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| [Tradtional] Laws of Fast and Abstinence |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-07-2020, 12:52 PM - Forum: Church Doctrine & Teaching
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Church Laws of Fast and Abstinence
ABSTINENCE
1. Everyone over seven years of age is bound to observe the law of abstinence.
2. Complete abstinence is to be observed on Fridays, Ash Wednesday, Holy Saturday, and the Vigils of the Immaculate Conception and Christmas. On days of complete abstinence, meat and soup or gravy made from meat
may not be used at all.
3. Partial abstinence is to be observed on Ember Wednesdays and Saturdays and on the Vigil of Pentecost. On days of partial abstinence, meat and soup or gravy made from meat may be taken only once a day at the principal meal.
FAST
1. Everyone over 21 and under 59 years of age is also bound to observe the law of fast.
2. The days of fast are the weekdays of Lent, including Holy Saturday, the Ember Days and Vigils of Pentecost, the Immaculate Conception and Christmas.
3. On days of fast, only one full meal is allowed. Two other meatless meals, sufficient to maintain strength, may be taken according to one's needs; but together they should not equal another full meal.
4. Meat may be taken at the principal meal on a day of fast except on Fridays, Ash Wednesday, Holy Saturday, and the Vigils of the Immaculate Conception and Christmas.
5. Eating between meals is not permitted, but liquids, including milk and fruit juces, are allowed.
6. Where health or ability to work would be seriously affected, the law does not oblige. In doubt concerning fast or abstinence, a parish priest or confessor should be consulted.
* There is no obligation for fast or abstinence on a holy day of obligation, even if it falls on a Friday.
The New Eucharistic Fast Laws
(Motu Proprio of Pope Pius XII of March 19, 1957)
1. Priests and faithful before Mass or Holy Communion respectively - whether it is the morning, afternoon, or evening or Midnight Mass - must abstain for three hours from solid foods and alcoholic beverages, and for one hour from non-alcoholic beverages. Water does not break the fast.
2. The infirm, even if not bedridden, may take non-alcoholic beverages and that which is really and properly medicine, either in liquid or solid form, before Mass or Holy Communion without any time limit.
His Holiness, Pope Pius XII, earnestly exhorts priests and faithful who are able to do so to observe the old and venerable form of the Eucharistic Fast (from foods and liquids from midnight) before Holy Communion. All those who will make use of these concessions must compensate for the good received by becoming shining examples of a Christian life and principally with works of penance and charity.
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| Tota Pulchera Es |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-07-2020, 12:28 PM - Forum: Marian Hymns
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Tota pulchra es is an old Catholic prayer, written in the fourth century. It is one of the five antiphons for the psalms of Second Vespers for the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. The title means "You are completely beautiful" (referring to the Virgin Mary). It speaks of her immaculate conception. It takes some text from the book of Judith, and other text from Song of Songs, specifically 4:7.
Tota pulchra es
Tota pulchra es, Maria.
Et macula originalis non est in Te.
Tu gloria Ierusalem.
Tu laetitia Israel.
Tu honorificentia populi nostri.
Tu advocata peccatorum.
O Maria, O Maria.
Virgo prudentissima.
Mater clementissima.
Ora pro nobis.
Intercede pro nobis.
Ad Dominum Iesum Christum.
You are all beautiful, Mary,
and the original stain [spot] (of sin) is not in you.
You are the glory of Jerusalem,
you are the joy of Israel,
you give honour to our people.
You are an advocate of sinners.
O Mary,
Virgin most intelligent,
Mother most merciful.
Pray for us,
Plead for us,
To the Lord Jesus Christ.
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| New Technology Will Dangerously Expand Government Spying On Citizens |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-07-2020, 10:14 AM - Forum: Socialism & Communism
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This New Technology Will Dangerously Expand Government Spying On Citizens
Zero Hedge | 12/05/2020
Authored by Jack Rasmus via Counterpunch.org,
If you’re worried about the capability of government to conduct surveillance of citizens engaged in political assembly and protest, or even just personal activity, then you should be aware the technological capability of government surveillance is about to expand exponentially.
