By Bishop Mark A. Pivarunas, CMRI
In order to comprehend sufficiently the doctrinal errors which have emanated from the Second Vatican Council, it is necessary to review the very foundation of our holy religion.
As Catholics, we firmly believe in Divine Revelation, that Almighty God has revealed truths to mankind in regard to what man must believe and how he must live in order to fulfill his purpose here on earth.
Of the many religions in the world today, which religion has been revealed by God Himself? There can be no doubt that there is but one religion which has been revealed by Almighty God through Jesus Christ, His only begotten Son, the Eternal Word made Flesh. This is the foundation of our holy Faith, as Pope Pius XI taught in his encyclical, Mortalium Animos (1929):
“God, the Creator of all things, made us that we might know Him and serve Him; to our service, therefore, He has a full right…. He willed, however, to make positive laws which we should obey, and progressively, from the beginning of the human race until the coming and preaching of Jesus Christ, He Himself taught mankind the duties which a rational creature owes to his Creator. “God, Who at sundry times and in divers manners spoke in times past to the fathers by the prophets, last of all in these days hath spoken to us by His Son” (Heb. 1:1, seq.). Evidently, therefore, no religion can be true save that which rests upon the revelation of God, a revelation begun from the very first, continued under the Old Law, and brought to completion by Jesus Christ Himself under the New. Now, if God has spoken — and it is historically certain that He has in fact spoken — then it is clearly man’s duty implicitly to believe His revelation and to obey His commands.”
And how do we know that there is but one religion revealed by God? What evidence has been manifested by God to demonstrate the divine origin of Christianity?
The answer is miracles and prophesies, these supernatural events which prove the divine origin of Christianity. As we read in St. Pope Pius X’s Oath Against Modernism(1910):
“I accept and acknowledge the external proofs of revelation, that is, divine acts and especially miracles and prophecies as the surest signs of the divine origin of the Christian religion and I hold that these same proofs are well adapted to the understanding of all eras and all men, even of this time.”
No other religion in the world has the supernatural proof that Christianity has.
“These surest proofs of the divine origin of the Christian religion” manifest to all men the religion by which God wills to be worshiped and make it obligatory for man to seek the true religion and practice it.
Pope Leo XIII taught in Satis Cognitum (1896):
“It was thus the duty of all who heard Jesus Christ, if they wished for eternal salvation, not merely to accept His doctrine as a whole, but to assent with their entire mind to each and every point of it, since it is unlawful to withhold faith from God even in regard to one single point.”
And just as it is certain as there is one religion revealed by God, it is also certain that there is but one true Church founded by Jesus Christ. The one true Church of Christ is the Catholic Church; this is a historical fact, confirmed by Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition. No other church can be historically traced back to Jesus Christ and His Apostles; no other church is confirmed by Sacred Scripture and Tradition.
Pope Boniface VIII in his Bull Unam Sanctam (1302) infallibly taught:
“We are compelled in virtue of our faith to believe and maintain that there is only one Catholic Church, and that one apostolic. This we firmly believe and profess without qualification. Outside this church there is no salvation and no remission of sins. Thus the spouse proclaims in the Canticle, ‘One is my dove: my perfect one is but one. She is the only one of her mother, the chosen of her that bore her’ (Cant. 6:8). Now this chosen one represents the one mystical body whose head is Christ, and Christ’s head is God. In her there is ‘one Lord, one faith, one baptism’ (Eph. 4:5). For at the time of the deluge there existed only one ark, the figure of the one Church.”
Pope Leo XIII in his encyclical Satis Cognitum (1896) reiterated this doctrine:
“There is clear and abundant proof in Sacred Scripture that there is one genuine Church of Jesus Christ… According to factual history, then, Jesus Christ did not plan and establish a Church made up of a number of organizations that were genetically similar, yet separate and without those bonds of unity which make the Church one and indivisible as we profess in the Creed, ‘I believe in one Church.’… When Jesus Christ spoke of this mystical structure, he spoke of one Church only which he called his own: ‘I will build my Church’ (Matt. 16:18). Since no other church besides this one was founded by Jesus Christ, no other church which could be imagined can be the true Church of Christ.”
