Illicitude of interpreting Holy Scripture contrary to the true sense which the Church has always held
The Synod of the Vatican adopted the teaching of the Fathers, when, as it renewed the decree of Trent on the interpretation of the divine Word, it declared this to be its mind, that in matters of faith and morals, which pertain to the building up of Christian doctrine, that is to be held as the true sense of Holy Scripture which Mother Church has held and holds, whose prerogative it is to judge of the true sense and interpretation of Scripture; and, therefore, it is permitted to no one to interpret the Holy Scripture against this sense, or even against the unanimous agreement of the Fathers. (Denzinger-Hünermann 3281. Leo XIII, Encyclical Providentissimus Deus, November 18, 1893)
☣︎Caution Prevost speaks:
The Gnostic Gospel of Judas according to Prevost:
⚠️💀“He has understood that the freedom of the other, even when it is lost in evil, can still be reached by the light of a meek gesture, because he knows that true forgiveness does not await repentance, but offers itself first, as a free gift, even before it is accepted” ⚠️ (20 August 2025)
Prevost twists the Gospel to justify Bergoglio's betrayal and his own.
Those who go beyond the limits determined by the Fathers and the Church in the interpretation of Sacred Scripture fall into serious errors
With truly lamentable results, our age, casting aside all restraint in its search for the ultimate causes of things, frequently pursues novelties so ardently that it rejects the legacy of the human race. Thus it falls into very serious errors, which are even more serious when they concern sacred authority, the interpretation of Sacred Scripture, and the principal mysteries of Faith. The fact that many Catholic writers also go beyond the limits determined by the Fathers and the Church herself is extremely regrettable. In the name of higher knowledge and historical research (they say), they are looking for that progress of dogmas which is, in reality, nothing but the corruption of dogmas. (Pius X. Decree Lamentabili sane exitu, July 3, 1907)
Saint Augustin, de Haer: [The error of the heretics about Christ is limited to three areas: They err either about his divinity, or his humanity, or the two together.]
2 Timothy 4:3-4
Douay-Rheims 1899 American Edition
3 For there shall be a time, when they will not endure sound doctrine; but, according to their own desires, they will heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears:
4 And will indeed turn away their hearing from the truth, but will be turned unto fables.
St. Ambrose:
“Even heretics appear to possess Christ, for none of them denies the name of Christ. Still, anyone who does not confess everything that pertains to Christ does in fact deny Christ.”
Acts 17:30-31
God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, but now he commands people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world with justice by a man whom he has appointed. He has given public confirmation of this to all by raising him from the dead.”
The Church Fathers teach that Jesus patiently awaited Judas's conversion and therefore omitted to publicly denounce him by name.
Mt.26-24. The Son of man goeth as it is written of him: but woe unto that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed! it had been good for that man if he had not been born.
JEROME. Judas, not withheld by either the first or second warning, perseveres in his treachery; the Lord’s long-suffering nourishes his audacity. Now then his punishment is foretold, that denunciations of wrath may correct where good feeling has no power.
JEROME. O wonderful endurance of the Lord, He had said before, One of you shall betray me. The traitor perseveres in his wickedness; He designates him more particularly, yet not by name. For Judas, while the rest were sorrowful, and withdrew their hands, and bid away the food from their mouths, with the same hardihood and recklessness which led him to betray Him, reached forth his hand into the dish with his Master, passing off his audacity as a good conscience.
1 John 3:8
He that committeth sin is of the devil: for the devil sinneth from the beginning. For this purpose, the Son of God appeared, that he might destroy the works of the devil.
Catena Aurea:
REMIGIUS. Woe also to all who draw near to Christ’s table with an evil and defiled conscience! who though they do not deliver Christ to the Jews to be crucified, deliver Him to their own sinful members to be taken. He adds, to give more emphasis, Good were it for that man if he had never been born.
JEROME. We are not to infer from this that man has a being before birth; for it cannot be well with any man till he has a being; it simply implies that it is better not to be, than to be in evil.
AUGUSTINE. (Quæst. Ev. i. 40.) And if it be contended that there is a life before this life, that will prove that not only not for Judas, but for none other is it good to have been born. Can it mean, that it were better for him not to have been born to the Devil, namely, for sin? Or does it mean that it had been good for him not to have been born to Christ at his calling, that he should now become apostate?
JEROME. His question feigns either great respect, or a hypocritical incredulousness. The rest who were not to betray Him, said only Lord; the actual traitor addresses Him as Master, as though it were some excuse that he denied Him as Lord, and betrayed a Master only.
