On X, a (real-life) friend asked me if I agreed with this:
“THE PROTESTANT IS AN ATHEIST WRAPPED
IN THE COVER OF A BIBLE, KEEPING ONLY THE COVER, BEING HIMSELF THE TEXT OF THE BIBLE, THAT IS, HIS OWN WILL, THROUGH FREE INTERPRETATION.”
-FATHER JULIO MARIA DE LOMBARDE pic.twitter.com/Z0OK9PZ8Mv— CatholicaMonarchia (@HolyRomanVibes) April 11, 2024
I replied that “I do, and, principally, because he’s agreeing essentially with Saint Thomas on the question of heretics and faith….” I then referred her to a piece on this site: That We May Know the True God, wherein I quote Saint Thomas Aquinas saying this:
Unbelievers cannot be said “to believe in a God” as we understand it in relation to the act of faith. For they do not believe that God exists under the conditions that faith determines; hence they do not truly believe in a God, since, as the Philosopher observes (Metaph. ix, text. 22) “to know simple things defectively is not to know them at all.”
As I show in the piece, the category, “unbelievers” (infideles), for Saint Thomas most certainly included Christian heretics. While there was no such thing as a Protestant properly so-called at the time of Saint Thomas, the Angelic Doctor regarded all Christian heretics as unbelievers; hence, his logic applies to Protestants.
In order to learn about the missionary to whom the quote was attributed, I resorted to an AI translation of the Portuguese language WikiPedia article on Padre Júlio Maria de Lombaerde. In the interests of spreading knowledge about him in English, I reproduce that translation below.
Please pardon its AI-ishness, but one gets the gist. There is a real article on him at the website of the Heralds of the Gospel, which I discovered only after generating the artificial masterpiece below: Servant of God Julio Maria de Lombaerde – A Fiery Missionary in Brazil. His life appears most edifying.
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Júlio Maria de Lombaerde (Beveren-Leie, January 7, 1878 – Alto Jequitibá, December 24, 1944), born Júlio Emílio Alberto, was a Belgian Catholic missionary, naturalized Brazilian,[1] priest and religious of the Congregation of the Missionaries of the Holy Family. Founder of the Daughters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, the Missionaries of Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament and the Sacramentine Sisters of Notre Dame[2].
Biography
At the age of 15, he went to study at the St. Joseph Institute in Torhout, Belgium, a school for the training of teachers run by diocesan priests. There, he regained his desire to be a missionary and read the missionary magazines assiduously. His decision to become a missionary was spurred on by a visit from a bishop who was working in the African missions. Faced with the bishop’s preaching and the needs of the African peoples, the young Julio Emilio left for Boxtel, in the Netherlands, to begin his missionary life. On October 19, 1895, he left for Maison Carrée, in Algeria, North Africa, wearing the habit of a white brother, with the name of Optato Maria.[3]As a result of fevers, he returned to Europe and, feeling called to the priesthood, entered the Congregation of the Holy Family in Grave (Holland) to collect late vocations. He was ordained on January 13, 1908. In 1912, he was sent to Brazil where he used to sign himself as Father Julio Maria, a way of showing his filial devotion to the Virgin Mary. He arrived at the port of Recife on October 15, 1912. He then left for the parish of Macapá, where he arrived in 1913, after a spell in Natal. He spent 16 years in the north and northeast of Brazil, preaching missions, working as a parish priest and founding a religious congregation. He also dedicated himself to education and basic sanitation as a way of improving the health conditions of the local population.
In 1928, he left for Manhumirim, in the east of Minas Gerais, with the full support of Bishop Carloto Fernandes da Silva Távora of Caratinga. He spent the last 16 years of his life there, as parish priest, formator of the seminary and teacher of his religious congregations. He also dedicated himself to the press, with his newspaper O Lutador and hundreds of publications in the most varied styles: spirituality, homiletics, dogmatic theology, Eucharist, Mariology, polemics, among others. In this region of recent immigration, some of it German, he clashed with Protestants, Freemasons and Spiritists and launched his diatribes in his newspaper and in pamphlets such as O Diabo, Lutero e o Protestantismo (The Devil, Luther and Protestantism), which were distributed throughout Brazil [citation needed].
At first he had a nephew as an assistant for three years, Father Hyppolite De Poorter, and in 1931 he was visited by Brother Achille, a missionary in Mongolia.
He founded three religious congregations: the Daughters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, the Missionaries of Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament and the Sacramentine Sisters of Notre Dame.”[4]
Father Maria de Lombaerde died with a reputation for holiness on December 24, 1944, on Christmas Eve, in a car accident in the district of Vargem Grande, which today has the name Padre Júlio Maria and belongs to the parish of Alto Jequitibá-MG. The Catholic Church has authorized the opening of the beatification process, so he is currently in the first phase of this process, which has granted him the title of Servant of God.[5] His remains reside in the sanctuary of Senhor Bom Jesus de Manhumirim.[6]