Furthermore, Pope Pius XII in his encyclical Mystici Corporis (1943) summarized the teaching of his predecessors:
“If we would define and describe this true Church of Jesus Christ — which is the One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic Roman Church — we shall find no expression more noble, more sublime or more divine than the phrase which calls it ‘the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ.’”
Ever convinced of her divine origin, the Catholic Church has always condemned the erroneous belief that all religions are more or less good and praiseworthy and that it doesn’t matter to what church one belongs for men can find salvation in any church. This is the false doctrine of religious indifferentism which has been frequently condemned by the Catholic Church.
Pope Pius IX in his encyclical Singulari Quadam (1854) warned the Catholic hierarchy:
“We want your episcopal care and vigilance to be on the alert to keep away from men’s minds, with all possible effort, that opinion which is as unholy as it is deadly. We mean the opinion that a way of eternal salvation can be found in any religion whatever. With all the learning and ingenuity that is yours, teach the people entrusted to your care that the dogmas of the Catholic faith are not in the slightest opposed to the mercy and justice of God.
“It must, of course, be held as a matter of faith that outside the apostolic Roman Church no one can be saved, that the Church is the only ark of salvation, and that whoever does not enter it will perish in the flood.”
Ten years later Pope Pius IX issued his Syllabus of Errors (1864) in which he condemned the following propositions:
CONDEMNED PROPOSITIONS:
• “Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall have come to consider as true.”
• “Men can find the way of eternal salvation and reach eternal salvation in any form of religious worship.”
• “Good hopes, at least, must be entertained of the eternal salvation of all those who in no way belong to the True Church of Christ.”
• “Protestantism is nothing else than a different form of the same True Christian Religion, and in it one can be as pleasing to God as in the Catholic Church.”
The main problem with the various religions of the world is that they do not accept Divine Revelation, and in regard to the Protestant churches they do not accept all that Christ has commanded. Our Divine Savior commanded his Apostles to “teach all nations… teaching them to observe all that I have commanded” (Matt 28:19,20) and He added, “He who is baptized and believes will be saved and he who does not believe will be condemned” (Mark 16:16).
Pope Benedict XV stressed this in his encyclical Ad Beatissimi (1914):
“Such is the nature of Catholicism that it does not admit of more or less, but must be held as a whole or as a whole rejected: ‘This is the Catholic Faith, which unless a man believe faithfully and firmly, he cannot be saved’ (Athanasian Creed). There is no need of adding any qualifying terms to the profession of Catholicism: it is quite enough for each one to proclaim ‘Christian is my name and Catholic my surname,’ only let him endeavor to be in reality what he calls himself.”
So important is the necessity of the profession of the true Faith in its entirety that Pope Leo XIII taught in his encyclical Sapientiae Christianae (1890):
“To refuse to believe any one of them is equivalent to rejecting them all.”
Later on, the same pontiff, Pope Leo XIII, warned in Satis Cognitum (1896):
“There can be nothing more dangerous than those heretics who admit nearly the whole series of doctrines, and yet BY ONE WORD, as with a drop of poison, taint the real and simple faith taught by Our Lord and handed down by apostolic tradition. From this it is very easy to see that men can fall away from the unity of the Church by schism, as well as by heresy.”
Pope Pius XI reiterated this in Mortalium Animos (1929):
“For it is indeed a question of defending revealed truth. Jesus Christ sent His Apostles into the whole world to declare the Faith of the Gospel to every nation, and to save them from error…”
“Now if God has spoken — and it is historically certain that He has in fact spoken — then it is clearly man’s duty implicitly to believe His revelation and to obey His commands. That we might rightly do both, for the glory of God and for our own salvation, the only-begotten Son of God founded His Church on earth. None, we think, of those who claim to be Christians will deny that a Church, and one sole Church, was founded by Christ.”
