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“What is the point of life? “If you would like to explore any of these questions then Alpha is for you”. This is how Alpha advertises its material; and it is how Alpha was advertised by the Catholic Parish of Mandurah, Western Australia. To answer these questions truthfully and accurately Alpha needs to be in full possession of the whole Truth. An Alpha website, specifically designed to induce Catholics into Alpha, claims that “Alpha is sound and works well in Catholic Parishes”. One would expect, therefore, that Alpha springs from the fullness of Catholic Teaching and Catholic Faith in that Teaching. However, such is not the case as the same website unashamedly reveals: “Alpha was developed over a twenty year period by the evangelical, charismatic Anglican Church of Holy Trinity, Brompton.” The Roman Catholic Church, which Jesus Christ founded and of which He is the Head, is the only Church in full possession of His Truth. It is obvious that Alpha cannot and will not answer the four questions above in the full light of Catholic Truth, because it comes from a source that does not possess that Truth. The Alpha for ‘catholics’ website states that “Catholics who have read the Alpha material have found it to be remarkably free from anything which we might object to”. Its Protestant origin guarantees Alpha to be ‘free’ from the fullness of Catholic Truth, and to contain implicitly or explicitly all the heresies of its corrupt origin. The statement that Alpha is “free from anything which we (Catholics) might object to” is thus taken to mean that Alpha is “free from” any Catholic Truth which ‘we’ (sic) ‘catholics’ might object to. Mandurah Parish reproduced a glowing ‘testimony’ to Alpha in the Easter 2002 edition of its Parish Bulletin, which verifies this meaning: “Sessions are about Jesus, not about church dogma and teachings but about Jesus. Who did he (note the small ‘h’) claim to be, what’s his (note the small ‘h’ again) relevance to me today, and so on? For some people it might be like meeting the man for the first time.” Church Dogma and Church Teaching is specifically the Teaching of Jesus about His Father, Himself, His Holy Spirit, His Holy Mother, His Holy Catholic Church, His Moral Law, His Sacraments etc. The commission to safeguard and hand on this teaching Our Lord gave to only one entity: the Hierarchy of His Catholic Church. Any church separated from that Sacred entity teaches neither with His Authority nor with His Infallibility. With Catholic Teaching and Dogma guaranteed to be absent, all that Alpha can offer individuals is their own individual and private interpretation of the Bible, where they will “meet the man” Jesus. Catholics who know and understand their Catholic Faith see through the fallacies and deceits of programmes like Alpha. But Alpha is specifically aimed at those who are weak in their Faith or who know little or nothing about the Catholic Faith, and who can therefore be relied upon not to see the deception that Jesus Christ is being deliberately excluded from ‘catholic’ Alpha sessions, and that they are being presented with a make-believe caricature of Him: a ‘Jesus’ who does not condemn to a Hell which no longer exists. The series of ten talks advertised by the Mandurah Catholic Parish are on the following topics:
After participants have been mesmerised by the first 9 sessions of group dynamics and private interpretation of the Bible to arrive at a group consensus that is aligned to the preconceived caricature of Jesus “the man” that has been hidden from them in the secret Protestant leaders notes that are used to guide the discussions, then, according to the ‘testimony’ reproduced above, when they arrive at the tenth session (sic) ‘What about the Church?’ they will be confronted with another man made caricature. After nine sessions in which Catholic Teaching has been deliberately excluded from the discussions in a Catholic Parish, the tenth session will also deliberately exclude Catholic Teaching about the origin and nature of the Catholic Church, in order to present a caricature that serves the ends of the modern rampant false ecumenism. This false ecumenism and its relationship to Alpha were outlined in Alpha News, April - July 2002: “We may be very thankful that so broadly unitive a course [Alpha] has won such general recognition around the world, binding together Catholics, Baptists, Anglicans, Methodists and Pentecostals in an introduction to basic Christianity.” Here Catholics are being bracketed with breakaways from the Catholic Church: creating the illusion that the Catholic Church at one time in Her history has corrupted or broken away from a so-called “basic Christianity”. This supposed “basic Christianity” of biblical times is the common ground which Catholics, Anglicans, Baptists, Methodists, Pentecostals etc are all now invited to ‘discover’ in Alpha by means of private interpretation of the Bible, so that they can be united in a common ecumenical ‘church’. The ‘catholic’ slice who have been syphoned into this sink show their acute identity crisis as soon as they open their mouths to try and fit anti-Catholic Alpha into a Catholic context, as was done on the ‘Alpha in a Catholic Context’ page of the ‘catholic’ - Alpha website: “Our identity as Catholic Christians is very much as part of the Church community. But this sense of Church is perhaps not something which people can respond to in the early stages.” No longer able to recognise Holy Mother Church as the unique and pristine New Creation of the Son of God because of their loss of Catholic Faith in that Holy reality, such ‘catholics’ are forced to grope in the darkness of private biblical interpretation toward a new identity as ‘Catholic christians’: an identity where being ‘christian’ is their new fundamental and more important, basic identity; and where ‘catholic’ is the veneer left on the surface to prevent public scrutiny of their identity crisis. The reality is that there is no other ‘basic Christianity’ apart from Catholicism, even if the name ‘Catholic’ came into use centuries after Our Lord founded His Church: the One, True, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. It is Biblical, Catholic Truth that: (i) Our Lord, founded His Church upon the Prince of His Apostles, Peter, the Rock; (ii) Our Lord changed bread and wine into His own Body and Blood and gave the power to do this to His Apostles with the words “do this in memory of Me”; (iii) Our Lord gave His Apostles power over sin with the words “those whose sins you shall forgive are forgiven, those whose sins you shall retain are retained”. These are basic, fundamental, truths; but they are either rejected outright or given twisted and false meanings under the banner of ‘basic christianity’ by ‘anglican christians’, ‘methodist christians’, ‘baptist christians’, ‘pentecostal christians’, and now also by ‘catholic’ christians in their united ‘ecumenical’ drive toward a ‘church’ without Catholic Dogma or Catholic Teaching. A ‘church’ without Dogma will not tolerate a Catholic Hierarchy which insists on Dogma and Catholic Teaching. So this ‘church’ is not the Institutional or Hierarchical Catholic Church that Our Lord founded, and which teaches with His Authority and with His Infallibility. It is a liberal non-hierarchical harlot ‘church’, where everybody can liberally believe what he likes and do what he pleases. Fr John Flynn SAC of the Riverton Catholic Parish tried to interest his parishioners in an Institutional/liberal dichotomy in a letter he wrote to introduce them to Alpha: “Biblically based, Alpha is an evangelising program directed especially at the lapsed, the searching and unbelievers. It needs a strong support base for success, and this comes from the already committed. However, the already committed could find Alpha a powerful renewing experience .... the impression I have gained over my 12 months in the parish is that the spirituality whilst deep and devoted, is rather institutional, traditional and formal. Because alpha has a strong Charismatic element, it could bring a more spontaneous personal and liberal character into out parish spirituality and devotion. ... a Charismatic prayer group in the parish I believe would be beneficial.” Why is Fr Flynn so afraid to tell the parishioners who practice what he describes as “institutional, tradition and formal” devotions and spirituality that Alpha is a Protestant “evangelising programme”? Does he lack the ‘courage’ of his counterpart in Mandurah who spilled the beans about Alpha: that it was “not about Church teaching and Dogma”; the very realities that “institutional, traditional and formal” Catholics love. Why does he tell them that Alpha is “biblically based” when it is based on the Protestant practice of private interpretation of a corrupted bible and therefore not biblically based at all; but has only a shallow surface appearance of being biblically based? His letter implies to me that he wants “liberal” practices and beliefs for his parish in preference to “institutional and traditional” ones, and that he believes Alpha will achieve that. In His Providence God has mercifully sent us a Holy Man to teach us with His Authority and His Infallibility exactly where and how Alpha fits into a Catholic context. In his Apostolic Letter of 1910, Our Apostolic Mandate, Pope St Pius X wrote to the French Bishops about a world wide movement of apostasy from the Catholic Faith that he could clearly see operating in the world of his day: “What has become of their Catholicity? Alas, this organisation (i.e. the SILLON, composed of well-meaning social Catholics in France) which formerly afforded such promising expectations, has been harnessed in its course by the modern enemies of the Church, and is now no more than a miserable affluent, feeding THE GREAT MOVEMENT OF APOSTASY, being organised in every country for the establishment of a One-World Church, which shall have neither dogmas nor hierarchy neither discipline of the mind nor