A Useful Tool for Exposing Counterfeit Catholicism
[Note: We've made several new additions to our online store in the past few days: 5 books, audiotape versions of all our single CD titles, and now a 50% discount on the second edition of our "Counterfeit Catholicism" 6-CD (or 6-tape) set for those who previously purchased the first edition. Check it all out at www.gerrymatatics.org/shop]
This coming Easter — less than three weeks away now — will mark a spiritual 23rd anniversary for me. Although previously an adamantly anti-Catholic Protestant for 14 years, I eventually discovered, by God’s undeserved grace, the truth of the Catholic Faith. On Easter of 1986 I publicly professed that Faith, formally abjured the heresies of Protestantism, tendered my credentials as an ordained pastor in the Presbyterian Church in America, and sought admission to the Catholic Church.
Ever since then it has been my joyous privilege to serve as a full-time professional apologist for the Catholic Faith. In addition to having served over the years as a professor of Sacred Scripture, theology, apologetics, patristics, and Biblical languages at several Catholic colleges, universities, and seminaries, as a Catholic apologist I have taken taken literally hundreds of trips across the country and around the world, and on those trips given literally thousands of different talks.
I've spoken to small groups gathered in someone’s living room (from "celebrities" to "nobodies" like me), and I've spoken to sold-out stadiums filled with tens of thousands of people, and to everything in between. I've spoken to radio and television and Internet audiences, and in both Protestant and Catholic churches (even cathedrals).
Of all those talks which I’ve given and am giving, which one talk do I consider the most important? If some enemy had the power to snap his fingers and obliterate all my other talks, to make it as though they’d never been given, leaving only one, which one would I want that one to be?
I have no doubt in my mind which one talk I would choose to “survive” that finger-snap-produced oblivion. I know that if I could give only one talk to every single person on the face of the earth, and have each of them remember it, I would want it to be the talk I've given approximately 150 times entitled “Consistent vs. Counterfeit Catholicism: Why Vatican II, the New Mass, and Benedict XVI Are Not What They Claim to Be.”
That is why — once my grasp of the contemporary crisis in Catholicism achieved (again, by God’s grace) its current clarity, causing all the pieces that had so puzzled me for two decades to finally fall into place — I launched (in 2006) my current “megatour,” to be my final speaking tour ever, featuring, at every stop, this vitally important talk.
The purpose of this final tour was, first of all, to return one last time to every city I have ever spoken in, to deliver this talk and “set the record straight” on what constitutes completely consistent Catholicism. In addition to revisiting all these cities, I also wished to speak in any of the 300 largest cities in the US, as well in any smaller but strategic city or town, in which I had never yet spoken. (In fact there are not many such cities remaining: at this writing the only state I’ve never yet spoken in is Alaska — although I lived there for two years as a boy — and in the other 49 states I've spoken in nearly every city, as well as in numerous smaller towns.)
I’ve already made it back to nearly 150 of these cities and towns so far. But that means I’m only halfway done!
When I give this talk on a weeknight I only have time to give a 75-minute abridgement of my full presentation, followed (as my talks are always followed) by a Q & A session. But on Saturdays, because there’s more time, I usually give an all-day seminar on the subject, featuring 5 separate hour-long talks, with at least one Q & A session at the end of the day and often one halfway through the day as well.
If you’ve never heard this presentation, I’d like to invite you to do so, conveniently, without having to travel anywhere to hear me, simply by purchasing a recording of it. As of this date I still do not have a recording that I'm currently happy with of the abridged, weeknight summary presentation (because I have to leave out so much data that I feel is necessary to prove my case). For now at least, all that I offer is a recording of the full-day seminar.
When I gave this seminar on September 15, 2007, in Indianapolis, a good friend and faithful supporter showed up with some tape recording equipment and a microphone so we could capture the day's talks on audiotape. I will be forever grateful to him for having done so, as it’s enabled many people around the world to hear the seminar who cannot attend it, or even the abridged talk, in person.