Pope Pius XII in his encyclical Mystici Corporis (1943) summarized the teaching of his predecessor in this regard:
“Only those are really to be included as members of the Church who have been baptized and profess the true faith and who have not had the misfortune of withdrawing from the body or for grave faults been cut off by legitimate authority. ‘For in one Spirit,’ says the Apostle, ‘we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Gentiles, whether slaves or free’ (1 Cor. 12:13). As, therefore, in the true Christian community there is only one body, one Spirit, one Lord and one baptism, so there can be only one faith (see Eph 4:5). And so if a man refuses to listen to the Church, he should be considered, so the Lord commands, as a heathen and a publican (see Matt. 18:17). It follows that those who are divided in faith or government cannot be living in one body such as this and cannot be living the life of its one divine Spirit”
Having considered these truths of our holy Catholic Faith, we turn our attention to the doctrinal errors of the Second Vatican Council.
The primary doctrinal error of this false council is religious indifferentism; to demonstrate this, we quote from the very documents which it promulgated. In the Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to Non-Christian Religions, Nostra Aetate, (October 28, 1965) we find the clear contradiction of the first Commandment of God, “I am the Lord, thy God, thou shalt not have strange gods before me”:
“From ancient times down to the present, there has existed among divers peoples a certain perception of the hidden power that hovers over the course of things and over the events of human life; at times, indeed, recognition can be found of a Supreme Divinity, and of a Supreme Father, too. Such a perception and such a recognition instill the lives of these peoples with a profound religious sense.
“Thus, in Hinduism men contemplate the divine mystery and express it through an inexhaustible fruitfulness of myths and a searching philosophical inquiry. They seek release from the anguish of our condition through ascetical practices or deep meditation or a loving, trusting flight toward God.”
Hinduism is a pantheistic (the world is god) as well as a polytheistic (many gods) religion. It recognizes various gods in the created world. The world and everything in it, including man, is god. Among the various Hindu divinities, there are three of great importance — Brahma, the creator; Vishnu, the preserver; and Shiva, the destroyer. Hindus worship many animals as gods. Cows are the most sacred, but they also worship monkeys, snakes and other animals. How can Hindus make a “loving, trusting flight to God” when they worship false gods?
Continuing from the Declaration Nostra Aetate:
“Buddhism in its multiple forms acknowledges the radical insufficiency of this shifting world. It teaches a path by which men, in a devout and confident spirit, can either reach a state of absolute freedom or attain supreme enlightenment by their own efforts or by higher assistance.”
Buddhism teaches nothing about God; all beings are essentially equal; all things are changing constantly, except the Law alone by force of which good actions produce a reward, and bad actions bring forth punishment; therefore man does not differ essentially from other beings; he is subjected to a metempsychosis (the rebirth of the soul at death into the body of either a human or an animal form — reincarnation) until he acquires perfection in nirvana.
How can the Conciliar Church speak of “supreme enlightenment” in Buddhism? How can there be any enlightenment without knowledge of the true God and with the false belief of reincarnation?
Also from Nostra Aetate:
“Upon the Muslims, too, the church looks with esteem. They adore one God, living and enduring, merciful and all-powerful, Maker of heaven and earth and Speaker to men…. Though they do not acknowledge Jesus as God, they revere Him as a prophet.”
Once again we can recognize the utterly contradictory position of the Council. It praises the Muslims because “they revere Him (Jesus) as a prophet;” yet, they deny His divinity which Jesus Christ openly declared and most powerfully demonstrated by His miracles (especially His Resurrection). If the Muslims revere Jesus as a prophet, how can they claim that He is not divine. Prophets speak the truth from God, and Jesus Christ proclaimed Himself the Son of God!
