TradCatKnight: Full text of "THE NEW RELIGION", by Don Pietro Leone

   What we would like to ask now with regard to these doctrines, is whether they represent mere distortions or falsifications of the respective articles of Faith, or whether, together with the New Rite of Mass, the New Rites of all the sacraments, the New Code of Canon Law, the New Breviary, the New Catechism, the New Evangelization, the new morality and spirituality lived and preached by the clergy, the new relaxed Church discipline (in the rules of the religious orders and the dress of the clergy) they form as a whole a New Religion altogether.  

    In our discussion of the new marital teaching of the Church’s Magisterium in our work ‘Family under Attack’ we offered an answer to this question in terms of Gnosis. The aim of the present essay is to expound that answer in further detail. The essay falls into the following parts:

   I Gnosis at the Beginning of Time;

   II Gnosis in the Perverted Càbala;

   III Gnosis as the New Religion.

   Postscript on Gnosis in the World of To-day.

    I wish to thank Francesca Romana for her kindness and tireless efforts in translating this essay.

      The great Argentinean theologian Don Julio Meinvielle, writes: “Throughout human history there have been two fundamental ways of thinking and living: one is Catholic and it is the Tradition received from God, through Adam, Moses and Jesus Christ: the other is Gnostic and Cabalistic which nourishes the error of all peoples, in paganism and apostasy, first in Judaism and then in Christianity itself.” 

    The first of these great systems of thought and life is, then, the Catholic Faith (including its pre-Christian phase), and the second is Gnosis.  The former is the one true Faith and Religion. The latter, inasmuch as it constitutes a coherent body of doctrines and is widespread, inasmuch as in the final analysis it is atheist and in its essence antagonistic to the one true Religion, can be described as an Anti-Religion, or as the Anti-Religion par excellence.

    How should we define Gnosis? The word ‘gnosis’ comes from Greek and means ‘knowledge’. As we shall later see, this knowledge is understood as a form of arcaneknowledge directed towards the self-deification of man.

    Gnosis, the perennial rival of the Catholic Faith, was first manifest amongst men in the event known as Original Sin. We proceed to meditate on this primordial event as recounted in the book of Genesis.

     ‘Now the serpent was more subtle than any of the beasts of the earth which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman: Why hath God commanded you that you should not eat of every tree of paradise? And the woman answered him, saying: Of the fruit of the trees that are in paradise we do eat: But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of paradise, God hath commanded us that we should not eat; and that we should not touch it, lest perhaps we die. And the serpent said to the woman: No, you shall not die the death. For God doth know that in what day soever you shall eat thereof, your eyes shall be opened: and you shall be as Gods, knowing good and evil. And the woman saw that the tree was good to eat, and fair to the eyes, and delightful to behold: and she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave to her husband who did eat. And the eyes of them both were opened: and when they perceived themselves to be naked, they sewed together fig leaves, and made themselves aprons.’  

    The event here described, that of Original Sin, has always been understood and taught by Holy Mother Church as a real event on the part of the first human couple, Adam and Eve. It was a sin of pride and disobedience to God, caused by the seduction of the Devil in the form of a serpent: an action which, inasmuch as it was performed by the representatives of the whole of mankind, brought about harm not only to them but also to all of mankind. This event at the same time constitutes the paradigm of Gnosis.

   First of all we observe that Gnosis is based on the negation of Divine Revelation, on the negation of the Word of God, namely, that death will be the consequence of eating of the forbidden fruit.  For this reason it may be described as heretical, even if it is not heretical in the typical and formal sense of denying a dogma of the Faith. 

   Let us proceed to examine the Gnosis system in the light of the Catholic Faith: first in its theology, then in the knowledge that it purports to offer to man, and finally in its morality.

         1)    Gnostic Theology

         The principal characteristic of Gnostic theology is Monism. The reason for this is simple: if man can become God through his own efforts, man must share in the nature of God: man and God must possess a single nature, differentiated only according to the degree and perfection of that nature.

    Gnostic theology is monistic; Catholic theology, by contrast, is dualistic, teaching that man and God possess two different natures: a human nature and a divine nature.  These two natures are not differentiated only and essentially according to their degree of perfection, but rather in their ontological diversity.

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