But, though this initial seminar recording, filling 5 audiotapes (three of them 62-minute and two of them 92-minute tapes), served a useful purpose, we all thought it could be improved upon.
First of all, tape recordings have a certain inevitable amount of tape hiss, "wow and flutter," mechanical background noise from the tape recorder itself, and other audio anomalies.
Second, the microphone used at my podium was a unidirectional, not an omnidirectional mic, so that whenever I turned my head to the side to speak to one half of the audience or the other, or if I, without thinking about the audio consequences, moved away from the podium because I had instinctually begun to pace about in front of the audience (as I usually do once I get going and get “worked up” about my subject), the recording of my voice accordingly dropped in volume.
Thirdly, there was no separate microphone in the audience, so that their questions in the Q & A session can barely be heard on the tapes, and instead have to be inferred from listening to my answer.
A very good friend named Carlo in northern California, who has a lot of skill and experience in audio recording and possesses the requisite equipment, had already turned many of the audiotapes of the talks I’d given over the years into CDs. In the process he had “cleaned up” the recordings (improving the sound quality as much as possible given the limits of the original tape master), as well as editing out unnecessary verbiage (e.g., comments about the meeting place or the room's temperature, announcements about when the audience would break for lunch, etc.).
Carlo generously volunteered to take the audiotape recording of the Indianapolis “Counterfeit Catholicism” seminar and similarly improve and convert it to a CD format, and we sold copies of this “first edition” in both audiotape and CD form for the ensuing year.
All along, however, Carlo and I hoped that at some point in time we would have the opportunity for me to re-deliver these talks at a location where he could record them digitally and thus avoid the problems inherent in an audiotaped original.
That opportunity finally arose last summer, when I brought my megatour to southern California for a week-long tour of all the cities I’d spoken in during previous lecture tours of that area.
On the Saturday of that week I gave my all-day seminar in Orange County, and Carlo drove down from northern California to capture the entire event (as well as several other talks I gave during that weekend) in a digital recording using state-of-the-art equipment. Because he had me wear a wireless mic so that my voice was equally clear and loud wherever I moved in the room during my talk, and because he had a separate microphone in the audience that every audience member who wished to ask questions during the Q & A could use, the difference in sound quality between this “second edition” and the “first edition” is the difference between night and day.
Even more importantly, the intervening nine months between the two recorded seminars had afforded me the opportunity to read many, many more books and articles about the events leading up to, during, and subsequent to the Vatican II revolution. Consequently I had much more evidence to present, particularly in support of certain controversial assertions and hotly contested facts. In addition to presenting much new material, I had also refined many of my arguments, rearranged the order in which I presented my material, and made several other improvements.
As a result the “second edition” is not only a dramatically better-sounding recording, it also has much better content and more content, filling 6 CDs instead of only 5.
We’ve been selling this fast-moving, fact-packed, revised and expanded “second edition” of the “Counterfeit Catholicism” seminar for 3 months now, since December 2008. Though it was recorded in digital electronic media, not on audiotape, we’ve also “reverse engineered” an audiotape version of this second edition for those few individuals who still have tape players rather than CD players in their car or home. You can thus order it either on 6 CDs or 6 audiocassettes, either way in a handsome vinyl album, for only $40 plus $5 for Priority Mail shipping and handling.
Because I want everyone who purchased the first edition to have this new, greatly improved second edition – not only because of the vastly superior sound quality but also to have the new and expanded material – I am making the second edition available to previous purchasers of the first edition for only half price, or only $20.
You can immediately go to my online store at www.gerrymatatics.org/shop and order the new set using your Visa or MasterCard. If you have previously bought the first edition, upon checkout (on the "Shopping Cart Contents" page), simply type the word "Upgrade" — with an upper-case "U" but without the quotation marks — into the box labeled "Coupon Code," click on the word "Apply" to the right of the Coupon Code box, and $20 is automatically deducted from your subtotal.
