Keys of This Blood (113 page)

The enormity of this error and its almost boring and repetitive similarity with the error of Judas—in other words, the Judas syndrome of modern Churchmen—becomes very apparent when you examine the Traitor's behavior. Judas did finally betray Jesus. But it is important to note the “good” intentions with which he started down the crooked road that ended in the Field of Blood, where he died suffocated by the noose around his neck and cruelly killed by the evisceration of his belly.

The personal outline of Judas in the pages of the New Testament is dim on all points—except for his awful treachery of the beloved Lord. Understandably, the writers would not, could not, remark anything good or even interesting about Judas, except his treachery. In the light of Jesus' resurrection and the subsequent descent of the Holy Spirit on the remaining Apostles, all that mattered in the eyes of the New Testament writers was that gross treachery, and all they could express for the Traitor was utter contempt and abhorrence. There is perhaps no parallel in the New Testament record to that total and merciless condemnation of Judas. “He got the same offer from Jesus as we all did”: Peter must have spat out those syllables with a grating harshness when addressing all Jesus' followers in the Upper Room at Pentecost. “He was one of us. Yet he guided the mob who laid hands on Jesus. And now he has got what he asked for—a field spattered with his own entrails, and his own special torment in Hellfire.” There is no hint of forgiveness, no trace even of regret. Perhaps this was because Judas had committed the one sin Jesus said was unpardonable, the sin against the Holy Spirit.

This total rejection of Judas has inclined Christians to see him in a bad light from the beginning of his association with Jesus, as a kind of infiltrator admitted by Jesus to the intimacy of his special people, because, so to speak, somebody had to betray the Lord. But in all logic, this cannot have been the true story of Judas. From a divine and a human point of view, Judas must have appeared initially as one of the more promising candidates for leadership in Christ's future Church. Judas was the only public official of Jesus' group, in a manner of speaking. He was more trusted than the others; to him Jesus confided the keeping and the management of whatever funds were collected by the group for “out-of-pocket” expenses and, therefore, any and all “business” dealings during their travels.

The facts of life were that a group of hale and hearty young men in
their prime, who were not regularly employed gainfully and who were continually on the move, had to have a common “purse” for food, for lodging, for road tolls, for taxation, for incidentals: clothes, charitable contributions, support of their families, repair and maintenance of their fishing equipment. Most of them were fishermen, who retained their equipment right through their association with Jesus until well after the Resurrection.

There is no exaggeration in describing Judas as the only official among the group. In the eyes of the other Apostles also, Judas was considered to hold high office. For they may have appeared as a ragtag group to some of their contemporaries, but we today know that they were destined to found an organization that would absorb the whole known world and create a new thousand-year civilization.

We cannot reasonably doubt that Judas started off with great enthusiasm and devotion to Jesus, and with full trust and confidence in Jesus' ultimate success. We know that, for the other companions, until well after the Resurrection, success meant a political restoration of the Kingdom of Israel, with the Apostles occupying twelve thrones of jurisdiction and judgment. Judas cannot have thought differently or hoped for less. He and they even squabbled about which of them would be the greatest in authority. Two of them had their mothers buttonhole Jesus and try to secure them two prime positions around the kingly throne they figured Jesus would occupy when he ruled Israel and the world. For of course, Jesus would eventually be King.

Here is where disillusionment set in for Judas. More in touch with practical affairs than the others, more alive to the politics of his land, he could only grow in disillusionment each time Jesus repudiated attempt after attempt to crown him leader and king. There were more than two such occasions; each time, Jesus sounded those very unworldly sentiments of suffering and death. Further, each time the intermittent clashes with the Hierosolymite authorities dug a deeper gap between Jesus and the political ascendancy of Israel—now concentrated in the Jerusalem council of state, the Sanhedrin—the sense of disillusionment in Judas would grow that much deeper.

Remark that at any given moment Judas could have left Jesus and “walked with him no more,” as many indeed did. But no, Judas wanted to stay. He believed, after his own fashion, in Jesus and his group and their ideals. He just wanted Jesus and the others to conform to political and social realities, to follow his plan, not whatever plans Jesus may have had. We can be sure that the last thing he thought of doing was quitting the group.

