Lux Lucet

Ruth and Naomi Leave Moab, 1860, by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld (1794-1872).

Time was when Protestants understood that, “There is no other head of the church but the Lord Jesus Christ:  nor can the pope of Rome in any sense be the head thereof; but is that Antichrist, that man of sin, and son of perdition, that exalts himself in the church against Christ and all that is called God” (Westminster Confession of Faith, XXV,vi).

But that understanding, which began to die out in the 19th century, is very nearly extinguished among even conservative Protestants in our own time.

In fact, far from viewing the Roman Church-State (RCS) with suspicion, many Protestants, including many influential Protestants, having fallen prey to Rome’s false ecumenical outreach beginning with Vatican II, actually view the Vatican as an ally in the culture war to save Western Civilization

Given Rome’s decades’ long push to co-opt Evangelicals, especially through ecumenical political action in opposition to abortion, it was rather interesting to read a recent article titled Evangelical Fundamentalism and Catholic Integralism in the USA: A Surprising Ecumenism by Antonio Spadaro S.J. [S.J. means Society of Jesus, indicating the person to whose name it is appended is a member of the Jesuits] and Marcelo Figueroa, in which the authors excoriate American Christian-Evangelical fundamentalists and Catholic Integrationists for pushing what they call an “ecumenism of hate.”

What, you may ask, is this “ecumenism of hate”? Principally, it would seem, it consists in opposition to the Vatican’s push to implement its world-wide, taxpayer subsidized mass immigration / migration / refugee program. One that calls for a massive movement, all in the name of Christian charity, of people from the third-world into Europe and North America, with the citizens of the host nations finding themselves stuck with the bill. All the while, virtue signaling prelates of the RCS preen before the television cameras to lecture the hard-pressed citizens of the receiving nations on their “Christian duty” to do even more.

Write the authors,

However, the most dangerous prospect for this strange ecumenism is attributable to its xenophobic and Islamophobic vision that wants walls and purifying deportations. The word “ecumenism” transforms into a paradox, into an “ecumenism of hate.” Intolerance is a celestial mark of purism. Reductionism is the exegetical methodology. Ultra-literalism is its hermeneutical key.

There are several observations that can be made concerning this paragraph. In the first place, it is this author’s opinion that Rome’s push for mass third-world and Islamic migration into Europe and North America is not motivated out of a concern for Christian charity, but part of its push for world government.

As has been pointed out in other posts on this blog, the current conflict between nationalism and globalism is really a conflict between the Westphalian World Order (WWO), which is geopolitical Protestantism, and the New World Order (NWO), which represents geopolitical Romanism. Under the WWO, international power is diffused among individual nation states, the governments of which are answerable only to the citizens of each nation. On the other hand, the NWO is all about global government. Under the NWO, a central world government authority holds ultimate political power, with the individual nations being merely administrative districts in the global super state. In such a system, national governments do not ultimately answer to their citizens, but to the supreme global authority. An example of this arrangement is medieval Europe under the popes.

But for a nation state to function, there must be some degree of social cohesion among its citizens. Absent that cohesion, the only way a state can be held together, if it can be held together at all, is by force. Perhaps this is why the Apostle Paul in his address on Mars Hill said, “And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings, so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him” (Acts 17:26, 27). Regarding this passage, there is some disagreement among the commentators as to the phrase “preappointed times.” Some hold that this is a reference to the seasons. Others claim that this refers to individual men. A third view, and this is my own understanding, is that, since the passage as a whole refers to nations, “preappointed times” is a reference to the historical epochs in which different nations prosper.

But not only does God establish the times and boundaries of nations, he has, as Paul tells us, a clear purpose in doing so: that they [the nations] should seek the Lord. This seems to suggest that individual nations are God’s approved way for men to organize themselves, providing fertile ground for the propagation of the Gospel. But a world order based on the idea of individual, self-governing nations, the WWO referred to above, is a by-product of the Protestant Reformation and is in direct conflict with the multiculturalist inspired mass immigration policies popular with both the secular left and the Roman Church-State.

This leads to a second point: Mass Islamic and third world, welfarist immigration into Europe and North America will have, if allowed to go unchecked, the effect of remaking these nations into something very different from what they historically have been. With Muslim dominated no-go zones springing up all around various European countries, the Islamification of Europe is well underway.

In effect, the mass, taxpayer subsidized immigration fostered by Rome will serve to make these nations unable to function as independent, sovereign nations. First, by destroying the nations’ finances as a result of the necessary massive increases in government social services needed, second due to the inevitable ethnic and religious conflicts that will follow, and third due to the fact the many millions of foreign born citizens will have no real attachment to their host nations and thus may very well welcome the idea of folding the once independent states into a world government system.

By destroying the social and political integrity of the rich Western nations, the Vatican will create a power vacuum into which it can step as a political savior.

Third, Spadaro and Figueroa mislead their readers by calling the opposition to mass, taxpayer subsidized third-world immigration held in common by conservative Protestants and some Roman Catholics as “ecumenism.” Ecumenism is cooperation of Christians, or at least among those who name the name of Christ, as representatives of their different church organizations. In that sense, there is no ecumenical activity among Romanists and Protestants for the purpose of opposing Rome’s weaponized immigration policies. While individual American Roman Catholics and individual American Protestants may agree that flooding the country with immigrants, migrants and refugees, some of whom are actually quite hostile to the social and political norms of the historic American nation, and then forcing American taxpayers to foot the bill for their own displacement is a bad idea, there is no formal ecumenical church structure organizing this. It is simply the case of individual citizens, Protestant and Roman Catholic, acting in their own self-interest.