Hebrews 9:28
so Christ, having been offered once to take away the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to bring salvation to those who are eagerly waiting for him.
Commented Bible by Monsignor Juan Straubinger: “The tradition that is valid for the Church is the one that has its origin in divine revelation, that is, in the preaching of Jesus Christ himself and of the apostles, "so that the absolute and immutable truth preached from the beginning by the apostles may always be believed in the same way” (Pius X in the oath focuses on the modernists)
The Oath Against Modernism: The purpose of this is, then, not that dogma may be tailored according to what seems better and more suited to the culture of each age; rather, that the absolute and immutable truth preached by the apostles from the beginning may never be believed to be different, may never be understood in any other way.
St. Peter warned that those who maliciously twist the Scriptures weave their own condemnation:
2 Peter 3:16 As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are certain things hard to be understood, which the unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, to their own destruction.
2 Peter 2:2 But there were also false prophets among the people, even as there shall be among you lying teachers, who shall bring in sects of perdition, and deny the Lord who bought them: bringing upon themselves swift destruction.
Catena Aurea
CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. lxxii. 1) But not even then did our Lord expose the traitor by name; Jesus answered, He it is, to whom I shall give a sop when I have dipped it. Such a mode of declaring him, should itself have turned him from his purpose. Even if a partaking of the same table did not shame him, a partaking of the same bread might have. And when He had dipped the sop, He gave it to Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon.
AUGUSTINE. (Tr. lxii. 3) Not as some careless readers think, that then Judas received singly Christ’s body. For our Lord had already distributed the sacraments of His body and blood to all of them, while Judas was there, as Luke relates; and after this He dipped the sop, as John relates, and gave it to the traitor; the dipping of the bread perhaps signifying the deep dye of his sin; for some dipping cannot be washed out again; i. e. when things are dipped, in order to receive a permanent dye. If however this dipping meant any thing good, he was ungrateful for it, and deserved the damnation which followed him; And after the sop, Satan entered into him.
CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. lxii. 1) So long as he was one of the twelve, the devil did not dare to force an entrance into him; but when he was pointed out, and expelled, then he easily leaped into him.
AUGUSTINE. (Tr. lxii. 2) Or entered into him, that he might have more full possession of him: for he was in him, when he agreed with the Jews to betray our Lord for a sum of money, according to Luke: Then entered Satan into Judas Iscariot, and he went away, and communed with the chief priests. (Luke 22:3. 4) In this state he came to the supper. But after the sop the devil entered, not to tempt him, as though he were independent but to possess him as his own.
AUGUSTINE. (Tr. lxii) But some will say, was his being given up to the devil the effect of his receiving the sop from Christ? To whom we answer, that they may learn here the danger of receiving amiss what is in itself good. If he is reproved who does not discern, i. e. who does not distinguish, the Lord’s body from other food, how is he condemned who, feigning himself a friend, comes an enemy to the Lord’s table?
John 13:27 And after the sop Satan entered into him. Then said Jesus unto him, That thou doest, do quickly.
Ver. 18. Shall lift up his heel against me. It is the sense of those words, (Psal. xl. 10.) hath supplanted me; and they were spoken of Judas's sin in betraying Christ. Wi. — Jesus Christ applies in this place to the perfidy of Judas, that which David appears to have said on occasion of the perfidy of Achitophel, who was thus a figure of the perfidious Judas. V.
Ver. 27. Satan entered into him, who presently went out with great anger and indignation. It was then night, likely about nine o'clock. (Witham) — That which thou dost, do quickly. It is not a license, much less a command, to go about his treason: but a signification to him, that Christ would not hinder or resist what he was about, do it as soon as he pleased: but was both ready, and desirous to suffer for our redemption. (Challoner). — Christ does not by these words exhort the traitor, much less command him, to perform his wicked deed; but he means to reprobate it, and at the same time testify that he would not hinder his being betrayed. St. Chrysostom hom. lxxi. in Joan. — It is the voice not of command, but of permission, not of a person in fear, but of one prepared for death. S. Leo.
Catena Aurea by St. Thomas Aquinas
AUGUSTINE. (Tr. lxii. 4) He did not however enjoin the act, but foretold it, not from desire for the destruction of the perfidious, but to hasten on the salvation of the faithful.
CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. lxxii. 2.) That thou doest, do quickly, is not a command, or a recommendation, but a reproof, meant to shew too that He was not going to offer any hindrance to His betrayal.
