Righteous John of Kronstadt: A Word on the Catholics

 The word of our Savior, Lord Jesus Christ, is true: "He who is not with Me is against Me" (Matt. 12:30). Catholics, Lutherans, and Reformists have fallen away from the Church of Christ – and they are not with us, they are not of one mind with us, they strongly oppose us, persecute us unto death, oppress us in every way for our faith, mock it and us, and commit all sorts of wickedness against us, especially in the main places of their settlements. They openly go against Christ and His Church, do not venerate the Life-Giving Cross, icons, holy relics, do not respect the fasts, the holy dogmas of salvific faith. They are not with us, but against us and against Christ. Turn them, O Lord, to Thy True Church and save them.

The nail of Catholic pride and Catholic falsehood in dogmas, in governance, and in moral teaching is the primacy of the pope, the erroneous and incorrect understanding of the saying of the Savior: "Thou art Peter, and upon this rock, I will build My Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it" (Matt. 16:18). All the Holy Fathers of the first and subsequent centuries, and even the first Orthodox popes themselves, have recognized that by the foundation—the rock—one must understand the Lord Jesus Christ Himself: "And that Rock was Christ" (1 Cor. 10:4). As the most certain and evident proof, I bring forth words with a similar expression from the Gospel of John: "Destroy this temple" (John 2:19) (by "temple" is meant the uncreated Temple of the Lord’s Body, and not the temple of Jerusalem, as one might understand from the flow of speech). The Lord meant precisely His Most Pure Body by "temple," just as by the rock-foundation, one must understand Christ Himself, and not the successor of the Apostle Peter, nor Peter himself. This is clear. But the popes imagined themselves to be the heads of the Church and its foundation, and even the vicars of Christ, which is absurd and inconsistent with anything. From this comes all the arrogance of the Roman popes and their long-standing claims to primacy and arbitrary rule over the entire Universal Church. Well, the popes have certainly performed various tricks in their papal church, inventing various false dogmas that lead to falseness both in faith and in life. It is a fully heretical church.

Where is the apple, the core of discord and the hatred of the Catholic Church toward the Orthodox Church? – In the excessively exaggerated opinion of the popes about themselves, about their superiority over the Eastern Orthodox bishops and hierarchs, in their boundless pride; in the false interpretation of the words of the Lord spoken to the Apostle Peter: "Thou art Peter, and upon this rock…" (Matt. 16:18). The Rock is Christ, and not Peter, who thrice denied Him, though he erased his rejection with tears of repentance and was restored to the apostolic rank… The thought that the Lord supposedly founded the Church upon Peter, and not upon Himself—this thought, ingrained in the minds of the popes and Catholics, and interpreted by them in favor of the successors of Peter, the popes, as heads of the Church and vicars of Christ—has turned everything upside down in the Catholic Church. They, in their view, are the vicars of Christ with unlimited power and dominance over the entire Church of Christ; as if they are the judges of all bishops; they are the founders and interpreters of dogmas; they supposedly can alter the very Mysteries of the Church at their discretion; they canonize saints, whom they do not truly have; they deprive the laity of the Blood of Christ; they sprinkle water on baptized infants instead of immersing them in water, and so on…

The communion of the Catholic Church with the Heavenly Church is utterly miserable, cold, brief, and lifeless—not as in the Orthodox Church, where it is living, wise, complete, utterly sincere, and profoundly reverent. Everywhere and always, it is the pope and the pope; honor is rendered to him, not to the saints. The saints of the East and West are diminished, concealed, cast into obscurity, and only occasionally shown to the faithful, especially to tourists, for appearance’s sake. And what careless, cold dismissals are used in Catholic liturgical services—Ite, missa est—"Go, the Mass is ended." But in our Orthodox Church, how reverent, humble, and full of Christ’s hope are the exclamations: "Christ, our True God, through the prayers of His Most Pure Mother and all the Saints, have mercy on us and save us, for He is good and the Lover of mankind." The pope disposes of the fate of both the heavenly and earthly Church, distributes the merits of the saints at his whim—he sends souls into purgatory and releases them at his discretion, grants indulgences (dispensing them to the faithful). It is simply laughable, if it were not so grievous and destructive. And how do the popes, cardinals, prelates, priests, and Jesuits themselves not see this? For the Catholic faith has been hastily constructed in its very character. Everything is sold; the pope has taken everything into his power—indeed, all salvation for Catholics lies in his hands.

And because of this, the Catholics today have no glorified saints; there are only fabricated ones, made by the whim of the pope. But the Orthodox Church, like the Garden of Eden, is filled with saints. Listen, in the Apocalypse of John the Theologian, about which Church is it said: "I will spew thee out of My mouth" (Rev. 3:16)? I believe it is about the Catholic and Reformed churches. Look at what the popes have turned the Orthodox faith of Christ into! What nonsense! Who is the pope? An idol, not Christ—his servants publicly say to him: "You are the vicar of Christ."

 

Source: "То, что имеешь, держи": Православие и католицизм в трудах русских святых и церковных мыслителей ["Hold fast what you have": Orthodoxy and Catholicism in the Works of Russian Saints and Church Thinkers], compiled by E. V. Semyonova, Moscow, Traditsii, 2016.