The US Air Force’s Research Lab (yes, it has its own lab) has recently signed a contract to test new software of a company called SignalFrame, a Washington DC wireless tech company. The company’s new software is able to access smartphones, and from your phone jump off to access any other wireless or bluetooth device in the near vicinity. To quote from the article today in the Wall St. Journal, the smartphone is used “as a window onto usage of hundreds of millions of computers,s routers, fitness trackers, modern automobiles and other networked devices, known collectively as the ‘Internet of Things’.”
Your smartphone in effect becomes a government listening device that detects and accesses all nearby wireless or bluetooth devices, or anything that has a MAC address for that matter. How ‘near’ is nearby is not revealed by the company, or the Air Force, both of which refused to comment on the Wall St. Journal story. But with the expansion of 5G wireless, it should be assumed it’s more than just a couple steps from your smartphone.
One can imagine some scary scenarios with this capability in the hands of government snoops:- Not only would the government know your geographical location via the GPS signal to your cellphone. They’d know what you are doing. And with whom.
- A political gathering would allow them to see all the owners of other cellphones in the vicinity of a protest or demonstration. How many are gathering at a particular street or location. The direction they might be heading. Or whether there’s an organization meeting in a hall or room and who (with a cellphone as well) might be attending.
- If you’re driving on a winding coastal or mountain road, it would know, and could possibly access, your car’s various electronic systems to turn them off. It might access your car’s circuit board that governs your power steering when you’re driving in an area of winding roads. Or it might be able to just shut down your car’s electrical system and remotely lock all your doors. The police no longer have to engage in highway chases until capture.
- The new tech would allow the government to access the data on your fitbit device while you’re jogging. Or worse, maybe even interfere with the signal on your heart pacemaker device.
- The technology might be used to access your smartphone, and from there to turn on your home Alexa device to listen in and record conversations without you ever knowing. Or to listen in on your zoom conferencing on your laptop. Or maybe even worse, to shut down or bypass the safety features on your home furnace equipment. Or turn off your home security system.
- And with 5G wireless broadband, the tracking might be extended well beyond the range of a bluetooth device. Add 5G broadband wireless to SignalFrame’s technology, and then wed that to the capability of machine learning and artificial intelligence, and you get instant processing of a massive amount of data on any targeted person or gathering!
This problem of government surveillance on free citizen activity is not new. It took a giant leap after 9-11 with the Patriot Act and acquisition of phone data by Homeland Security and other government agencies. It was supposed to have stopped. But it hasn’t. The snoops have continued to ignore Congressional resolutions and court decisions on privacy invasion of citizens. The latest Air Force lab testing is likely just a recent ‘tip of the iceberg’ revelation. And if the Air Force is doing it, be assured so are the Army, Navy, the NSA, CIA, FBI and all the other government snoops.
Certainly this kind of technology would be used not only by the US government. If the USA has it, you can bet other governments do too–especially China, Russia, Israel, and probably some of the Europeans as well.
Unlike in 2001, in 2020 SignalFrame’s technology takes government surveillance to a new level–given the ubiquity of smartphones, Internet of Things (IOT) devices, digital circuit board dependent autos, and all the many household devices now with MAC wireless access addresses. And now, unlike circa 2001 and the passage of the Patriot Act (and its continuation in annual NDAA legislation), we have AI, machine learning, neural nets everywhere, and massive government data processing power.
In short, Technology is becoming a growing tool and power in the hands of governments, to use to thwart democratic and constitutional rights–as well as to detect, apprehend, and ‘deal with’ those who protest and oppose those governments.
The coming decade in the USA will be not only increasingly difficult economically, increasingly unstable politically, but will prove to be a period in which technology is increasingly threatening basic civil rights as well as the very foundations of Democracy itself.
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| The Great Reset and Klaus Schwab |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-07-2020, 10:07 AM - Forum: Great Reset
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The Great Reset and Klaus Schwab
American Thinker | December 5, 2020
Klaus Schwab, the chief proponent of a global project called the “Great Reset,” may be the most influential “intellectual” in the world today. A former member of the UN Advisory Board on Sustainable Development, he is the founder of the World Economic Forum (WEF) that meets annually in the Swiss resort town of Davos. Business Insider explains, “Each year, business leaders and heads of state give lectures and speak on panels about topics ranging from gender equality and venture capital to mental health and climate change.” And as the WEF website states, “The non-profit organization's aim is to engage the foremost political, business, cultural and other leaders of society to shape global, regional and industry agendas.”