It is not surprising that this is so. Many American Roman Catholics are far more Protestant in their thinking than either they realize or the Vatican is comfortable with. Roman Catholics have prospered greatly in the United States and many of them, despite the fulminations of their Church and its popes against political and economic liberty, appreciate the Protestant concepts of limited government and capitalism and they correctly perceive the RCS’s advocacy of mass immigration as a threat.

It is rather ironic that Spadaro and Figueroa have written an article opposing what they call Evangelical and Roman Catholic ecumenism, seeing that while Spadaro is a Jesuit, Figueroa is a Presbyterian. So it’s not that the authors oppose all ecumenism, it’s just certain types of ecumenism that get their dander up.

Fourth, by calling them xenophobic and Islamophobic, the authors lie about the motives American Protestants who oppose being forced to pay for the transformation of  their country.  And as if accusing Protestants and Roman Catholics who share some of their concerns of suffering from mental disorders weren’t bad enough, they go on to also add the charge of hate.  

These terms are what those on the left like to call dog whistles.  They are terms meant to rile up support for the Jesuit cause among the Social Justice Warrior secular left.  In other words, they represent an attempt by the Roman Catholic globalists to gain support among a group that ordinarily would oppose them.  Or to put it differently, it is an attempt by Rome to effect an ecumenical rapprochement with the secular left.  As further evidence of this, consider that xenophobic and Islamophobic were two of the terms Hillary Clinton used to describe Trump supporters in her infamous “Basket of Deplorables” speech during last years presidential election.  

As far as the charge of being haters goes, we Protestants are called by Christ to love our neighbors as ourselves, so there’s no room for hating people in our creed.  The concerns American Protestants have expressed about the current immigration / migration / refugee system are not rooted in irrational fear of, or hatred for, foreigners, but out of a legitimate concern that the current immigration system is not designed , as it should be, to benefit both the immigrants and the host country, but rather represents an attempt by globalists, of which the Jesuits are among the leading lights, to subvert the sovereignty of the nation and bring about world government.  

Fifth, while reading Spadaro’s article, one is reminded of the old saying, “always accuse your opponents of what you are doing.”  For while he accuses Protestants of engaging in hatred, Spadaro’s, and by extension, Rome’s hatred of Protestants is laid bare for all the world to see. In the space of about 3,000 words, Spadaro calls Evangelicals “Manichaean” and “apocalyptic,” looks down upon them for believing “the United States to be a nation blessed by God” and not “hesitat[ing] to base the economic growth of the country on a literal adherence to the Bible,” sees them as reactionaries opposed to “the black civil rights movement, the hippy movement, communism, feminist movements” and now “migrants and the Muslims,” he calls them people with a “decontextualized reading of the Old Testament” who are not “guided by the incisive look, full of love, of Jesus in the Gospels,” a people whose belief in creationism serves as “a sort of ‘anesthetic’ with regard to ecological disasters and problems generated by climate change,” who have the gall to believe “the book of Genesis…put humanity in a position of ‘dominion’ over creation,” and finally accuses them of having a “non-allegorical understanding of the final figures of the Book of Revelation.” In short, Spadaro is angry with American Protestants for having the nerve to actually believe the Bible.

In a rather comical case of the pot calling the kettle black, Spadaro and Figueroa accuse American Evangelicals of desiring “some influence in the political and parliamentary sphere and in the juridical and educational areas so that the public norms can be subjected to religious morals.” Thank goodness Spadaro is on the case. It’s nice to know that the Jesuits, who would never attempt to influence politics, are working 24-7 to protect Americans from the dangerous and deleterious political machinations of those dastardly Evangelicals, who have their heads filled with these wild notions that God gave man dominion over the earth, that climate change is not a global problem requiring a global solution, and who oppose being taxed and regulated to death to support the invasion of their country by Mexican Roman Catholics and Islamic jihadis, the end purpose of which is to make the country ungovernable and help usher in world government.

Sixth, Spadaro’s article is not some off-the-cuff personal statement, but has been sanctioned by the very highest levels of the Vatican. In an interview in America Magazine, the official publication of the American Jesuits, Spadaro was asked, “Is it true to say that this article, like other articles of La Civilian Cattolica [this is the publication in which Spadaro’s article first appeared] was approved by the Vatican?” To which Spadaro responded, “Yes. La Civiltà Cattolica is a peer-reviewed magazine. Its articles are always read and approved by the Secretariat of State before they are published. The same was true for this article.”

In closing, despite the fact that many Protestants believe Roman Church-State leopard has, in fact, changed its spots, the truth is that the new Rome is just as hostile to Christians and Christianity as it was in the 16th century when it was massacring Protesting for daring to teach and believe the Gospel of Justification by Faith Alone.

And just as Rome has been, is, and always will be opposed to the Gospel, so too it has been, is and always will be opposed to the political and economic systems of the Bible, what John Robbins called constitutional-capitalism as well as the geopolitical system of the Bible, the Westphalian World Order.

In light of this, it is critical for Protestants to see Rome, not as the church of Jesus Christ as she portrays herself, but for what she truly is: Mystery, Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots and of the Abominations of the Earth. She is the mortal enemy of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the saints of God, and whatever degree of political and economic liberty remain in the West.

And for those Roman Catholics who love liberty and hate tyranny, it is my prayer that God would open their eyes, not only to the true nature of their church and its Antichrist papal head, but to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, Justification by Belief Alone, which is only hope of salvation anyone has in this sinful, fallen world, and our only hope of pushing back on the growing tyranny of world government being pushed by pope and his minions such as Spadaro and Figueroa.