Again, from Nostra Aetate:
“Likewise, other religions to be found everywhere strive variously to answer the restless searchings of the human heart by proposing ‘ways,’ which consist of teachings, rules of life and sacred ceremonies.
“The Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true and holy in these religions… The Church therefore has this exhortation for her sons: prudently and lovingly, through dialogue and collaboration with the followers of other religions, and in witness of Christian faith and life, acknowledge, preserve and promote the spiritual and moral goods found among these men, as well as the values in their society and culture.”
Here we find the apostasy from the Catholic Church to the Conciliar Church of Vatican II! No longer will the Conciliar Church seek to convert the world to Christ; it will now promote the “good” found in those other religions; yet, what good is in the worship of false gods? The Declaration does not list any particular area of goodness of these false religions. How can one witness to the Christian faith while he promotes the “good” of false religions? This is an impossibility!
This recognition of all the religions of the world has been the consistent theological theme of the Conciliar Church, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI. In his catechesis “The Seeds of the Word in the Religions of the World” (September 9, 1998), John Paul II stated:
“The Holy Spirit is not only present in other religions through authentic expressions of prayer. ‘The Spirit’s presence and activity,’ as I wrote in the encyclical letter Redemptoris Missio, ‘affects not only individuals but also society and history, peoples, cultures and religions.’”
“Normally, ‘it will be in the sincere practice of what is good in their own religious traditions and by following the dictates of their own conscience that the members of other religions respond positively to God’s invitation and receive salvation in Jesus Christ, even while they do not recognize or acknowledge Him as their Savior.’”
Not only does this catechesis of John Paul II proclaim the doctrinal error condemned by Pope Pius IX in his Syllabus of Errors:
CONDEMNED PROPOSITIONS:
“Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall have come to consider as true.”
“Men can find the way of eternal salvation and reach eternal salvation in any form of religious worship.”
…but also it smacks of the modernism so vehemently condemned by Pope St. Pius X in his Oath Against Modernism (1910):
“.. .Fifthly, I hold with certainty and sincerely confess that faith is not a blind sentiment of religion welling up from the depths of the subconscious under the impulse of the heart and the motion of a will trained to morality; but faith is a genuine assent of the intellect to truth received by hearing from an external source. By this assent, because of the authority of the supremely truthful God, we believe to be true that which has been revealed and attested to by a personal God, our Creator and Lord.”
Faith is a supernatural virtue by which men firmly believe all that God has divinely revealed; faith is NOT some “blind sentiment of religion welling up” in an individual as John Paul II falsely taught.
One of the natural consequences of religious indifferentism is the equally erroneous belief of false ecumenism. Those who profess religious indifferentism promote dialogue and common worship not only between the various Christian churches but also the various religious of the world.
As the contagion of religious indifferentism and false ecumenism began to spread with particular devastation, Pope Pius XI condemned these erroneous beliefs in no uncertain terms in Mortalium Animos (1929):
“With this object, congresses, meetings and addresses are arranged, attended by a large concourse of hearers, where all without distinction, unbelievers of every kind as well as Christians, even those who unhappily have rejected Christ and denied His Divine Nature or mission, are invited to join in the discussion. Now, such efforts can meet with no kind of approval among Catholics. They presuppose the erroneous view that all religions are more or less good and praiseworthy, inasmuch as all give expression, under various forms to that innate sense which leads men to God and to the obedient acknowledgment of His rule. Those who hold such a view are not only in error, they distort the true idea of religion, and thus reject it, falling gradually into naturalism and atheism. To favor this opinion, therefore, and to encourage such undertakings is tantamount to abandoning the religion revealed by God…
“This being so, it is clear that the Apostolic See can by no means take part in these assemblies, nor is it in any way lawful for Catholics to give to such enterprises their encouragement or support. If they did so, they would be giving countenance to a false Christianity quite alien to the one Church of Christ. Shall we commit the iniquity of suffering the truth, the truth revealed by God, to be made a subject for compromise?