The “Great Reset,” a term coined in a 2011 book by economist Richard Florida and wholeheartedly adopted by Schwab in the context of the United Nation’s Agenda 2030 for sustainable development, proposes to determine “the future state of global relations, the direction of national economies, the priorities of societies, the nature of business models and the management of the global commons.” It presents itself as a humane and compassionate means to inaugurate a beneficial root-and-branch transformation of the social, economic and political structure of the world’s “operating systems”: capitalism, the free market and democracy.
Practical capitalism is to be supplanted by what Schwab calls “stakeholder capitalism” in which the private sector is tightly controlled by government (otherwise known as “fascism”). The free market is considered unfair and skewed to the advantage of a piratical business class exploiting the world’s poor and hungry. Democracy is regarded as an inefficient political arrangement relying on the incapacity of the demos to understand its own best interests or to command the intricacy of integrated governing structures and processes.
Instead, the Great Reset will remake the world -- in Schwab’s words, “to create a more inclusive, resilient and sustainable world going forward,” all the platitudes neatly packed into one sentence. Private property deforms the natural relations between human beings and must be abolished. Private transportation will not be allowed. “Contrary content” in the printing or production of materials will not be permitted, at the cost of access to social media and Internet domains. Fossil fuels will be replaced wholesale by Green technologies. Home gardens will be outlawed. The Christian faith will be gradually suppressed (as is happening today). Vaccines will become mandatory.
Society will become “cashless” and all standard monetary transactions replaced by digital currency and governed by electronic means, which can be cancelled by reigning authority at the slightest provocation. Debts will be forgiven and creditors will face the prospect of bankruptcy. The middle class and small entrepreneurs will be wiped out. Commerce will become progressively “contact-less.”
The United States must be neutralized via social isolation, lockdown-induced poverty, and facemask conformity and passivity. Constant surveillance will be employed to ensure compliance. The human being will be “enhanced” through biosecurity, synthetic biology, implantable microchips, cortical modems, nanobots, genetic editing and designer babies. Everyone will be equal, everyone will be secure from the ravages of competition, risk and chance, and everyone will be happy -- as they are today in the political template for the Great Reset, Communist China and its fascist business model.
So here we are. Schwab is a canny manipulator and knows how to turn a perceived catastrophe to his advantage, in his own words “to break glass in case of an emergency.” He has understood that the most effective enabler of the Great Reset has been the pandemic panic unleashed by COVID-19, which has taken the planet by storm, reduced entire populations to abject terror, led to massive lockdowns and personality disfigurement brought about by mandatory masks, and promoted the reign of political despots, ignorant leaders, hired-gun health officials and left-wing organizations like the W.H.O., The Lancet, and innumerable others. As Prince Philip, a WEF member, mused, “We have a golden opportunity to seize something good from the crisis,” which may “make people more receptive to big visions of change” and reset the global economy toward “sustainability” -- the buzzword du jour.
Indeed, COVID is a more powerful persuader even than “climate change,” since virus panic works immediately but climate panic “can only follow with a time lag.” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, a committed Marxist and an admirer of Schwab, is also on board. Addressing the United Nations, Trudeau asserted that “This pandemic has provided an opportunity for a reset. This is our chance to accelerate our pre-pandemic efforts to re-imagine economic systems that actually address global challenges like extreme poverty, inequality and climate change.”
As Rex Murphy writes in the National Post, “the word that should trouble us most in all of this is ‘imagine’…. Is it really a good idea to place economies under the servitude of amateur imaginations? You cannot dream an economy (although it is very possible… to kill the one we already have).” Trudeau, with no genuine university education to speak of and the beneficiary of a large family trust fund, is adept at bafflegab and empty abstractions. His mullings originate in The Communist Manifesto and John Lennon’s treacly “Imagine.”