But he had formed his own ideas about the sensible way Jesus should go about seizing supreme power. Now, in the heady atmosphere of collaboration with the authorities, he saw his way opening out to vistas of greatness, a chief position in the future Kingdom of Israel, once the Romans were driven out and the local Jewish powers-that-were, with the help of Jesus, utterly defeated the hated Romans. Even when Jesus told him plainly and frankly during that last Passover meal that, yes, he knew it was Judas who would betray him, that made no dent in Judas' resolution. He probably did not understand the use of the word “betray” by Jesus. Many times in the past, he had “betrayed” Jesus in the sense that he had done the opposite of Jesus' express will, and things had always turned out just fine. That compromise plan still seemed the best to Judas. The ultimate blindness closed in on his soul like a steel trapdoor. “Satan,” the Gospel says, “entered his heart.” Judas was now under the control of the one personality who stood to lose most by any success Jesus might have. And Judas could, without any scruple and always fully persuaded that his plan was fine, go and find the Temple authorities, his “high-level contacts,” and pinpoint the place where Jesus would be at a certain hour, and identify Jesus to the armed force sent out to bring him in, bound and manacled like a hunted animal.

Every single event that followed on Judas' decision was made possible and evoked directly by that act of malfeasance on the part of Judas, the chosen Apostle of Jesus and his trusted official. All was Judas' responsibility. The terrible agony in Gethsemane; the violence done to Jesus at his arrest and at his mock trials during the night; the hours of imprisonment and abuse by Roman soldiers; the crowning with thorns and the scornful mocking of his person, which we can be sure violated his dignity in every possible way; his arraignment before Pilate and Herod; his scourging; the painful, agonizing path to Golgotha; the searing pain of crucifixion, followed by three hours of death agony, hours divided into weakening efforts not to suffocate, and not to be overwhelmed by the cruelty of the nails pinning his wrists and feet to the cross. All this as well as the final result: the death of Jesus.

All of it, evil and sacrilegious beyond human telling, was a direct consequence of that Judas complex. While the ultimate result of Judas' choice was gross betrayal and treachery, his specific sin was compromise—what really seemed to him a wise and prudent compromise given the otherwise impossible situation into which Jesus had boxed himself and his loyal group by his violent attacks on the status quo and by his refusal to meet Jewish authorities halfway in order to satisfy the needs and questions of men who, after all, were in a position to know what they
were talking about when it came to the national cause and the continued existence of Judaism. They were, after all, the Keepers of the Flame.

For Jesus and his doctrine must have been classified in Judas' practical and worldly-wise mind as utterly unsuitable to the social consensus and political mentality of his day. Actually, it was both unsuitable and unacceptable. Unacceptable to the point of provoking its adversaries to a political assassination. It was, after all, a matter of state security and national survival.

This, then, is the essence of the Judas complex: the compromise of one's basic principles in order to fit in with the modes of thought and behavior that the world regards as necessary for its vital interests. The principle of that special group was Jesus—his physical existence, his authority, his teaching. Judas had been persuaded by his tempters and corrupters that all that Jesus stood for had to be modified by a decent and sensible compromise.

This provides us with a sure norm by which we can identify the members of the anti-Church now sitting foursquare within the Roman Catholic institutional organization. While the last twenty years of that organization's history is littered with compromises and hundreds of misfeasances by Churchmen, we must seek out and identify the major compromises that can be accurately described as acts of genuine malfeasance in high ecclesiastical and ecclesial office.

An act of malfeasance has been aptly described as “the doing by a public official, under color of authority of his office, of something that is unwarranted, that he contracted not to do, and that is legally unjustified and positively wrongful or contrary to law,” according to Webster.

Both “misfeasance” and “malfeasance” are used to describe abuse of office. The appreciable difference between the terms seems to lie in the extent and effect of the abuse. Misfeasance seems to be particular and limited. For instance, using the authority of one's office in obtaining incidental pleasures. Malfeasance subverts the office itself, converting it into something totally different from and contrary to what the office was meant to be.

