Pope Leo XIII, Providentisimus Deus: "It is futile to argue that the Holy Spirit took human beings as his instruments in writing, implying that some error could slip in....For by his supernatural power he so stimulated and moved them to write, and so assisted them while they were writing, that they properly conceived in their minds, wished to write down faithfully, and expressed aptly with infallible truth all those things, and only those things, which he himself ordered; otherwise he could not himself be the author of the whole of Sacred Scripture" (Denz 3293).

Because of all these witnesses, many of which Vatican II included as footnotes attached to Dei Verbum 11, König's examples of Scriptural error were rejected. The only thing the bishops agreed to do was take the word "any" out of "without any error," but with the stipulation that "without error" meant the same thing as "without any error."

To help show the continuity with previous papal and conciliar statements, Vatican II's Fathers made six major citations in the footnote (#5) which comes at the end of Dei Verbum 11's sentence affirming Scripture's freedom from error.³² Two of the citations are from Augustine, whom, as we have seen earlier in his disputes with Faustus, was one of the staunchest defenders of a totally inerrant Scripture. Interestingly enough, the first citation is from The Literal Interpretation of Genesis. Here Augustine teaches about the harmony between science and Scripture, showing, in turn, that Vatican II's respect of Scripture's inerrancy extended to its affirmations about the physical creation, even though the Bible is not considered a scientific textbook. This clearly shot down König's objection that the original drafts of Dei Verbum 11 did not allow "scientific freedom." The second citation from Augustine (Epistle 82, 3) is the quote from the letter to Jerome we cited earlier, which affirmed total biblical inerrancy and attributed contradictions to manuscript variations and human frailties when engaging in biblical interpretation.

Another of Vatican II's citations is from Trent's The Canon of Scripture, which, interestingly enough, speaks of the salvific purpose of Scripture. Referring to both Scripture and Tradition, Trent states that they are "the source of all saving truth" (Denz 1501), which is very similar to Vatican II's statement "for the sake of our salvation," yet, as everyone knows, Trent never entertained the notion that Scripture contained errors in matters outside of salvation.³³

The most important addition to footnote #5 was the teaching of Pope Leo XIII in Providentissimus Deus stating that, since the sacred writers wrote only what the Holy Spirit wanted them to write, everything which they assert has Him for its author, and is therefore necessarily true. This coincides with the commission's previous conclusion that the word "salvific" in Dei Verbum 11 did not imply a "material limitation" of the truth of Scripture. Since the quote from Providentissimus Deus includes Leo's words concerning the Fathers and Doctors who "labored with no less ingenuity than devotion to harmonize and reconcile those many passage which might seem to involve some contradiction or discrepancy," with little doubt this indicates that Vatican II agreed that steadfastness to preserve the inerrancy of Scripture should be constantly maintained in the Church.

Could the attempted hijacking of Vatican II's teaching have been avoided? The answer would have to be yes, and it starts with Vatican II itself. Although no one could rightly accuse Dei Verbum 11 of being in error, nevertheless, its leading language and essay format lent itself to being misinterpreted, especially by the modernists whose agenda we know very well. The European Alliance, which was composed of a huge German-Scandinavian-French-Dutch-Belgian-Austrian bloc of liberal prelates, tried every way possible to steer the council in their direction, and they were well quite successful because they were well organized. The Alliance presented position papers and slates of candidates for the all-important commissions that would eventually control almost every crucial decision the council would make. For example, of 109 candidates presented by the alliance, 79 were elected (72%), and which represented 49% of all elected seats. They constituted 50% of all elected members of the Theological Commission, and 78% on the Liturgical Commission. We've already seen what the European Alliance, headed by Cardinal König, had done to the first schema of Dei Verbum 11 - they had it excised from the debate. It was a beautifully worded schema that left no wiggle room for the liberals. Once again it read: "...it follows directly and necessarily that the whole Bible is absolutely immune from error...by its very nature, necessarily prevents and excludes every error in any subject-matter whatever, religious or profane."

