Mary. Whoever seeks Christ apart from Mary seeks Him in vain.
St. Bonaventure
He who wishes to find Jesus will do so only by having recourse to Mary.
St. Alphonsus Maria Liguori
He who desires to find Jesus will not find Him otherwise than through Mary.
St. Alphonsus Maria Liguori
One cannot talk about the Church if Mary, the Mother of the Lord, is not present with His brothers. Only Mary could make one heart and one mind of Jesus' Apostles, as though Christ wanted to show us that He entrusted to His Mother's maternal care the mission of making the Church a single family. Yes, in Mary we have the bond of communion of all of us who, through faith and Baptism, are disciples and brothers of Jesus.
Pope John Paul II
Death through Eve, life through Mary.
St. Jerome
Mary is that Happy Ark, in which those who take refuge will never suffer the shipwreck of eternal perdition.
St. Bernard
The Saints assert that anyone who prays to the Mother of God in time of temptation will be preserved from sin, and that whoever approaches her with perfect trust throughout his life will surely be saved.
St. Maximilian Mary Kolbe
   He will not taste death forever who, in his dying moments, has recourse to the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Pope Pius XI
   All those who seek Mary's protection will be saved for all eternity.
Pope Benedict XV
  Mary obtains salvation for all who have recourse to her. Oh! If all sinners had recourse to Mary, who would ever be lost? . . . He who is protected by her will be saved; he who is not will be lost.
St. Alphonsus Maria Liguori
   It is impossible to be saved without the help of the Most Blessed Virgin, because those who are not saved by the justice of God are saved by the intercession of Mary.
St. John Chrysostom
   Not a single soul who has really persevered in her service has ever been damned.
St. Louis Marie de Montfort
   No one who shall invoke this Mother of Grace with devotion and perseverance can possibly perish forever.
St. John Eudes

  
Meanwhile, I will pray and make a daily sacrifice that you will once more find the Holy Catholic faith, whole and entire, apart from which there is no salvation.
Your Friend in Prayer,
Pauly Fongemie

March 12, 2009