A survey of the past twenty-five years of Roman Catholic history leads one to the conclusion that the greatest single act of malfeasance in high ecclesiastical and ecclesial office has been the tolerance and propagation of confusion about key beliefs among the Catholic rank and file, this tolerated confusion being a direct result of a tolerated dissidence by Catholic theologians and bishops concerning those same key beliefs. For to tolerate confusion is to propagate confusion. A primary and fundamental duty of every ecclesiastical office and the ecclesial responsibility
attached to all offices in the Church comprise the clear, unmistakable teaching and enforcement of the basic rules and fundamental beliefs the Church holds and declares to be necessary for eternal salvation. There can be no compromise on both points: teaching and enforcement. If Roman Catholics have any rights in the Church, they have a primary right to receive such unequivocal teaching and to be the subjects of such forthright and unhesitating enforcement.

Furthermore, it is relatively easy to identify the four key areas in which ecclesiastics and ecclesial members have tolerated and propagated the maleficent confusion that affects Roman Catholics today. These areas are: the Eucharist, the oneness and trueness of the Roman Catholic Church, the Petrine Office of the Bishop of Rome, and the morality of human reproductive activity.

When you talk of the Eucharist, you are talking about the Roman Mass, which has been and still is the central act of worship for Roman Catholics. The value of the Mass for Catholics is twofold. A Mass, in Catholic belief, presents the real live Sacrifice of the body and the blood and physical life of Jesus consummated on Calvary. It is not a commemoration of that sacrifice, nor a reenactment after the fashion of a historical drama, nor a symbolic performance.

Therein lies the mystery of the Mass. When a Roman Mass is said to be valid, it is believed to achieve that mysterious presentation of Christ's sacrifice of his bodily life. It has validity; and Roman Catholics can then literally adore their Savior under the physical appearance of bread and wine.

In the Roman Church, this mystery was celebrated in the Roman Mass, a liturgical ceremony that attained its traditional form in the early Middle Ages, was confirmed as perpetual law in 1570 by Pope Pius V, and was recognized again by the Council of Trent in that same century. It remained the same in all details, except for the addition or substitution of single prayers and invocations, until the mid-1960s.

At that time, a momentous change sanctioned by Vatican officials took place: That traditional Roman Mass was removed, and a new form, known as the Novus Ordo or the Conciliar Mass, was substituted for it by order of Pope Paul VI, on March 26, 1970. By 1974, this Novus Ordo, in vernacular translations, had been spread by decree all over the Church Universal. The traditional Roman Mass was never forbidden, never abrogated, and never declared illegal, by any competent Roman official. But, all over the Church, there was an active and sometimes a violent policy of suppressing any trace of the traditional Roman Mass.

For a number of years, there was an official pretense on the part of
Roman authorities and many bishops that this Novus Ordo merely implemented the recommendations of the Second Vatican Council. But nowadays that pretense has fallen away. It now is undeniable that the Novus Ordo in its various forms violates the explicit precepts of the Vatican Council concerning the changes in the Roman Mass.

Such violation and departure from the explicit will of the Council would be bad enough. What has done untold damage to the Eucharist, belief and doctrine, is the fact that, without some special care, not indicated in the official text and instructions of the Novus Ordo, the ceremony of the Novus Ordo does not ensure its validity: i.e., that it achieves that presentation of Christ's Sacrifice on Calvary. As a general fact, nowadays throughout the Church such special care is rare. Consequently, the celebration of the Novus Ordo does not always result in a valid Mass. Indirectly, this result can be seen mirrored in the overall lack of sacramental reverence for the Eucharist among the clergy and the laity. For the Novus Ordo, which aims to be a communal spectacle composed of communal actions, has removed all due emphasis on the presence of the Sacrifice to the presence of the congregation praying and gesturing. The Roman Mass was a “vertical” act of worship. The Novus Ordo is strictly “horizontal.”