The Newspeak of Progressivism

Consequences of Vatican II

The Newspeak of Progressivism

Lyle J. Arnold, Jr.

In her inspiring article “Reading Medieval Architecture,” Christine Fitzgerald brings to life the indispensable role architecture plays in the history of mankind. She rightly states, "Architecture is one of the expressions of a nation's soul." Turning to the Middle Ages, she observes,

"Everything in medieval architecture reflected the hierarchical order of the society on which it was constructed - the detailed and complex relationships connecting lines, arches, vaults and buttresses analogized the multifaceted interdependency of secular, ecclesiastical and familial authority - bellatores, oratores and laboratores (those who fight, those who pray and those who work). It was a hierarchical society where, each part in its turn followed God's plan in creation."

There was harmony in the classes in the Middle Ages

I would like to focus on last words of the above quote. The hierarchical society, with its three classes, existed according to God's plan in creation, which gave harmony in Christendom. The Marxist view, however, is the opposite. According to the Communist Manifesto, "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle." This is a direct offense against Divine Providence.

During that resplendent period of History, few men of low degree aspired to more. A rhyme of that period says it all: "God hath shapen lives three; boor and knight and priest they be.” (1)

The modern egalitarian hatred of medieval society is contrary to the plan of God for the different but harmonious interdependency of classes. The Marxists pretend the serf was oppressed and miserable, always on the verge of rising up against the hated master. Fr. E. Cahill, S.J., refutes this false argument, affirming the serf had the advantage of protection from the lord, as well as his permanent home and farm from which he could not be evicted. In addition, he lived amid all the consolations of an intensely religious society. Cahill continues:

“A moral tie attached him to the family of his master, to the castle whose old towers protected him as they had protected his fathers; to the church at whose door he had assumed all the dignity of a man and of a Christian, and which offered him an inviolable asylum against the powers of the world. Around him all was animate. His habits, his labors, his privations, his perils were all connected with ideas in which he had faith and for which he would have gladly died. There was then a unity of feeling, and even of taste and a community of enjoyments among the high and the low." (2)

Even an anti-Catholic and socialist like George Orwell recognizes hierarchy in society: which he simply calls the High, the Middle and the Low. In the Orwellian society of his science-fiction novel 1984, he describes a world where the power of the High is retained perpetually. With this solution, class struggles in History have ended for all time. A force has been developed to forever keep the ruler safe from being deposed.

The key to this forced structure is in the concept of newspeak, designed to keep people from thinking outside of a fixed mindset. Two of its main components are doublethink (where two conflicting thoughts are accepted as true), and duckspeak (unconscious quacking of words, where only the mouth works and not the mind). This mental condition is called "controlled insanity," whereby obvious truths about the dysfunctional society are suppressed, and those who cannot adapt are "vaporized," or eliminated.

Progressivist newspeak

One might say that Progressivism fulfills several of these characteristics of the Orwellian society. A timely example of newspeak has surfaced with Benedict's view on condom use in the book-interview Light of the World. According to reports, the Pope said that if "a male prostitute" uses a condom to prevent infection, "this can be a first step in the direction of moralization."

Fr. Fessio's abstract distinctions lost touch with reality

The Pope’s publisher Fr. Joseph Fessio, head of Ignatius Press, bent himself into a pretzel pretending there is "nothing new" in the declaration. Making an abstract distinction between the “intention” and the “act,” the Jesuit comes to the forced conclusion that the Pope did not justify use of the condom in any circumstance. How is it possible to say that he did not change anything in practice when he de facto allowed condoms to be used by male prostitutes, changing hitherto Morals on prophylactics?

Effectually it is as if he would have said, “If you are a sodomite, be kind to your partner and don't spread your HIV. Use a condom, for I am publicly countenancing protective sex in a sin that ‘cries out to heaven.’"

For being indulgent with this kind of sin, it is understandable that he could be described as the man with a "devilish gaze" in the facsimile of the Third Secret.

In the collection Eli, Eli, Lamma Sabacthani? Atila Guimaraes proves that the language and spirit of Vatican II was a diabolical legerdemain, a newspeak whereby "Progressivism entered the official documents of the Magisterium." (5) Progressivism adopts the same errors of Modernism, which St. Pius X rightly termed “the synthesis of all heresies.” (6) As Guimaraes points out, “a progressivist differs from a modernist in two important developments of the same errors: the extension of their consequences and the subtlety of their expression.” (7)

Such consequences have long been indemnified by the Conciliar Popes, to the point that progressivists no longer "cling to Tradition and what has been believed everywhere, always, and by all," one of the criteria St. Vincent de Lerin gave us to identify the true Catholic Faith. (8) By a kind of doublethink and duckspeak they generate, promote and live a heresy that is a new synthesis of heresies.

To conclude, let me return to the above Catholic principles about the three classes, "those who fight, those who pray and those who work." Let us laymen - who are neither "nobles nor priest" - take a lesson from St. Michael. There are some who defend that he was in the class of Archangels, the second from the bottom of the nine choirs. If this were so, by analogy, he would belong to a lower class like us. Yet "at the time of Satan's rebellion, his outstanding zeal for the glory of God merited him such glory and power as to equal and even excel through grace such celestial spirits that belong to a much higher Choir by nature." (9)

Such is the manner of today's lay components of the remnant. Let us pray to Our Lady of Fatima for the grace to rise up, as St. Michael did, and fight against this ugly and seemingly perpetual heresy of Progressivism.

1. Anne Fremantle, Age of Faith, NY:Time-Life Bks, 1965, p. 16.
2. The Framework of a Christian State, Ft. Collins, CO: Roman Catholic Bks, first published in 1932, pp. 66-67.
3. George Orwell, 1984, Signet Classic, 1950, p. 166.
4. "Pope's publisher defends Benedict XVI's condom statement," CAN online, November 24, 2010
5. Atila S. Guimaraes, In the Murky Waters of Vatican II, Metairie, LA: Maeta, 1997, pp. 35-36.
6. Pascendi Dominici Gregis, 1907, n. 39.
7. Atila S. Guimaraes "Liberals, Modernists and Progressivists" .
8. Words of St. Vincent de Lerins. From the article "How to Distinguish the True Faith from Heresy," TIA.
9. Pascal P. Parente, Beyond Space, Rockford, IL:TAN, 1957, pp. 84-85.

Share

Follow us

Posted December 3, 2010

Related Topics of Interest

  The Organic Formation of Feudalism

An Élan for Perfection Should Exist in All Classes

Schizophrenia at the Vatican?

  Condoms: Doctrine versus ‘Pastoral’

  Ratzinger’s Foxtrot on Communion to Pro-Abortion Politicians

  Third Secret of Fatima

  How to Distinguish the True Faith from Heresy

  Liberals, Modernists and Progressivists

Related Works of Interest