The text is based on the article "The Doctrinal Errors of the Second Vatican Council", by H.E. Bishop Mark A. Pivarunas, CMRI.
✝️ The Divine Foundation: The Unicity of Revelation and the ChurchIn order to understand the depth and gravity of the errors emanating from the Second Vatican Council, Bishop Pivarunas first establishes the immutable bases of the holy religion. As Catholics, the belief in Divine Revelation is the absolute foundation: God revealed truths necessary for belief and human living aiming at salvation. Given the multiplicity of religions, it is categorically affirmed that only one was revealed by God Himself through Jesus Christ. As Pope Pius XI taught in the encyclical Mortalium Animos (1929), "no religion can be true save that which rests upon the revelation of God," initiated in the Old Testament and completed by Christ. The proof of this divine origin resides in miracles and prophecies, which, according to the Oath Against Modernism of St. Pius X (1910), are "surest signs of the divine origin of the Christian religion," external proofs that no other religion possesses. Consequently, it is the absolute duty of man to seek and embrace this one true religion.
Following this divine logic, just as there is only one revealed religion, there is only one true Church founded by Christ: the Catholic Church. This is a historical and dogmatic reality confirmed by the Scriptures and Tradition. Pope Boniface VIII, in the Bull Unam Sanctam (1302), infallibly declared that we are compelled by our faith to believe and hold that there is only one Catholic Church, and that outside of this Church there is neither salvation nor remission of sins. This doctrine of the unicity and exclusivity of salvation in the Roman Church was successively reiterated, as by Leo XIII in Satis Cognitum and Pius XII in Mystici Corporis, identifying the Roman Catholic Church unequivocally as the Mystical Body of Christ. Therefore, the Church has always condemned religious indifferentism, the perverse notion that all religions are more or less good. Pope Pius IX, in the Syllabus of Errors (1864), explicitly condemned the proposition that men may find the way of eternal salvation and arrive at eternal salvation in any form of religious worship. Catholicism requires the integral acceptance of the truth; to deny a single point is to deny God, as Leo XIII warned, for to refuse to believe in any one of them is equivalent to rejecting them all.
🛐 The First Conciliar Error: Religious Indifferentism and the Denial of the Faith
Countering this perennial magisterium, the text denounces religious indifferentism as the primary doctrinal error of Vatican II. The Declaration Nostra Aetate (1965) is cited as a flagrant contradiction of the First Commandment of God's Law. The conciliar document praises Hinduism—a pantheistic and polytheistic religion that worships animals and false gods—absurdly suggesting that its followers seek God through profound meditation or loving flight. Bishop Pivarunas critically questions how Hindus can make a loving and confident flight to God when they worship false gods. The same document praises Buddhism, an atheistic system that seeks supreme enlightenment through self-effort, and Islam, which although it reveres Jesus as a prophet, vehemently denies His Divinity. The Council states that the Church rejects nothing that is true and holy in these religions, exhorting Catholics to promote the spiritual and moral goods found in them. The text denounces this as a theological impossibility and an apostasy, for one cannot witness to the Christian faith by promoting the worship of false gods.
This doctrinal betrayal was perpetuated by the "Conciliar Church" in the figures of John Paul II and Benedict XVI. John Paul II, in 1998, went so far as to state that the Holy Spirit is present in other religions and that their members can receive salvation through their own religious practices. Such teaching not only revives the propositions condemned by Pius IX but also exudes the modernism condemned by St. Pius X, by reducing faith to a religious sentiment or subconscious experience, denying its nature as an intellectual assent to the truth revealed by an external and divine authority.
🍷 The Second Conciliar Error: False Ecumenism and Sacrilegious Communion
Stemming from indifferentism, false ecumenism arises. The Catholic Church has always forbidden active participation in non-Catholic worship (communicatio in sacris), as stipulated in the 1917 Code of Canon Law (Canon 1258) and reaffirmed by Pius XI in Mortalium Animos, who taught that the only form of union is the return of dissidents to the one true Church. Pius XI was emphatic in stating that the Apostolic See can by no means take part in these assemblies. However, the conciliar decree Unitatis Redintegratio (1964) broke with this prohibition, stating that separated communities are not deprived of significance and importance in the mystery of salvation and that the Spirit of Christ uses them as means of salvation. The Council introduced the deadly poison by allowing common worship under the pretext of obtaining grace.
The text demonstrates that this false ecumenism led directly to the destruction of the Holy Mass (replaced by the Novus Ordo) and to sacrilegious practices made official in the 1983 Code of Canon Law, promulgated by John Paul II. Canon 844 of this new code allows the administration of the sacraments of Penance, Eucharist, and Anointing of the Sick to heretics and schismatics who are not in full communion with the Church, under certain conditions. This frontally contradicts the 1917 Code and the Council of Trent, which teaches that the Eucharist is the symbol of the unity of the Mystical Body. Administering the Body of Christ to those who reject the Church is a sacrilege and a doctrinal aberration that destroys the unity of the faith.
⚖️ The Third Conciliar Error: Religious Liberty and the Destruction of Catholic Society
The third fatal error analyzed is religious liberty. Traditionally, popes such as Gregory XVI (Mirari Vos) and Pius IX (Quanta Cura and Syllabus) condemned the idea that liberty of conscience and worship is an inalienable right. Gregory XVI called this idea madness and a poisoned spring. The perennial magisterium teaches that error has no rights; only the truth possesses rights. Pius XII reinforced that what does not correspond to the truth and the moral law has objectively no right to existence nor to propaganda. However, Vatican II, through the decree Dignitatis Humanae (1965), proclaimed the exact opposite, declaring that the right to religious freedom has its foundation in the very nature of the human person and must be recognized as a civil right, allowing religious communities not to be hindered from teaching and witnessing their faith publicly.
Bishop Pivarunas illustrates the catastrophic consequences of this doctrine with the case of Spain. After the Council, Spain had to alter its Concordat with the Vatican and its fundamental laws to conform to Dignitatis Humanae. Where previously the Catholic religion enjoyed exclusive official protection and the proselytism of sects was forbidden, the new legislation allowed freedom for all religions. The practical result was not a flourishing of the faith, but the legalization of pornography, contraceptives, divorce, sodomy, and abortion. The "liberty of perdition," warned against by St. Augustine and reiterated by Gregory XVI, opened the bottomless pit mentioned in the Apocalypse. The adoption of religious liberty by Vatican II not only contradicted the previous infallible magisterium but resulted in massive apostasy and the moral corruption of formerly Catholic nations, proving that unrestricted freedom of opinion and worship is the deadliest scourge for States and for souls.