In fact, the liberals even had the title of the general document changed based on the Protestant sensitivities they were trying to inculcate into the council. The original title was "On the Two Sources of Revelation," which, as any Catholic knows, refers to Scripture and Tradition as two but separate sources of divine revelation. Since Protestant don't believe Tradition holds such authority, the title was changed to what we have now, Dei Verbum, that is, "On Divine Revelation." Of course, there is no error in choosing such a title, but in these cases, once we know the history we begin to realize that there is a significant practical difference between being error-free and being agenda-free.

Having substituted Dei Verbum 11 with anemic wording, these liberals knew precisely what they were going to do with Vatican II's language. If they couldn't get the Fathers to state that Scripture contained errors, they would do the next best thing - use their clout to pack it with as much leading language as possible so that when they finally began to teach in their seminaries and universities they could convince the unsuspecting that they were seeing black when in fact it was white.

That this kind of subterfuge was precisely their plan was made quite obvious right at the council. For example, when the Fathers were debating the issue of collegiality, the European Alliance used their clout to steer the voting in a particular direction. When the final vote was presented to Paul VI he was appalled at the council's lack of wisdom. In his book The Rhine Flows into the Tiber, Father Ralph Wiltgren, S.V.D., reports that:

...the Pope called in one of the theologians from this group and asked him how more than two-thirds of the Fathers could have approved so flawed a document. Did not, Paul asked, the Fathers give the matter deep thought and prayer? The cardinal apologized in advance, then answered: They could not have. Shocked, deeply disturbed, the Pope ended the interview and withdrew to reflect and pray.

Then occurred what may well have been the most significant moment of the Council. It was a moment either of incredible good fortune for traditionalists or of providential intervention by the Almighty. For, suddenly, completely unexpectedly, a document, written by a Council theologian, appeared to do exactly what conservatives warned that radicals might do. The even has received little notice and has been practically ignored and unreported in most accounts of the Council. Wiltgren tersely recounts the event:

Then one of the extreme liberals made the mistake of referring, in writing, to some of the ambiguous passages, and indicating how they would be interpreted after the Council. This paper fell into the hands of the aforesaid group of cardinals and Superiors General, whose representative took it to the Pope. Pope Paul, realizing finally that he had been deceived, broke down and wept.

Whoever the author of the article brought to Paul was, when Paul read the piece, he seems to have immediately sense the kind of dissent that would shortly be unleashed against the Church. Dissent, to a large extent, based on misinterpretations of Council documents.³⁴

In fact, so mistrustful was Paul VI of the Council's machinations, that he removed several controversial topics off the table, one of them being the issue of contraception, which he himself had to deal with alone in the 1969 encyclical Humanae Vitae. Just prior to his decision condemning artificial birth control, Paul VI invited 68 of his most prominent cardinals and bishops to discuss and vote on the matter. All but four of them turned out to be pro-contraception. As history reveals, however, Paul VI sided with the four.

Earlier I touched upon the fact that, as anemic as the language of Dei Verbum 11 was, still, the conservative Fathers succeeded in packing the footnotes with all sorts of traditional references, from Augustine, Aquinas, the Council of Trent and Leo XIII. As good as these footnotes were, however, everyone knows that footnotes do not have the impact that the main text possesses. Even if someone read the footnotes, he wouldn't know what they were saying unless he looked up the references, since Vatican II did not provide them. Prior to that, he might think Augustine and Aquinas supported the idea that Scripture was inerrant only in matters of salvation. The liberals are smart. They make you think you've won a battle so that they can use it to win the war - the war they have been waging the last 40 years.

