Cross-post from Father David Nix, with permission. Read it with eyes wide open, with a bearing of preparedness.

The Book of Jude for Today

Jude is one of two books in the Bible that is so short that it is numbered not according to chapter and verse, but rather verse only.  It seems Jude is particularly applicable to today.  We’ll look at a few verses with St. Jude’s words in Scripture in italics and my commentary in bold:

Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.—Jude 3

The shortest distance between two points is a straight line. So, if 1920s Catholicism looked like medieval Catholicism, then what do you think very early Catholicism looked like?  The answer is that Apostolic Christianity looked just like Patristic Catholicism which looked just like Medieval Catholicism.  This is why I keep saying that Traditional Catholicism is Apostolic Catholicism.  So, to contend for traditional Catholicism is to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.  Notice those words once for all mean that the Deposit of the Faith ended at the death of the last Apostle.  It is therefore an error to say the “Council Fathers of the 1960s” discovered something about early Christianity that the Desert Fathers did not know.  This would be nothing short of gnosticism (the heresy that a small group of special men has found a truth outside public revelation.)  The words in Scripture above, once for all, mean the deposit of the faith can not be changed by someone who hijacks the Chair of Peter (possibly twice the past seventy years) nor can early Christianity be considered “secret knowledge” that modern “Council Fathers” figured out but Medievals did not.  Rather, unlike the modernist gnostics, we traditional Catholics know that Divine Revelation went publicly from Christ to the Apostles to the Holy Fathers and Popes of infallible councils.  Hence, early Christianity “felt” very much just like Medieval Catholicism which “felt” very much like Catholicism, at least up up to the 1950s.  Anything outside of that is arrogant gnosticism that will not get your family to heaven.

For certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.—Jude 4

Dr. Taylor Marshall’s book Infiltration was met with some deal of anger in the Catholic world at its release, but that anger soon dissipated when nobody could prove any of his footnotes wrong.  So also, I believe the current anger at his recent statements will be short-lived, as no one can honestly argue with his logic of the theory of non-contradiction when applied to Divine Revelation.  That is, two opposite assertions on dogma can not both be true.  Infiltration is summarized in a single verse from Jude 4, namely, that certain people have crept in unnoticed into the fold.  But we need not fear, for God knew this would happen and these ungodly people…were long ago designated for this condemnation.

But you must remember, beloved, the predictions of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ. They said to you, “In the last time there will be scoffers, following their own ungodly passions.” It is these who cause divisions, worldly people, devoid of the Spirit. But you, beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life. And have mercy on those who doubt; save others by snatching them out of the fire; to others show mercy with fear, hating even the garment stained by the flesh.—Jude 17-23

If anyone accuses you of “schism,” remember the book of Jude here tells us that those who divert from Apostolic Catholicism are the ones who are scoffers…worldly people…who cause divisions.  The solution against a top-down apostasy in the Catholic Church is not to despair, but exactly as St. Jude wrote above:  Keep yourselves in the love of God.  (That is, keep yourself in sanctifying grace—living without mortal sin—or confessing within 24 hours if you fall into mortal sin.)  And while we are waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ we can show mercy with fear as St. Jude writes above.  Yes, even as we are opposed by hierarchical gnostics, we can still save others by snatching them out of the fire if we keep our eyes on Christ and the classic Magisterium.

https://padreperegrino.org/2022/02/the-book-of-jude/

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