Catholic Candle note: When you read the word “conciliar” in the following article, think “anti-Catholic” or “anti-Christ”.

The devil and evil men in the conciliar church know that they can control people’s thinking if they control how people speak.  For example, “Christian” truly means one who follows Christ.  But only Catholics truly follow Christ and so only Catholics are really Christian.^[1]

One who truly follows Christ enters heaven.  No one truly follows Christ unless he is a Catholic in the state of grace.  It is a dogma of the Catholic Faith that there is No Salvation Outside the Catholic Church!  If a person is not Catholic, he is not a Christian and cannot save his soul.^[2]

The conciliar church abuses the word “Christian” by calling heretics and schismatics “Christian”, to promote the heresy that non-Catholics can go to heaven.

To promote Heresy, the Modernists adopted the phrase “the People of God”

Just as the conciliar church abuses “Christian” to corrupt people’s thoughts by corrupting speech, so also the conciliar church abuses “the People of God”.  Although one can use this phrase in a Catholic way (viz., to refer only to Catholics), the modernists have hijacked this phrase to promote two conciliar errors: ecumenism and collegiality.

Whereas Catholics seldom called the Church “the People of God” before Vatican II, the conciliar church has been continually using this phrase since the 1960s.

 

The conciliar church claims this phrase, “the People of God” as its own.

Vatican II (and the conciliar church it caused), increased the use of “the People of God” so dramatically that the conciliar church claims this phrase as its own innovation.  Pope John Paul II remarked that “the doctrine in which the Church is presented as the People of God” is a “novelty of the Second Vatican Council”.^[3] 

Although the phrase is not completely new, nonetheless, because Vatican II widely popularized the phrase to promote heresy, a faithful and informed Catholic risks confusing and scandalizing others by using “the People of God”.

Vatican II’s use of this expression is traceable to the writings of a 20th Century Lutheran heretic.

Former Pope Benedict XVI (who served as a peritus, i.e., an expert, at Vatican II) traces the origin of Vatican II’s usage of the phrase “the People of God” to a Lutheran heretic, Ernst Käsemann.  Here is how this former pope explains Käsemann’s influence upon Vatican II:

There is a third factor that favored the idea of [using the phrase] the “People of God”.  In 1939, the Evangelical exegete, Ernst Käsemann, gave his monograph on the Letter to the Hebrews the title, The Pilgrim People of God. In the framework of Council discussions, this title became right away a slogan because it made something become more clearly understood in the debates on the Constitution on the Church [i.e., Lumen Gentium] ….^[4]

The conciliar usage of the expression “the People of God” promotes heretical ecumenism with non-Catholics.

The conciliar church falsely teaches that the Church of Christ encompasses more than just the Catholic Church, and that therefore one need not belong to the Catholic Church to save one’s soul.  The conciliar church uses the phrase “the People of God” to spread this heresy (viz., there is salvation outside the Catholic Church).^[5]

Here is the way former Pope Benedict XVI explains how the phrase “the People of God” promotes Vatican II’s ecumenism with the heretics and schismatics:

[T]he Council introduced the concept of “the People of God” above all as an ecumenical bridge.  It applies to another perspective as well: the rediscovery [sic!] of the Church after the First World War that initially was a phenomenon [sic!] common to both Catholics and Protestants. …

[T]he phrase “People of God” … expresses the ecumenical dimension, that is, the variety of ways in which communion and ordering to the Church can and do exist, even beyond the boundaries of the Catholic Church.^[6]

The conciliar notion of the Church as “the People of God” allows the conciliar church to falsely posit different degrees of “communion” with the Church.  Here is the way former Pope Benedict XVI explains how the phrase “the People of God” promotes the conciliar idea of degrees of “communion”:

If we use the image of a body to describe “belonging” we are limited only to the form of representation as “member”.  Either one is, or one is not, a member; there are no other possibilities.  One can then ask if the image of the body was too restrictive, since there manifestly existed in reality intermediate degrees of belonging.  

The Constitution on the Church [viz., Lumen Gentium] found it helpful for this purpose to use the concept of “the People of God”.  It could describe the relationship of non-Catholic Christians [sic] to the Church as being “in communion” and that of non-Christians as being “ordered” to the Church where in both cases one relies on the idea of the People of God (Lumen Gentium, nn. 15, 16).^[7]

The conciliar usage of the expression “the People of God” promotes the heretical notion of a “horizontal”, non-hierarchical church.