The liberals of Vatican II did the same thing in the social documents. For example, over five hundred Fathers petitioned to have communism condemned, in no uncertain terms. As many of us know, however, the Vatican had already made a secret deal with Russian diplomats not to condemn either Russia or communism in all its documents. This agreement is known as the Pact of Metz, coinciding with the place it was signed in France in 1962. Consequently, if one does a word-search with his computer software of Vatican II's documents, as I did, one won't find the word "communism" in any of the sixteen documents. However, one will find a vague reference to it in one of the footnotes. The council, of course, cannot be accused of error, but it can be accused of one of the all time greatest attempts at hiding the truth.

Despite the addition of the footnotes in Dei Verbum 11 which supported total biblical inerrancy, the modernists would insist otherwise. Steadily gaining ascendancy in academic circles, Fr. Brown finally let the other shoe drop in his New Jerome Biblical Commentary. He refers to the aforementioned inerrancy discussions at Vatican II, saying, "...but pre-voting debates show an awareness of errors in the Bible." This makes it sound as if the Fathers of Vatican II were bent on stigmatizing Scripture with errors, and thus it is no surprise to see Brown conclude precisely that very sentiment in his next statement: "Thus, it is proper to take the clause as specifying: Scriptural teaching is truth without error to the extent that it conforms to the salvific purpose of God."³⁵ In Brown's view, Scripture is only inerrant when it speaks about salvation, and he is trying to make it appear as if Vatican II accepted and propagated this same view.

The "pre-voting" Brown cites refers to the events I mentioned earlier regarding the bishops' ballots on the three previous schemas of Dei Verbum 11's wording. Cleverly, Brown does not reveal to the reader that the "pre-voting" eventually rejected the view that Scripture contained errors, nor that Paul VI was quite active in making sure that such action was facilitated. Instead, Brown shades the truth and makes it appear as if the "pre-voting" had some clout in and of itself. Even though the votes opting for Scriptural errors were the minority opinion, nevertheless, Brown decides that he and his followers can take that slim evidence and grant themselves a license to teach it as Catholic doctrine. With such hubris as his motivator, it is not surprising that the Nihil Obstat for Brown's New Jerome Biblical Commentary was granted by himself and his two co-editors, Joseph Fitzmyer and Roland Murphy.

Incidentally, it should be noted that the 1993 Pontifical Biblical Commission, of which Brown was a member until his death in 1998, produced a detailed document on Biblical Interpretation that cites, in one place, Dei Verbum's clause "for the sake of our salvation," but it does not mention, let alone endorse, Brown's liberal interpretation of it. In fact, although the document takes a shot at the excesses of "fundamentalism," it also warns against the excesses of historical criticism, stating, "the historico-critical method cannot lay claim to enjoying a monopoly...it must be conscious of its limits, as well as to the dangers to which it is exposed..."

But this is only one highlight in a virtual flood of opposing views. As one group of bishops put it:

There is a widespread feeling that Roman documents of varying authority have for some years been systematically reinterpreting the Vatican II documents to present the minority positions at the Council as the true meaning of the Council.³⁶

As we have noted, the notion that the Bible contains errors was certainly a "minority position" at the council, but modernists have been trying to hide that fact by playing a shell game with Vatican II for the last forty years. Unfortunately their views still dominate most of our major Catholic seminaries and universities throughout the world, and even secondary schools are permeated with it. From time to time we hear about their victories and adherents. One recent surfacing occurred in 1998 when Archbishop George Pell of Australia made headlines around the world with his statement that: "The Scriptures are certainly inspired by the Holy Spirit...But they are human creations, which also contain historical and scientific errors and misunderstandings."³⁷ As Pell's assertion stirred quite a bit of controversy, he was supported by no less of an icon than Jesuit priest Fr. Joseph Fessio of Ignatius Press. Using Fr. Brown's interpretation, Fr. Fessio cited Dei Verbum's phrase "for the sake of our salvation" as the fulcrum of his defense of Pell. Although Fessio conceded to a future magisterial decision on the issue, nevertheless, he concluded: "In the meantime, I'm on the side of Archbishop Pell for the simple reason that, even if he is an archbishop, I think he's right."³⁸ When priests known for their conservative stances on most other issues have succumbed so easily to the modernist view of Scripture, it shows how deeply modernism and Fr. Brown's teaching has penetrated Catholic thinking.