“… Can the object of faith, then, have become in the process of time so dim and uncertain that today we must tolerate contradictory opinions? If this were so, then we should have to admit that the coming of the Holy Ghost upon the Apostles, the perpetual indwelling of the same Spirit in the Church, nay, the very preaching of Jesus Christ, have centuries ago lost their efficacy and value. To affirm this would be blasphemy.
“… Thus, Venerable Brethren, it is clear why this Apostolic See has never allowed its subjects to take part in the assemblies of non-Catholics. There is but one way in which the unity of Christians may be fostered, and that is by furthering the return to the one true Church of Christ of those who are separated from it, for far from that one true Church they have in the past fallen away. The one Church of Christ is visible to all, and will remain, according to the Will of its Author, exactly the same as He instituted it.”
In the 1917 Code of Canon Law (Canon 125 8) Catholics are forbidden to participate actively in the worship of non-Catholics (communicatio in sacris):
“It is unlawful for the faithful to assist in any active manner, or to take part in the sacred services of non-Catholics.” (Canon 1258)
Furthermore, Canon 2316 declares:
“A person who of his own accord and knowingly helps in any manner to propagate heresy, or who communicates in sacred rites (in divinis) with heretics in violation of the prohibition of Canon 1258, incurs suspicion of heresy.”
In the Decree on Ecumenism, Unitatis Redintegratio, (November 21,1964) the Second Vatican Council promulgated the following:
“The brethren divided from us also carry out many of the sacred actions of the Christian religion. Undoubtedly, in ways that vary according to the condition of each Church or Community, these actions can truly engender a life of grace, and can be rightly described as capable of providing access to the community of salvation.
“It follows that these separated Churches and Communities, though we believe they suffer from defects already mentioned, have by no means been deprived of significance and importance in the mystery of salvation. For the Spirit of Christ has not refrained from using them as means of salvation which derive their efficacy from the very fullness of grace and truth entrusted to the Catholic Church.
“As for common worship, however, it may not be regarded as a means to be used indiscriminately for the restoration of unity among Christians. Such worship depends chiefly on two principles: it should signify the unity of the Church; it should provide a sharing in the means of grace. The fact that it should signify unity generally rules out common worship. Yet the gaining of needed grace sometimes commends it.”
As Pope Leo XIII wrote in his encyclical Satis Cognitum (1896):
“There is nothing more dangerous than those heretics who admit nearly the whole series of doctrines and yet, by one word as with a drop of poison, taint the real and simple faith taught by Our Lord and handed down by Apostolic Tradition.”
The drop of poison by which the Conciliar Church has brought about the apostasy is this approval of false ecumenism, under the disguise that “the needed grace recommends it.”
This false ecumenism has lead to the destruction of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and its replacement with the Novus Ordo. This false ecumenism has lead to the sacrilegious practice of the administration of the Sacraments to schismatics and heretics under certain circumstances.
The 1983 Code of Canon Law promulgated by John Paul II legislated:
Canon 844 – §3: Catholic ministers may lawfully administer the sacraments of penance, the Eucharist and anointing of the sick to members of the eastern Churches not in full communion with the Catholic Church, if they spontaneously ask for them and are properly disposed. The same applies to members of other Churches which the Apostolic See judges to be in the same position as the aforesaid eastern Churches so far as the sacraments are concerned.
Canon 844 – §4: If there is a danger of death or if, in the judgment of the diocesan Bishop or of the Episcopal Conference, there is some other grave and pressing need, Catholic ministers may lawfully administer these same sacraments to other Christians not in full communion with the Catholic Church, who cannot approach a minister of their own community and who spontaneously ask for them, provided they demonstrate the Catholic Faith in respect of these sacraments and are properly disposed.
This is clearly sacrilegious, especially in regard to the administration of the Holy Eucharist to heretics and schismatics.