For those who prefer not to order things online (even though our site, like all major e-commerce sites, is verified to be completely data-secure), you can either call me at (570) 969-1724, fax me at (570) 969-1725, e-mail me at gmatatics@aol.com, or mail your order and credit card number and expiration date to me at: Gerry Matatics, PO Box 569, Dunmore PA 18512. Those ordering by mail of course also have the option of paying by check or money order.
We've gotten many rave reviews of this second edition 6-CD set. Many have kindly stated that it's the best presentation they've ever heard me give. One long-time supporter ordered a dozen sets in mid-December to give as Christmas presents, one for each of his grown children and their families. Many other customers have bought multiple copies for friends and loved ones.
I am glad, because I truly believe that this is the most important set of recordings I have ever produced. In it I make the Biblical, historical, theological, and canonical case for the consistent Catholicism which has been unfortunately (and inaccurately) nicknamed “sedevacantism” by its opponents, but which is simply THE CATHOLIC FAITH — PERIOD — without concession to, or compromise with, the liberalism and modernism that has swept over the Catholic world in the last 50 years.
So-called “mainstream traditionalist” publications like The Latin Mass magazine, The Remnant, The Fatima Crusader, Catholic Family News, and groups such as the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter, the Institute of Christ the King, and even the Society of St. Pius X (still unapproved by, but ever hopeful for a rapprochement with, Rome) — publications and groups I once thought were authentically traditional — have all fatally compromised with this modernism, as these talks demonstrate.
These talks make the case that, according to Catholic theology and canon law, John XXIII through Benedict XVI could NOT have been validly elected to the papacy, due to their disqualifying character as manifest heretics before their election. I also show all these men to be promoters of one or more of the following: Talmudic Judaism, Communism, and Freemasonry — which further disqualifies them not only from office, but even from membership in the Catholic Church. (I have cited the relevant magisterial prooftexts that heretics cannot hold membership or office in the Church in previous essays on this website; please see the archives. I quote all those prooftexts in these recordings.)
Thus, John XXIII could NOT have validly called, and Paul VI could NOT have validly concluded, a true council of the Church. This explains why Vatican II “authoritatively” teaches doctrines previously condemned by the Church’s Magisterium (teaching office), such as a heretical view of the Church, religious liberty, ecumenism, salvation through false religions, etc., as I demonstrate in these talks.
Instead, Vatican II was convened to call the world’s Catholic bishops to Rome to be spiritually seduced (and browbeaten, where necessary) into putting their signatures to these heresies. Then these men were sent back to their dioceses, no longer as bishops of Christ’s one, holy, catholic, apostolic Church, but as bishops of a NEW church which had thus taken over the infrastructure “formerly owned and operated” by the Catholic Church. (The devil, not being God, can’t create ex nihilo ― out of nothing ― but must use the timbers of God’s true Church as the raw materials with which to construct his false church.)
Following a remarkably similar script, virtually the same thing occurred during the so-called English “Reformation” of the 16th century. By the time it was over, all the dioceses, parishes, and institutions of the Catholic Church in England had been hijacked by a new church, the Church of England. It claimed to be the Catholic Church, “reformed” and yet in authentic continuity with the Catholic Church of the preceding thousand years. But in fact it was not.
My 6-CD (or 6-tape, if you prefer) set shows that the Vatican II revolution of the 1960’s was simply the English “Reformation” re-mixed and now exported globally to the entire Catholic world.
As a result, the new, Vatican II church teaches new doctrines. It offers a New (invalid) Mass and sacraments, including an invalid ordination rite that CANNOT produce valid bishops or priests. It enshrines a new morality in its New Code of Canon Law. All of these clearly demonstrate it to be another church than the Catholic Church. Holy Mother Church, as Pius XII reminds us in paragraph 66 of his 1943 encyclical Mystici Corporis Christi, is always “spotless” in the doctrines she perennially and unchangingly teaches and passes down from Christ, in the worship she offers God and the sacraments she dispenses among mankind, and in her universal legislation.