Even the Pope is a passionate believer in the Great Reset, though knowing Francis’s affiliation with Liberation Theology, this comes as no surprise. As the Pope said in a recent interview, “We need change. The pandemic brought our organizational and developmental models into a crisis; it exposed many injustices, the troubling silence and social and health failures, subjecting a great number of our brothers to the processes of social exclusion and degradation.” Typical fare. One recalls the Pope’s 2014 message to Schwab urging “an openness to the transcendent” from which “a new political and business mentality can take shape, one capable of guiding all economic and financial activity within the horizon of an ethical approach which is truly humane… I ask you to ensure that humanity is served by wealth and not ruled by it.”
Of course, attendees of the Davos conference number among the wealthiest people on the planet, including Bill Gates, George Soros, Prince William, Jamie Dimon (JP Morgan Chase CEO), Jack Ma and many others, who fly in by private jet and have no problem with membership fees ranging up to $620,000 per year and chalets that go for up to $140,000 per week. These great benefactors of suffering humanity received the Pope’s “divine blessings on you and the participants of the Forum, as well as on your families and all your work.” That’s a pretty good gig, if you can get it.
The topic for the 2021 Davos conference, which has been postponed from January to the summer, is, naturally, the “Great Reset” and the expedient arrival of the pandemic. So COVID it is.
In his July 2020 book COVID-19: The Great Reset, co-authored with Thierry Malleret, Schwab regards the virus as a providential pretext to remake the world and unleash a “fourth industrial revolution” that, as we have observed, will eliminate private property, restrict travel and establish a surveillance state in which everyone is chipped and monitored. The authors admit that COVID-19 is not “an existential threat” and that it is “one of the least deadly pandemics the world has experienced in the last 2000 years,” but surreptitiously convert it into a pretext for unprecedented social and economic change. The lockdowns are a way of softening up the population to accept a global techno-fascist revolution presided over by a club of billionaires, their political adjutants and chosen “experts,” and UN mandarins. Schwab’s books make this clear.
Accordingly, Schwab takes to task “some rich countries endowed with sophisticated health systems and strong assets in research” that will be perceived to have failed their citizens. He targets their “social fabric and socio-economic system” as the “real” culprit guilty of “failing to guarantee economic and social welfare for the majority of citizens.” This is true, but not in the way Schwab intends, for it is precisely the draconian measures these countries have imposed that have ruined their economies, helped to unravel the social fabric, and caused needless suffering and unnecessary deaths.
Klaus Schwab is a dangerous man. One must admit he deploys the technocratic jargon and terminology -- what I call the “germinology” -- to perfection, and can be quite convincing. But that does not make him right. It makes him sinister and portentous.
[...]
In any case, one must be prepared for what is impending. It’s not a joke and it’s not an unanchored fantasy. It is happening as we speak. The time has come to implement the Great Reject before we experience the Great Regret. It makes sense to consult the tainted oracle and I would suggest looking into one or two of his books, whether the aforementioned COVID-19: The Great Reset, the earlier The Fourth Industrial Revolution, or the most recent The Aftermath of the COVID-19 Pandemic. For all his rhetorical sleight of hand, polished demeanor and public acclaim, Klaus Schwab is nonetheless a wannabe nabob and a rather ridiculous little man, but as we know from history, preposterous people can sway multitudes and cause unprecedented havoc and suffering. They may be the object of justified ridicule, but they must also be taken seriously. Klaus Schwab is no exception.
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| Doctor Lost His Medical License after Publicly Speaking Out Against CV Oppression |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-07-2020, 08:49 AM - Forum: Pandemic 2020 [Secular]
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Doctor Has License Yanked After Saying This About the Coronavirus
Townhall.com | Dec 05, 2020
An Oregon doctor has reportedly lost his medical license after attending a "Stop the Steal" rally and delivering comments about the coronavirus and face masks.
In a video of Dr. Steven LaTulippe's remarks at the Nov. 7 "Stop the Steal Rally," the physician described himself as a retired Air Force officer, an ordained minister, and a practicing physician in The Dalles, Oregon area.
"I want you to know that I never shut down during the entire COVID season, from the time it was declared till now," LaTulippe told the crowd. "I hate to tell you this -- it might scare you -- but I and my staff, none of us once wore a mask in my clinic. And how many problems did we have in our clinic from that? Zero. Absolutely none."
The doctor called the lockdowns a threat to the American people, freedom, and the Constitution, and petitioned those in the crowd to remove their "mask of shame."
While the physician acknowledged the virus was real, LaTulippe said it is "a common cold virus that has been with us forever."
