"Kasper the Friendly Heretic" Update

Kasper Remains Firmly in Place

by Christopher A. Ferrara

        In yet another sign that the status quo maintained by John Paul II will be preserved intact, Cardinal Walter Kasper has been kept on by Pope Benedict XVI as head of the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity — and this despite Kasper’s public disagreements with the former Cardinal Ratzinger.

        As noted in a report by CWNews.com on May 25, 2005, "Cardinal Kasper said there has been ‘enormous progress’ toward Christian unity in recent years." What progress? The Protestant sects and the schismatic Orthodox are as adamantly opposed as ever to any submission to the Roman Pontiff. Rather, they live in the hope, nurtured by forty years of "ecumenical dialogue," that the Catholic Church will finally abandon Her claims concerning the primacy of Peter as the foundation of Christian unity in the one true Church.

        Kasper went on to say that "the progress was very evident in the ‘presence of important delegations from nearly all the churches and ecclesial communities’ at the funeral of Pope John Paul and the inaugural Mass of Pope Benedict. These delegations, he said, ‘showed that the expression 'sister churches' is not merely an abstract concept.’"

        Pure nonsense. The mere attendance of non-Catholic ministers at the papal funeral and inaugural Mass — ministers who have not budged one iota from the profession of their manifold errors — signifies nothing but worldly respect for a departed "spiritual leader" and the "inauguration" (before Vatican II Popes were crowned, not inaugurated like politicians) of another. Indeed, the only "progress" we have seen after forty years of "ecumenical dialogue" is the Protestantization of the human element of the Catholic Church — the very development which encourages our "dialogue partners" to believe that the Church will finally come to see things their way.

        Kasper the friendly heretic, who has already publicly denied the necessity of Protestant and Jewish conversion to Catholicism, remains firmly in place, and the status quo goes on. And yet, as CWNews observes, before Cardinal Ratzinger became Pope Benedict, Kasper "characterized the stance of then-Cardinal Ratzinger as showing a ‘rigid emphasis’ on the authority of the Pope." Moreover, contrary to the "position" of Cardinal Ratzinger, Kasper, as Archbishop of Rottenburg, "proposed a policy that allowed divorced and remarried Catholics to receive the Eucharist" even though "at Cardinal Ratzinger's prompting, in 1994 the Vatican ruled against that practice." And in 1999, "when Cardinal Ratzinger produced the statement Dominus Iesus, on the essential role of the Church in the plan of salvation, Cardinal Kasper expressed sympathy with Protestant leaders who were critical of the document."

        So an open heretic and dissenter is still ensconced in a high Vatican office despite his public opposition to the man who is now Pope. Yet Father Nicholas Gruner, who adheres to every single teaching of the Church on faith and morals, is hounded by members of the Vatican apparatus and denounced to the world (on no grounds whatsoever) in L’Osservatore Romano.

        The motto of John Paul II was "be not afraid." It is time for us to be very afraid indeed, for what Sister Lucy called the diabolical disorientation of the Church appears to be getting worse, not better. That God will save His Church is certain. When the rescue will occur, however, is a great and terrible unknown. Clearly, we are living in the midst of the apostasy predicted in the still unpublished part of the Third Secret of Fatima.