In the recent flap over Mel Gibson's movie, The Passion of the Christ, several Catholic prelates tried to neutralize the film's value by stating that the Gospels were not accurate accounts of what actually took place during the passion. Bishop Patrick McGrath of San Jose led the list of faithless clerics in this category, declaring in the San Jose Mercury News on February 1 that:

While the primary source material of the film is attributed to the four gospels, these sacred books are not historical accounts of the historical events that they narrate. They are theological reflections upon the events that form the core of Christian faith and belief.

McGrath and Fessio are not alone in this, of course. They are getting their marching orders from on high. For example, in 1986 the Vatican released the document Notes on the Correct Way to Present Jews and Judaism in Preaching and Catechesis of the Roman Catholic Church. The document strongly suggests that the Gospels' accounts of the animosity between Christ and the Jews may not be accurate; rather, they are the result of the writer's inadvertent bias due to hostility that arose between Christians and Jews many years after Christ's death. It states:

The Gospels are the outcome of long and complicated editorial work....Hence it cannot be ruled out that some references hostile or less than favorable to the Jews have their historic context in conflicts between the nascent Church and the Jewish community. Certain controversies reflect Christian-Jewish relations long after the time of Jesus (n. 29).³⁹

This is one of the best examples of the dangers of historical criticism. By the words, "it cannot be ruled out," some liberal hierarch at the Vatican is trying to persuade us that the Gospels cannot be automatically assumed as historically accurate.⁴⁰ If it is true that the Gospels have been "edited," then obviously they will contain distorted ideas regarding not only the hostility between Our Lord and the Jews, but many other issues and ideas as well.

Four years later, the U.S. Catholic Bishops' document God's Mercy Endures Forever followed the Vatican's lead in questioning the accuracy of the Gospels. It reads: "The bitterness toward synagogue Judaism seen in John's gospel most likely reflects the bitterness felt by John's own community after its 'parting of the ways' with the Jewish community."⁴¹ When the USCCB says "John's own community" they are suggesting that John did not write the Gospel that bears his name; rather, it was written by a group of unidentified people in the second century who were followers of John's Christian posterity. In essence, the Vatican and the USCCB are willing to put traditional teaching about Scripture on the altar of sacrifice in order to further their ecumenical agenda and appease their overly scrupulous consciences. All this, of course, has resulted in the utter heresy which maintains that today's Jews have their own covenant with God and do not need to convert to Christianity for salvation.

These same views are often found on your local television channels. Ex-priest and liberal icon John Dominic Crossan, professor emeritus of DePaul University and ubiquitous guest on ABC, NBC and The Discovery Channel whenever the need arises for the directors to deny the historicity of the Gospels, holds to the same theory as Fr. Brown, that is, that the Gospels were not written by the four evangelists, but were a product of Christian advocates far removed from the events of Christ's life.

In a recent airing of ABC's The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, Crossan and all the chief liberals of biblical scholarship are interviewed. Crossan is asked by Stone Phillips: "Who killed Christ" to which Crossan responds: "Not the Jews....the Romans killed Christ...but we don't have any anti-Italianism today..." Crossan tries to prove that the Gospels have a bias against the Jews by claiming that Mark, which he says is the earliest Gospel, refers to the number of Jews who shouted for Jesus' crucifixion as a "crowd," but Matthew and Luke, which are written later, refer to them as a "the crowds," and by the time we get to John (whom Crossan envisions as written last and well into the second century) the "crowds" are now referred to as "the Jews." To Crossan, this is clear evidence of a strong anti-semitism growing in the Christian community, and thus the Gospels are anti-semitic.

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