The 1917 Code of Canon Law forbids this sacrilegious practice:
“It is forbidden to administer the Sacraments of the Church to heretics or schismatics, even though they err in good faith and ask for them, unless they have first renounced their errors and been reconciled with the Church.”
Administering Communion to heretics and schismatics also presents a serious doctrinal problem. The Res Sacramenti of the Holy Eucharist is the unity or union of the Mystical Body of Christ — the Catholic Church. As the Council of Trent taught:
“He (Christ) wished it (the Eucharist) furthermore to be a pledge of our future glory and everlasting happiness, and THUS BE A SYMBOL OF THAT ONE BODY OF WHICH HE IS THE HEAD and to which He wished us to be united as members by the closest bond of faith, hope and charity” (Session 13, Chap. 2).
The errors of religious indifferentism and false ecumenism naturally spawn the false notion of religious liberty.
Pope Gregory XVI was fully aware of and exposed this in his encyclical Mirari Vos(August 15, 1832):
“We come now to another cause, alas! all too fruitful of the deplorable ills which today afflict the Church. We mean indifferentism, or that widespread and dangerous opinion sown by the perfidy of the wicked, according to which it is possible, by the profession of some sort of faith, to procure the soul’s salvation, provided that one’s morals conform to the norms of justice and probity. From this poisoned source of indifferentism springs that false and absurd maxim, better termed the insanity(deliramentum), that liberty of conscience must be obtained and guaranteed for everyone. This is the most contagious of errors, which prepares the way for that absolute and totally unrestrained liberty of opinions which, for the ruin of church and State, is spreading everywhere and which certain men, through an excess of impudence, do not fear to put forward as advantageous to religion. Ah, ‘what more disastrous death for souls than the liberty of error,’ said St Augustine.”
And before him, his predecessor, Pope Pius VII, wrote in his Letter to the Bishop of Troves (1814):
“Not only does it permit the liberty of cults and of conscience, to cite the very terms of the article, but it promises support and protection to this liberty and, moreover, to the ministers of what are termed the cults….
“This law does more than establish liberty for all the cults without distinction; it mingles truth with error and places heretical sects and even Judaism on equal terms with the holy and immaculate Bride of Christ outside which there can be no salvation. In addition to this, in promising favor and support to heretical sects and their ministers it is not simply their persons but their errors which are favored and tolerated. This is implicitly the disastrous and ever to be deplored heresy which St. Augustine describes in these terms: ‘It claims that all heretics are on the right path and speak the truth. This is so monstrous an absurdity that I cannot believe that any sect could really profess it’”
In regard to the term right, Pope Leo XIII taught in Libertas (June 20, 1888):
“Right is a moral faculty, and as We have said, and it cannot be too often repeated, it would be absurd to believe that it belongs naturally and without distinction to truth and to lies, to good and to evil.”
And as for the matter of the obligations of governments, Pope Pius XII taught in his address to Catholic lawyers, Ci Riesce (December 6,1953):
“It must be clearly affirmed that no human authority, no State, no Community of States, of whatever religious character, can give a positive mandate or a positive authorization to teach or to do that which would be contrary to religious truth or moral good… Whatever does not respond to truth and the moral law has objectively no right to existence, nor to propaganda, nor to action.”
The infiltrators who brought about the apostasy in the Catholic Church did not overlook this concept of religious liberty as a devastating and erroneous consequence of religious indifferentism and false ecumenism.
Thus, we find promulgated by the Second Vatican Council the decree Dignitatis Humanae (Dec. 7, 1965):
“Therefore, the right to religious freedom has its foundation, not in the subjective disposition of the person, but in his very nature. In consequence, the right to this immunity continues to exist even in those who do not live up to their obligations of seeking the truth and adhering to it.
“Religious communities also have the right not to be hindered in their public teaching and witness to their faith, whether by the spoken or written word.
“In addition, it comes within the meaning of religious freedom that religious communities should not be prohibited from freely undertaking to show the special value of their doctrine in what concerns the organization of society and the inspiration of the whole of human activity.