GREGORY. (ii. Mor. 11) By the time of the day is signified the end of the action. Judas went out in the night to accomplish his perfidy, for which he was never to be pardoned.
“Son of perdition” St John 17:12 While I was with them, I kept them in thy name. Those whom thou gavest me have I kept; and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition, that the scripture may be fulfilled.
“Perdition” - a state of eternal punishment and damnation into which a sinful and unrepentant person passes after death.
Then Satan entered Judas Iscariot
Luke 22:3-4; John 13:17.
The Council emphasizes that Judas exercised his own free will to betray Jesus Christ, which is considered a sin, leading to his damnation. Additionally, the Catechism of the Council of Trent states that Judas lost his soul and is therefore in Hell. This teaching is supported by various Church figures, including Pope Leo the Great and St. Augustine, who affirmed that Judas was damned for his actions.
Raban.: He “hung himself,” to shew that he was hateful to both heaven and earth.
St. Jerome (Bible Catena Aurea Matthew 27:3):
It profits nothing to do an act of penance which is incapable of correcting the sin. If a man sins against his brother in such a way that the wrong he committed can be amended, it is possible for him to be forgiven. If the consequences of his sin remain in force, however, in vain does he attempt to do penance. The psalmist applies this truth to our most miserable Judas when he says, “Let his prayer be counted as sin.” Not only was Judas unable to repair the damage of his sinful betrayal, but he even continued to compound the evil of that initial crime by committing suicide. Of such things the apostle speaks in his second epistle to the Corinthians: “Let not a brother be overwhelmed by greater sorrow.”
St Jerome: The weight of Judas’s impiety overshadowed the magnitude of his avarice. Seeing the Lord condemned to death, he brought the money to the priests as if it were in his power to change the sentence of Christ’s persecutors. Although he would change his mind eventually, he could not change the consequence of his first decision. Yet if he sins who betrays innocent blood, how much more do they sin who purchase innocent blood and provoke a disciple by offering a reward for his apostasy. Those who deny the apostle’s free will and attempt instead to explain Judas’s betrayal by attributing to him an evil nature will need also to explain how a person of evil nature can repent.
John Chrysostom
This was a charge both against him and against these others. Against Judas, not because he repented but because he did so late and slowly and became selfcondemned. For that he gave himself up, he himself confessed. And it was a charge against the others, in that having the power to reverse the verdict, they did not repent. But observe when it is that Judas feels remorse. When his sin was completed and had been fully accomplished. The devil is like this. He does not permit those that are inattentive to see the evil in due time, lest they might repent. At least when Jesus was saying so many things, Judas was not influenced. But when his offense was completed, then repentance came upon him. And then it was too late to be profitable. For to condemn it and to throw down the pieces of silver and not to regard the Jewish people were all acceptable things. But to hang himself, this again was unpardonable and a work of an evil spirit. For the devil led him out of his repentance too soon, so that he should reap no fruit from it, and carried him off by a most disgraceful death, and one manifest to all, having persuaded him to destroy himself. The Gospel of Matthew, Homily
Acts 1:24-25
Then they prayed, saying, “Lord, you know the hearts of everyone. Show us which one of these two you have chosen to take the place in this apostolic ministry that Judas abandoned to go to his own place.”
Blessed Isabel Canori Mora prophesied the divine punishment that would fall upon these apostate rebels.
She warned that apostates within the Church are the worst enemies and persecutors of Jesus Christ, trampling and profaning the sound Doctrine of the Apostles to lead the faithful away from Divine Law with harmful doctrines:
To the wretches who, with increasing pride and insolence, in word and deed, with disbelief and apostasy, trample upon the holy religion and the divine law.
They use the words of Sacred Scripture and the Gospel, corrupting their true meaning to support their perverse intentions and their crooked principles.
But woe to those religious men and women who do not obey God's law, who despise the holy rules! Woe, woe! Because they will all perish under the terrible chastisement... as will all who deliver themselves to debauchery and follow the false maxims of the deplorable philosophy of those times!”
“In His omnipotence He will chastise the proud for their temerity and shameless insolence. God will use the powers of darkness to exterminate these sectarian, iniquitous and criminal men who plotted to eradicate the Catholic Church, our Holy Mother, to her deepest roots and throw her to the ground.
“God will allow wicked men to be cruelly chastised by fierce demons because they voluntarily submitted to the power of the devil and conspired with him to cause damage to the Holy Catholic Church.”
