Nevertheless, the worst enormity of the ecumenical movement has not yet been touched on. In this case, exceptionally, the guilt does not belong to the Second Vatican Council, nor to Paul VI. It is found in the perversion introduced into the ecumenical movement by John Paul II, who turned it from a search for Christian unity to a general convergence of world religions. Several times in his reign this false direction led him into shocking associations with paganism. Thus, during his visit to India in February 1982, he allowed a Hindu priestess to impose the mark of Telak on him, and another a few days later to smear sacred ashes on his forehead in a Hindu ritual. In 1995, in Australia, he conducted the beatification Mass of Mary of the Cross McKillop, at which the penitential rite was replaced by a ritual taken from aboriginal fire worship.
pagan rites mark of the devil rar
Let us be clear: the guilt of the prayer meeting at Assisi did not lie in the gathering of non-Christian religions. It lay in the acts of idolatrous worship that the pope caused to be performed as the deliberate component of his gesture. The teaching of the Church for centuries condemned the participation of Christians in the prayers of a false religion, let alone the countenancing of idolatrous worship. This is not the arrogance of an established church but goes back to the earliest time of Christianity. In the primitive discipline of the Church, idolatry was an unforgivable sin, one that debarred even a penitent sinner from return to communion. In its efforts to win their conformity, the pagan empire laid before Christians easy, formal gestures of loyalty: to swear by the genius of the emperor, to offer a pinch of incense to his statue. But the Church would have none of it; a pinch of incense offered to a false god was an enormity, to be refused even at the cost of martyrdom. When the Christians gained power in the empire, they did not set out to impose Christianity, but on one thing they were adamant, the prohibition of idolatry, of sacrifices to the pagan gods. The priests kept their wealth and honours, and pagans could continue to teach their myths, but Christians could not tolerate the practice of idolatry where they had the power to prevent it. We can imagine the incredulity and horror with which those early Christians, including the many who shed their blood for the true God, would have learnt that one day a bishop of Rome would gather together pagan votaries and invite them to perform their idolatrous rites, confounding them with his own.
In the primitive discipline of the Church, idolatry was an unforgivable sin, one that debarred even a penitent sinner from return to communion. In its efforts to win their conformity, the pagan empire laid before Christians easy, formal gestures of loyalty: to swear by the genius of the emperor, to offer a pinch of incense to his statue. But the Church would have none of it; a pinch of incense offered to a false god was an enormity, to be refused even at the cost of martyrdom. . . . We can imagine the incredulity and horror with which those early Christians, including the many who shed their blood for the true God, would have learnt that one day a bishop of Rome would gather together pagan votaries and invite them to perform their idolatrous rites, confounding them with his own. 2ff7e9595c
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