I couched the names between Progressives and Traditionalists, this is an error of category. There are three groups in the Roman Church. 1) Progressives 2) Conservatives and 3) Traditionalists. The conservatives are the biggest group in the Roman Church. In the past, what unified conservatives and traditionalists was the fact that they had a kind of papolatry, known in the 19th century as ultramontanism. The church reacted against modernity, and viewed it as a rebellion against God. Ultramontanism was a reaction in the Roman Church against Protestantism and then the enlightenment. With the Second Vatican Council, papolatry and ultramontanism ceases to be anti-modernity. Vatican II embraces modernity and that’s really what leaves conservatives and traditionalists confused. Now the Pope embraces modernity and this completely threw them off.
That was the capital sin of the Second Vatican Council, to reject scholasticism, reject medieval and modern scholasticism. Reject all that doctrinal heritage accumulated during the Middle Ages. In the Middle Ages the Roman Church establishes all it’s institutions. There you will find the Gregorian reforms. There you will find the evangelization of Europe, carried out by the Benedictine monasteries. There you have a preservation of culture. There you have the universities. This will later take the Spanish monarchy to America. All of these great institutions of the Catholic church were configured in the Middle Ages. The Council of Trent in 1545 - 1563, what that does is put all those medieval institutions and codifies them. Is an error that I hear very often, that the Tridentine Mass was invented during the Council of Trent. We would have to go back to Saint Gregory the Great in the 7th century and even he didn’t invent it. We would have to go back even to Pope Saint Damasuss I, born in Spain in the 4th century. This was not invented in my opinion, is more a transmission that was passed generation after generation.
In the 16th century from 1586 to 1593 a Jesuit ─ in a time when they were Roman Catholics ─ a fellow by the name of Saint Robert Bellarmine, has a series of controversies with Protestant theologians and from there, his famous work will come out, which is titled Controversies of the Christian Faith against the Heretics of this Age. Is not a very well known work, but the book was cited a lot by Saint Francis of Sales, who claimed that he had converted many Calvinists thanks to the Controversies of Saint Robert Bellarmine. He provided him with a whole arsenal of formation and arguments to conceptually dismantle all the edifice of lies in Calvinism. Many of them were converted thanks to that book.
The Protestant theologians who like Luther and since Luther, accuse the pope of being the antichrist and the Roman Church of being the Babylonian whore; well Saint Robert Bellarmine leaves them speechless and without arguments, when he simply tells them that the pope can’t be the antichrist, because as long the Roman empire survives, the antichrist will not manifest. He uses the Greek word “katechon” which means that which withholds. Bellarmine says that the Roman empire is the katechon, the obstacle that prevents the manifestation of the “anomos”, anomie, man without law, the disorder, the apostasy. Many of the protestant theologians were left without argument and Bellarmine tells them you have Protestant electors to the Holy Roman Empire. You have Protestant electors to the Holy Roman Germanic Empire that bears the name, King of Romans. Now… it doesn’t make sense that the emperor is Protestant, because if is the Holy Roman Empire and people are apostates and renounce Rome then it doesn’t fit.
This idea was kind of difficult to refute because this conviction of the interpretation of katechon in the Second Letter to Thessalonians from Saint Paul, as the incarnation of the order, of the natural law, of the natural right, Roman law, etc. All of this was very clear, there cannot be antichrist, he cannot manifest itself, as the man of perdition, the anomos, while the Roman Empire remains standing. That was in the 16th century.
In my opinion the manifestation of the antichrist is a process. No doubt the schism was a massive event. In the West, I think, is in the 19th century where the katechon, that obstacle which prevents the manifestation of the antichrist, will begin to be undermined, and will begin to be massively demolished. Is true we had the peace of Westphalia in 1648 at the end of the Thirty Years War. Protestantism has blown up Christianity. Protestantism has broken Western Christianity, but even then the Roman Empire has not disappeared. That was the time of Saint Robert Bellarmine so it was still standing, little he knew we were going to have a mass, imposed in a completely tyrannical way, via authoritarian papal legal positivism. The Novus Ordo Missae departs in an impressive way, from the theology that was codified in the Council of Trent, which codifies the rite, because it raises insurmountable walls, so that they are not assaulted by Protestant heresy.
In my opinion, the Napoleonic wars were key. Napoleon wanted to institutionalize his power and establish a dynasty. Every place he conquered, he started putting his family to establish a dynastic empire. For example, Joseph Bonaparte was named king of Spain. Napoleon wanted to be the new Charlemagne and consolidates the French Revolution and was able to export it through Europe. The Napoleonic code of 1804 had some elements of Roman law, but were reinterpreted and twisted by the political law that arise during the French Revolution. Montesquieu with his artificial separation of powers, which is the secularization of the counterbalance of the powers that existed during medieval Christianity. The myth of the noble savage of Rousseau. The social contract where Rousseau theorizes the Leviathan of Thomas Hobbes. Mr. Hobbes reasoning was that of a full blown atheist and materialist. In 1804 the year when the Napoleonic code was formulated, is the same year Napoleon tells pope Pius VII that he wants to be crowned emperor in Paris. The next year in 1805 Napoleon is going to sweep away an Austrian coalition in the Battle of Austerlitz. Very important battle and after he signs the Peace of Pressburg which demands the disappearance of the Holy Roman Empire. Is Napoleon who cuts the head of the Holy Roman Empire. What Napoleon is saying there “I’m the continuation of the Holy Roman Empire.”
In my opinion, that’s crucial because is no coincidence that after the implementation of the Napoleonic code, you see the rise of liberalism in the 19th century. The founding principle is the negation of divine sovereignty, of the sovereignty of God, the sovereignty of the law of God, etc. All of that cosmology is substituted by popular sovereignty, popular will, by the social contract. All the ideas were transmitted rather quickly to Hispanic America, people were reading all this nonsense written by Freemasons and wannabe God Emperors.
My point is, that for a traditional Roman Catholic 1) the antichrist or antichrists is a process 2) As long there is a Roman Empire there can’t be an antichrist. He can’t manifest. Roman Empire is not referring to an historical, political, or administrative structure. Roman Empire in regards to incarnation, in regards to materialization of the principle of authority, and the principle of right, of authoritas and of ius, of justice. Rights are the pursue of that which is just, that was the Roman law. When the empire officially converted to Christianity the church was going to completely assume the legal administrative organization of the empire. This is why is going to be organized in dioceses like the Roman Empire was organized at a civil level. When the Western empire collapsed in the year 476, and Odoacer tears the imperial insignias from Romulus Augustus and sends it to Constantinople, the church maintains the legal administrative Roman structure. Is the only institution that the Barbarians are going to respect, and the reason the church was able to evangelize those barbarian peoples and convert them.
In my opinion, this is the very reason why the Roman Church has been infiltrated by Freemasons and the babies of the French Revolution.They want to see it burned down to the ground. Everybody is taking shots at the Roman Catholics. Freemasons, Protestants, Atheists, Islam, Jews, etc. When the Roman Church goes down, you all go down and that includes the Orthodox brothers, who are getting killed left to right in the middle east and none of you are saying anything. We are not abandoning this ship, there are plenty of traditionalist in the Roman Church, particularly and specifically in Hispanic America. The very place the Barbarians went out of their way to balkanize and make everybody retarded. Not happening! hold on to the badly interpreted prophecies for some other time.