"Please don't be duped. You have an immune system," LaTulippe said.
LaTulippe also said he has treated 75 cases of the coronavirus and every one of his patients got better in a week.
"Don't let them put you in a state of fear," the doctor urged. "That is oppression."
For his heresy, the Oregon Medical Board issued an emergency suspension of LaTulippe's license, finding the doctor engaged in "unprofessional" and "dishonorable" conduct, NBC News reported.
The emergency suspension alleges LaTulippe told a patient in July that asymptomatic people should not be tested and that wearing a face mask does not prevent transmission of the virus. LaTulippe reportedly directed the patient not to self-isolate because, according to the doctor, exposing other people to the virus would help those people build immunities against the disease.
The medical board claims LaTulippe and his staff refused to wear masks and encouraged patients to remove theirs as well. The clinic also failed to implement screening procedures upon entry of the premises, according to medical board investigators.
The medical board deemed LaTulippe "an immediate danger to the public" and said the doctor "presents a serious danger to the public health and safety."
"I'm very interested in sound medical practice, and I'm interested in good science," LaTulippe told NBC News. "And when science and medicine become perverted with corrupt politics, then I'm up for a fight, and that's what made me go to that rally and say what I said."
LaTullipe can no longer practice medicine in the State of Oregon, where the physician has practiced for over 20 years.
A residency colleague of LaTulippe has set up a defense fund.
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| Archbishop Lefebvre: 1985 Sermons - 'Changes in the Sacraments' |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-07-2020, 08:12 AM - Forum: Sermons and Conferences
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The Angelus - May 1985
The Archbishop Speaks
Sermons of His Excellency Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre
During April 1985 at Chicago and Saint Louis
First Sermon - in Chicago
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.
My dear children, my dear brethren,
It is a great pleasure for me to come here for this ceremony of the Sacrament of Confirmation—for the first time in Chicago! I passed through Chicago one time, but I never celebrated the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass for you. I congratulate the people who have prepared the Altar and this room—so nice, so beautiful—very important for this very important ceremony of the Sacrament of Confirmation and the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
For you, my dear children, you shall receive the grace of the Sacrament of Confirmation. This is a very great day, very important, because you know the teaching of the Church, the doctrine of the Church: we receive only once the Sacrament of Confirmation. It is not the same as the Sacrament of Holy Eucharist or the Sacrament of Penance. We must receive many times the Sacrament of Penance and the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist, but the Sacrament of Confirmation is the same as Baptism and Holy Orders for the priests. We shall receive it only once during our life because we receive in our soul a character. Our souls receive this sign of this grace and your angels see this sign of the Sacrament; also the holy souls who are in heaven know that we are baptized and they know that we received the Sacrament of Confirmation.
The grace of the Sacrament of Confirmation is very important—more than ever in these times of confusion in the Church, in this time of crisis of the Church. You know that now, in many dioceses, it is no longer the bishop who gives the Sacrament of Confirmation. He delegates many priests and he, himself, does not give the Sacrament of Confirmation. And they have the same thinking about this Sacrament as the Protestants: "It is not very necessary; it is just a remembrance of the Sacrament of Baptism." I know of a bishop who wrote, in a letter to his diocese, that the Sacrament of Confirmation does not give the Holy Ghost; it is only a remembrance of the Holy Ghost we received in Baptism, and so the Sacrament of Confirmation is no longer a true sacrament if we do not receive the Holy Ghost. And now these same bishops—and there are many bishops who think this way—now they try to have the Holy Ghost by charismatism, pentecostalism, WITHOUT the sacraments, directly from God. They no longer need the true sacraments and this is not the Will of God! Jesus Christ is God and Jesus Christ, Who is very God Himself, instituted these Seven Sacraments, not more—not eight, not six—but Seven Sacraments. He instituted this Sacrament of Confirmation and we know that if we receive this sacrament with good dispositions we receive the Holy Ghost.