“This right of the human person in religious freedom is to be recognized in the constitutional law whereby society is governed; thus it is to become a civil right.”
It is truly remarkable that the Vatican II decree Dignitatis Humanae promulgated teachings which were explicitly condemned by Pope Pius IX in his Syllabus of Errors:
CONDEMNED PROPOSITIONS:
“78. Hence it has been wisely decided by law, in some Catholic countries, that persons coming to reside therein shall enjoy the public exercise of their own peculiar worship.
“79. Moreover, it is false that the civil liberty of every form of worship, and the full power, given to all, of openly and publicly manifesting any opinions whatsoever and thoughts, conduce more easily to corrupt the morals and minds of the people, and to propagate the pest of indifferentism.”
To see the consequences of this decree on Religious Liberty, let us look at its effects in Spain. Shortly after the close of the Second Vatican Council, there arose the necessity to update the Concordat between Spain and the Vatican. The following is an excerpt of the new preamble attached to the concordat:
“The fundamental law of 17 May 1958, in virtue of which Spanish legislation must take its inspiration from the doctrine of the Catholic Church, forms the basis of the present law. Now, as is known, the Second Vatican Council approved the Declaration on Religious Freedom on 7 December 1965, stating in Article 2: ‘The right to religious freedom has its foundation in the very dignity of the human person, as this dignity is known through the revealed word of God, and by reason itself. This right of the human person to religious freedom is to be recognized in the constitutional law whereby society is governed. Thus, it is to become a civil right.’ After this declaration of the Council, the necessity arose of modifying Article 6 of the Spaniards’ Charter in virtue of the aforementioned principle of the Spanish State. This is why the organic law of the State dated 10 January 1967 has modified the aforementioned Article 6 as follows: ‘The profession and practice of the Catholic religion, which is that of the Spanish State, enjoys official protection. The State guarantees the protection of religious liberty, which shall be guaranteed by an effective juridical provision which will safeguard morals and public order.’”
What was the outcome of this change in the Concordat? From the date of the change, any religious sect was free to proselytize in Catholic Spain. And what followed? With the circulation of all manner of opinions and beliefs, Spain eventually legalized pornography, contraceptives, divorce, sodomy, and abortion.
This example is by no means just limited to Spain. Other Catholic countries with constitutions and concordats which once prohibited proselytism by religious sects had to change their laws to grant religious freedom to all religions. In Brazil, the National Conference of Brazilian Bishops acknowledges that each year approximately 600,000 Catholics leave the Church to join false religions. And why? The answer is found in the encyclical Mirari Vos by Pope Gregory XVI (1832):
“This is the most contagious of errors, which prepares the way for that absolute and totally unrestrained liberty of opinions which, for the ruin of Church and State, is spreading everywhere and which certain men, through an excess of impudence, do not fear to put forward as advantageous to religion. ‘Ah, what more disastrous death for souls than the liberty of error,’ said St. Augustine. In seeing thus the removal from men of every restraint capable of keeping them on the paths of truth, led as they already are to their ruin by a natural inclination to evil, We state in truth that the pit of hell is opened from which St John depicted a smoke which obscured the sun and from which locusts emerged to devastate the earth. This is the cause of the lack of intellectual stability; this is the cause of the continually increasing corruption of young people; this is what causes people to despise sacred rights, the most holy objects and laws. This is the cause, in a word, of the most deadly flail which could ravage states; for experience proves, and the most remote antiquity teaches us, that in order to bring about the destruction of the richest, the most powerful, the most glorious and the most flourishing states, nothing is necessary beyond unrestricted liberty of opinion, that freedom of public expression, that infatuation with novelty.”
To summarize this article, the main doctrinal errors promulgated by the Second Vatican Council and previously condemned by the Catholic Church are: religious indifferentism, false ecumenism, and religious liberty.