Consider just a random handful of the Rome-approved abominations (even leaving aside the “abuses”) of the past 50 years:
-
John Paul II’s 1986 World Day of Prayer for Peace at Assisi, with representatives of virtually every false religion of the world in attendance, including voodoo witch doctors and devil worshippers
-
“papal” Masses incorporating pagan rites
-
inter-faith worship with heretics and schismatics, forbidden by divine law
-
altar girls – also forbidden by divine law, according to all the Church Fathers!
-
sacrilege in the administration of “sacraments,” including giving them to non-Catholics
-
vernacular Masses which invalidly misrepresent Our Lord as saying “for you and for ALL” in consecrating the chalice
-
the sex education and modernism endemic in every “Catholic” school, college, university, and seminary
-
Biblical scholarship which accuses Sacred Scripture of error and myth
-
heresies regarding the fate of Jews, Muslims, pagans, and unbaptized infants
-
the Balamand Statement forbidding the evangelizing of the Eastern schismatics
-
the Catholic-Lutheran Joint Declaration on Justification, etc., etc.
The list, of course, is endless. Anyone who resists the “sedevacantist” conclusion but who admits that such abominations are not Catholic has already LOST the argument: the “church” authorizing these things CANNOT be the one true Catholic Church!
But what about Benedict XVI? What about his 2007 motu proprio allowing more celebrations of "the Tridentine Mass"? What about his recent lifting of the excommunications of the four SSPX bishops? Don't these events indicate the slow but sure return of "Tradition" to the Vatican II church?
Hogwash. In my seminar I show that, far from betokening that long-promised “new springtime of the Church,” Benedict's “pontificate” is actually a FRAUD that intensifies the current crisis and deepens the diabolical disorientation and deception pervasive among contemporary “Catholics,” while it seduces the SSPX and other "traditionalists" to return to the leprous embrace of the whorish (as St. John bluntly describes her in the 17th chapter of his Apocalypse) Vatican II church in the mistaken belief that she is really Holy Mother Church.
What difference does it make what the non-pope, non-Catholic Ratzinger thinks of the non-Catholic SSPX (non-Catholic because they accept a non-Catholic as pope), or what the SSPX thinks of him?
What difference does it make if Novus Ordo (and thus invalid) “priests” are allowed to say the truncated and illicit 1962 Mass of antipope John XXIII (which falsely claims to be the “Tridentine” Mass)? Even though this illicitly promulgated (because "promulgated" by a non-pope) Mass is minimally valid, if a man who's not really a priest says the words of consecration, nothing happens. Pantomime "priests," however good their intentions, produce pantomime "Masses." Illusion begets illusion.
This recorded seminar shows that the principled and complete rejection of Vatican II and its counterfeit doctrines, counterfeit Mass and sacraments, counterfeit canon law, and counterfeit popes, is not only compatible with Catholic teaching — it is the ONLY position that IS compatible with Catholic teaching! To embrace any other explanation of the current crisis, as I show by example after example, is to REJECT Catholic teaching, and thus to endanger your immortal soul.
In these talks I show how Sacred Scripture’s prophecies and types, how extra-Biblical prophecies, and how previous crises of Church history all clearly foretell the near-universal (Luke 18:8) apostasy that has come to pass in our day. I show that the teaching of popes, Fathers, Doctors, and saints all agree that such an apostasy can happen and will happen before the Second Coming of Christ (2 Thessalonians 2:3). That it now, in our lifetime, has happened I show to be undeniable.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Though our 6-CD exposé of “Counterfeit Catholicism” is our “flagship” product, we have other equally instructive recordings. “The Plot Against the Church,” for example, is a very popular series that historically traces the infiltration and subversion of the Church from the dawn of time to the present day. “Part One” consists of 8 CDs that begin with Lucifer’s revolt and continue to the times of St. John Chrysostom. Here are the individual CD titles:
1: The Plot Begins: The Synagogue of Satan
2: The Plot Continues: The Empire Strikes Back, Part I:
The Roman-Jewish Alliance Against the Church
3: The Plot Continues: The Empire Strikes Back, Part II
4: The Plot Continues: The Empire Strikes Back, Part III
5: Arian Supremacy: “Athanasius Against the World”
6. Arian Supremacy, Part II
7. Attacking Jesus through Mary: Nestorian Heresy, Then and Now
8. The Mouth of Gold versus the Merchants of Gold:
The Controversial Conflicts of St. John Chrysostom & His Critics
“Part Two,” the second set of 8 CDs, covers from from the age of St. Augustine down (and I do mean down) to the apostate monk Martin Luther. The individual CD titles are as follows:
9. St. Augustine’s City of God vs. City of Man:
Supernatural Society vs. Organized Naturalism
10. Should Old Aquinas Be Forgot & Never Brought to Mind?
How Dumb Was the “Dumb Ox” on Jewish-Christian Relations?
11. Should Old Aquinas Be Forgot? Part II
12. Should Old Aquinas Be Forgot? Part III
13. The Truth about the Templars:
The Triangular Relationship between International Finance,
Secret Societies, and the Subversion of God’s Sanctuary
14. The Truth about the Templars, Part II
15. The Protestant “Reformations” & the American Revolution:
Spiritual Subversion Masquerading as Biblical Christianity
— overview, plus analysis of the 2008 Presidential Election
16. The Protestant “Reformations,” Part II: Luther
“Part Three,” the final set of 8 CDs, continues the saga from Calvin's part in the Protestant Revolt down to the Catholic crisis of the present day, and will be released later this year.
We also have several single titles, available on either CD or audiotape:
Clarity Begins At Home:
Biblical Foundations of Homeschooling
Every King Has a Queen Mother:
Biblical Teaching on Mary’s Immaculate Conception,
Perpetual Virginity, Bodily Assumption & Queenly Coronation
The Fate of the Family:
Satan’s Seven-Step Strategy for Destroying Civilization
Friends in High Places:
Biblical Teaching on the Intercession of the Saints
God’s Summer School of Sanctification:
Biblical Foundations of Purgatory & Praying for the Dead
How the Bible Converted Me to Catholicism:
One Protestant Minister's Amazing Journey of Faith
How to Keep Your Kids Catholic:
Basic Principles & Practical Tips
The Myth of Evolution vs. the Truth of Sacred Scripture
Peter, Prime Minister of Christ’s Kingdom:
Biblical Foundations of the Papacy
“Sola Scriptura” Is Unscriptural:
Biblical Teaching on Sacred Tradition
The Strange Case of the Headless Homeschool:
The Father’s Role in the Training of Children
“Unless You Eat My Flesh and Drink My Blood”:
Biblical Teaching on the Eucharist
What Christ Wants for Christmas — And All Year Long
In addition to our own recordings, we also sell essential Catholic reference works and other crucial Catholic books to equip you with both the knowledge and the holiness necessary for you to survive the current crisis:
-
magisterial sources such as the Catechism of the Council of Trent and the encyclicals of the pre-Vatican II popes, which ably expose in advance the heresies in the documents of Vatican II and in John Paul II’s “New Catechism”
-
the Douay-Rheims Bible, Haydock edition with its thousands of footnotes
-
the 1917 Code of Canon Law, which contrasts dramatically with the heresies and sacrileges of John Paul II’s “New Code”
-
the nineteenth-century Benedictine Abbot Guéranger’s 15-volume masterpiece of Catholic commentary, The Liturgical Year
We also sell other key works of dogmatic and moral theology, apologetics, Church history, Sacred Scripture, and the spiritual life. (Visit our online store at www.gerrymatatics.org/shop for pictures and full descriptions.)
We hope that during these remaining days of Lent you will avail yourselves of these essential spiritual weapons to protect yourself and your loved ones from the “Counterfeit Catholicism” which is leading so many souls astray in our day.
May God guide and enlighten you, and as the current crisis worsens may He keep you and your loved ones firm in the Faith and in the Church outside of which there is no salvation.
Yours for the diligent study, staunch defense,
and global dissemination of our glorious Catholic Faith,
Gerry Matatics