The First Signs of Repentance by the Vatican?
Introduction: Repentance At Last?
In a letter written to Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople for the feast of the holy Apostle Andrew the First-Called, 30 November on the Roman Catholic calendar, the Vatican has indicated first signs of possible repentance. In his letter Pope Benedict XVI suggested that he was prepared to re-examine the forms in which the Bishop of Rome could exercise his ‘ministry of love’. He declared that the ‘Catholic Church’ is examining ‘the ministry of the holy apostle Peter ‘(by which he means the ‘mission’ of the Bishop of Rome) as ‘a gift of the Lord to His Church’.
He added in the letter that this mission ‘should not be interpreted in the perspective of power’ (as Roman Catholicism always has done so far, ever since its development in the eleventh century). Most significantly of all, Pope Benedict explained that ‘it is a question of seeking together, inspired by the model of the first millennium, the forms in which the ministry of the Bishop of Rome may accomplish a service of love recognised by one and all’. The Pope also seems to have admitted that the schism of Roman Catholicism from the Orthodox Church is ‘a scandal’. It is to be hoped that these words will be followed by deeds. If so, then we would suggest three phases of repentance.
Phase One: Repentance For Twentieth-Century Crimes
The Vatican should return in history to repent for individual crimes. Perhaps first it could start with repentance for the Vatican’s intervention in former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, which indirectly led to the deaths of some 250,000 people. Then it should turn to renouncing its protestantisation since the 1960s.
Returning to the 1940s, the Vatican should repent for the war crimes of Croat Catholic politicians and Franciscan monks in Yugoslavia. It should also repent for protecting and smuggling mass murderers through Croatia and Italy into Argentina through the ‘ratlines’ of Roman Catholic monasteries and the Vatican State. Then it should repent for the dynamiting by the Catholic Fascist government of Poland of 250 Orthodox churches in the 1920s and 1930s, paying to rebuild them. Next its should repent for siding with the atheist Bolsheviks against the Orthodox Church in Russia after 1917.
Phase Two: Repentance For Pre-Twentieth-Century Crimes
From here the Vatican should abandon its novelties of the nineteenth century – its doctrines on papal infallibility and the immaculate conception. At the same time it should repent for supporting the anti-Christian alliance with the Muslims in the Crimean War. Next, post-Reformation Uniatism, founded on the threat to starve to death all Orthodox who did not accept the Unia, would have to be abandoned. We would suggest that the Vatican then sell and move out of its present pagan Renaissance palace to genuine Christian buildings. Perhaps it could use the money so raised to compensate Orthodox for its crimes committed during the Crusades and for its attempts to invade Russia with its bloodthirsty Teutonic Knights, thus stabbing in the back Russian Christians who were already facing the Tartar-Mongol onslaught.
It should also recognise that its 1204 sacking of the Capital of Christendom led directly to its seizure by Muslims in 1453, which entirely distorted Christian, European and World history. (Would Columbus have set off the Catholic and then Protestant genocide in the Americas, if Rome had not first allowed the East to be conquered by Muslims? Columbus was seeking the East, not a New World in the West). It should also abandon previously unknown doctrines, introduced in the Middle Ages, like purgatory and the money-spinner of indulgences. It should at once give up the rationalistic scholasticism which lies behind these innovations. (These were also later responsible for the Protestant schisms). Such practical, initial acts would mean that the Pope’s words would be taken seriously by the Orthodox Church.
Phase Three: Repentance For Its Schism
After this Rome should get down to more basic matters. This would mean giving up the pomp and militant power brought to it by its eleventh-century transformer, Hildebrand, Pope Gregory VII. Like many other enemies of Christ, such as ‘Blessed’ Charlemagne, as well as inquisitors and psychic charlatans he would also have to be decanonised. This would entail the complete dismantling of the Roman Catholic machine, with its divisions of celibate clericalist warriors, and its return to the authentic ministry of the Bishop of Rome of the first millennium (as it claims it wishes to do).
This would mean returning to being the overseeing Patriarch of the Orthodox Church and Faith in Western Europe, one who does not meddle in the affairs of other Local Orthodox Churches, as he did not in the first millennium. Then, at long last, there would follow automatically what the Church and all its faithful Orthodox Christians have been patiently awaiting for a thousand years. This is Rome’s renunciation of its founding heresy – the anti-Holy Spirit doctrine of the filioque, which is the ideology behind the papal power-grab, its supplanting of Christ by ‘the Vicar of Christ’. Only then could a Vatican de-vaticanised, that is, no longer a secular, worldly State, finally return to communion with the Church of Christ, which is governed by the Holy Spirit.
Conclusion: Reality?
Sadly, we suspect that none of the above vast movement of repentance will take place. It is far more likely that the Vatican does not accept any of the above, for it has brainwashed itself into thinking that its ideology is actually Christian. Ominously, the Vatican already seems to have swept all the historical facts responsible for its present disastrous situation under the carpet. For, sadly, in his letter, Pope Benedict wrote: ‘Our growing friendship and mutual respect, and our willingness to encounter one another and recognise one another as brothers in Christ, should not be hindered by those who remain bound to the remembrance of historical differences, which impedes their openness to the Holy Spirit’. From this, tragically, it sounds as if the Vatican does not desire even the opportunity to face up to facts.
Yet repentance, which is the key, can only begin when we recognise the facts. If the Vatican wishes to deny its sad history, it is in denial of the reality created by its historical crimes and doctrinal errors. Only when it can accept responsibility for its errors, recognising reality and so repenting, will it be able to open itself to the Holy Spirit, instead of impeding it through the filioque and all its tragic consequences. Tragically, for ordinary Roman Catholics, hoodwinked for a thousand years, it sounds as if the millennial invention of Roman Catholicism will first have to be brought low by today’s atheist political correctness, so that authentic Christianity (Orthodoxy) can become widespread again in Western Europe. In the words of the Gospel: ‘Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit (Jn 12, 24).