This emphasis on “the People of God”, instead of the Mystical Body of Christ, de-emphasizes the hierarchical nature of the Church, since a body is hierarchical (with some parts more exalted and which control other parts) but “the people” is non-hierarchical.   This de-emphasis of hierarchy panders to the Protestants, as well as to the “we are church” modernist Catholics.^[8]

Whereas priestly and Episcopal orders, and the delegation of Divine authority distinguish the clergy from the laity, describing the Catholic Church as “the People of God” obscures these differences.  For example, in Lumen Gentium, §13, Vatican II lumps together the hierarchy and clergy along with laymen as “members of the People of God”.^[9]

Here is how former Pope Benedict XVI explained (with approval) how the phrase “the People of God” deemphasizes the hierarchical nature of the Church:

The expression does not lend itself easily to a description of the hierarchical structure of this community, especially if “People of God” is used in “contrast” to the ministers ….^[10]

Conclusion

One can correctly describe the Catholic Church as “the People of God”.  However, Catholics seldom used this phrase.  Beginning at Vatican II, the modernists hijacked this phrase, and the conciliar church has used it ever since to promote two heresies.  

The “New” SSPX now uses the phrase “the People of God” as an additional step accustoming their followers to the way the conciliar church speaks
 

Because the SSPX formerly differed greatly from the conciliar church, to merge the SSPX into the conciliar church required enormous changes in how the SSPX thought and spoke.  

Thus, the leaders of the revolution in the SSPX had to tell its followers that they must “continually reposition”^[11] themselves, i.e., continually change.  Bishop Fellay declared that the SSPX will try to maintain the support of its followers for a deal with Rome, by working hard to get its followers to understand the “new reality” in the Church.^[12]

The “new” SSPX is steadily adopting the vocabulary of the conciliar church so that its followers will get used to how the conciliar church speaks.  The N-SSPX meters out its new conciliar terminology slowly enough to accustom its followers to hearing and using conciliar terms – without waking up those followers.  

The SSPX now speaks of “the People of God”, to accustom its followers to this conciliar lingo so they feel comfortable with it.^[13]

But the SSPX also now uses many other conciliar phrases as part of its ongoing revolution against Catholic Tradition.  Here are a few more examples of the N-SSPX’s shift to conciliar terminology:

1. Just as the conciliar church does, the N-SSPX describes the true Catholic Faith together with false heretical faiths, as “the Christian Faith” (in the singular).^[14]

2. The “new” SSPX promotes what it falsely calls “tradition”, by expanding this term to include groups that promote the new mass, the Assisi ecumenical gatherings, and the writings of Pope Francis.^[15]

3. Following the conciliar church by promoting the heresy of naturalism, the N-SSPX now defines the Catholic term “sacred” to include things such as any kind of bread and any eating together,^[16] as well as all human life.^[17]  Faithful and informed Catholics know that these are all only natural goods and are not sacred.

4. The “new” SSPX follows the conciliar church in falsely saying that heretics and schismatics are “Christians”.^[18]

5. The “new” SSPX follows the conciliar church by falsely describing as “martyrs” those heretics who are killed for their heresies (e.g., by Muslims).^[19]

6. The “new” SSPX uses the phrase “faithful Catholics” to include those who attend the new mass.^[20]

7. Like the conciliar church, the “new” SSPX heretically teaches the vice of presumption, calling it the Theological Virtue of Hope.^[21]

8. The N-SSPX uses the conciliar jargon “Catholic Community” to refer to a parish, just as the conciliar church does.^[22]        

9. The N-SSPX uses the conciliar lingo degrees of communion (viz., full communion and partial communion), just as the conciliar church does.^[23]

10. The N-SSPX has begun to call the Traditional Mass by the conciliar name “Extraordinary Form” (just as the conciliar church does).^[24]

11. The N-SSPX follows the modernists by using the conciliar lingo “New Evangelization”, which is a program of indoctrination into conciliar errors.^[25]

Conclusion

After Vatican II, most people who disliked the changes nonetheless stayed in their parishes, assuring themselves and each other that they would be strong enough to continue secretly rejecting the changes.  Those people gradually became conciliar.  

In the same way, most SSPX followers who dislike the SSPX’s changes have stayed in their local SSPX parish, assuring themselves and each other that they are strong enough to secretly reject the changes.  These people are gradually becoming conciliar.

Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it!

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