curb for the passions, and which, under the pretext of freedom and human dignity, would bring back to the world the reign of legalised cunning and brute force and of the oppression of the weak and of all those who toil and suffer ... We know only too well the dark workshops in which are elaborated those mischievous doctrines which ought not seduce clear thinking minds.” Workshops that deliberately exclude Catholic Teaching thereby deliberately exclude the Light of Christ. These dark workshops “elaborate mischievous doctrines” in place of the Light of Catholic Teaching that has been rejected. We reproduced the ‘testimony’ from a bulletin of the Mandurah Catholic Parish where it was explicitly stated that Alpha workshops are not about Church Teaching and Dogma. It could not be any clearer. Alpha workshops fit to a tee the description given to “dark workshops” by Pope St Pius X: they are created to feed the great movement of apostasy that was already being organised in every country in 1910 for the establishment of what we now clearly see to be the goal of Alpha: a united ecumenical church of ‘basic christianity’; which in reality is the same ugly One World ‘church’ of darkness that Pope St Pius X could see being organised in every country in his day: a ‘church’ “without dogma or hierarchy”, and which, “under the pretext of freedom and human dignity will bring back to the world the reign of legalised cunning and brute force and of the oppression of the weak and of all those who toil and suffer”. Alpha was boasted of as being ‘free’ from Catholic Dogma and Teaching as a pretext for inducing involvement in its ‘workshops’: ‘freedom’ being used as a pretext; just as St Pius X said it would be used in this dark ‘church’: to oppress those weak in faith and who suffer because of it ... all done under the further pretext of introducing them to a ‘man’ who accords with their ‘human dignity’: just as St. Pius X said it would be done. From what this great Pope and Saint has taught us about THE GREAT MOVEMENT OF APOSTASY, we know for sure what the big A of Alpha represents. The Mandurah Parish unwittingly got it right when it reproduced in its Easter 2002 Bulletin a claim of the National Director of Alpha Australia that likened Alpha to a “revival plan that will burn as hot and as wild as the bushfires Australia is famous for ... just as our bushfires are caught by the wind and jump across roads to ignite other forests ...”. Discipline of the mind (cf where Pope St. Pius X defined the absence of this so necessary attribute to be a mark of the ‘church’ of darkness) or even a modicum of plain common sense tells us that hot and wild bushfires are destructive and burn out of control, destroying everything in their path: and this is an accurate epitaph for the ‘basic christianity’ that deliberately rejects Catholic Teaching to be blown uncontrollably along by the wind of Alpha into the eternal, uncontrollable flames of Hell. “But when the Rebel comes, Satan will set to work. There will be all kinds of miracles and a
deceptive show of signs and portents, and everything evil for the deception of those who are
bound for destruction because they did not possess the love of truth that could have saved
them. The reason why God is sending a power to delude them and make them believe what is
untrue is to condemn all who refused to believe in the truth and chose wickedness instead.” “I saw again the strange big church that was being built. There was nothing holy in it. In this church all the work was being done mechanically according to set rules and formulae. Everything was being done according to human reason. I saw all sorts of people, things, doctrines and opinions. There was something proud, presumptuous, and violent about it, and they seemed to be very successful. I did not see a single Angel nor a single Saint helping in the work.” “I saw that many pastors allowed themselves to be taken up with ideas that were dangerous to the Church. They were building a great, strange, and extravagant church. Everyone was to be admitted in it in order to be united and have equal rights: Evangelicals, Catholics, sects of every description. Such was to be the new church, but God had other designs.” “I see many excommunicated ecclesiastics who do not seem to be concerned about it, nor even aware of it. Yet they are (ipso facto) excommunicated whenever they co-operate in enterprises, enter into associations, and embrace opinions on which an anathema has been cast. It can be seen thereby that God ratifies the decrees, orders, and interdicts issued by the Head of the Church, and that He keeps them in force even though men show no concern for them, reject them, or laugh them to scorn.” [Quotes taken from the Life of Anna Katarina Emmerich by Rev. Carl Schmoeger. The French translation from the original German was made by the Vicar General and Canon of Versailles, E. de Cazalès. The Italian translation was made on the orders of His Holiness Pope Pius IX]. F. Calneggia Feast of Pope St. Pius X |