You shall see in a few moments, when the Bishop begins the ceremony of the Sacrament of Confirmation, he stands and prays God that He gives you all the gifts of the Holy Ghost, and you answer "Amen! Amen! Amen!" And after this prayer you and your sponsor come forth, and when the Bishop puts his hand on your head and signs your forehead by the Sign of the Cross with the Holy Oil, with true Holy Oil! The Holy Oil I consecrated myself during Holy Week, as I have done all my life of bishop, and as all bishops have done this consecration before the Second Vatican Council. In our days, we do not know what this oil is—it is no longer Holy Oil—they use oil of nuts, I do not know, soya? That is not good and perhaps that is not valid because in all tradition of the Church during twenty centuries, the Popes and the Councils have said we must use olive oil, no other oil. So it is very important to have this thing because by this Sacrament we receive the Holy Ghost. So when the bishop puts his hand on your heard and signs your forehead with the Sign of the Cross with Holy Oil and says the words of the Sacrament of Confirmation, at this time you will receive the gifts of the Holy Ghost.
And you need these gifts of the Holy Ghost, very much! We need to fight—fight against the scandals of the world, fight against all bad spirits, all devils; they are now in the world and they try to put us in mortal sin. Mortal sin, that is the cancer of the world! Now so many things in the world are against the Commandments of God, against the Decalogue; so we must have these gifts of the Holy Ghost to fight against the Devil.
And you must also have the missionary spirit. The Holy Ghost whom you receive gives you this spirit of the missionary. Because you receive this grace and these gifts of the Holy Ghost, not for you only, but also for other people: You know that St. Therese of the Child Jesus was declared by Pius XII as protector and patron of all missions and St. Therese was a Carmelite, a Carmelite nun. She did not go out into the world, in the countries of mission. She remained in her convent and is now protector of all missions because she had this spirit of missionary, and she offered her life—ALL her life to save the souls, for the missionary priests. So she was a great missionary, and you can do the same! Offer your life and your difficulties and your pains to save souls.
After the ceremony you stand and say the Creed, the Our Father and the Hail Mary. These prayers you say before all people present, all people in heaven, to show that you are true Christians, true Catholics.
And so that is the ceremony of the Sacrament of Confirmation. I do not change anything. It is the same Sacrament, the same ceremony, when I received myself the Sacrament of Confirmation; it is the same ceremony that I do for you, it is the same! And your parents, your grandparents, received the same ceremony. I did not change anything. We keep the true tradition of the Catholic Church. When you return home, you can be sure that you received the Holy Ghost with all His gifts which you need to remain true Christians. That is very important.
My dear brethren, I want to say some words on this occasion because you know that we are in a sad situation in the Church after Vatican Council II and the "reforms" in the Church; the effects, the fruits of these reforms are very bad, very bad! Cardinal Ratzinger himself said recently, in an interview with the Italian review Jesu, he gave a description of the situation in the Church today as very tragic, tragic! I met with Cardinal Ratzinger last January, and I spoke with him about that. I said to him: "You made a description of the situation in the Church now that perhaps I do not do because it is so sad, so confused."
He said:"In Europe, in the Church in Europe, many priests and many bishops no longer believe in the Divinity of Jesus Christ!"
That is the basis of our Faith, and they do not believe in the Divinity of Jesus Christ!"In the States, in North America, they no longer have conscience of the Law, no more moral law, no more sin, everyone makes one's own morals, one's own law, and so morality is getting worse and worse. In South America, there is the theology of liberation!"
What is liberation theology? It is the destruction of society; no more authority. It is the spirit of revolution in society, against authority, all authority.
Quote:"In Africa, in India, in Japan, there are Catholics who want 'inculturation'; they want an African Church, an Indian Church, a Japanese Church—that is no longer the Catholic Church!"
That is what Cardinal Ratzinger himself said, he said it! And, so I said to him,
Quote:"What is the source of these bad fruits? For me, it is the Council of aggiornamento; that signifies the Council of the changes. What changes? Changes in the sacraments, changes in catechisms, changes in the Bible, so that we are no longer Catholics [but] are like Protestants. And that comes from the spirit of the Council!"
And he said,
Quote:"No! No, no, no, that does not come from the Council; it comes from bad interpretations of the Council; it comes from abuses of the reforms."
I said,"That is not true. That comes from the new orientation of the Church in the Council, especially by ecumenism."
Ecumenism and Religious Liberty are the same: "All religions are good now!" Before the Council the Popes said: "There is one, only one, true Religion, the Catholic Religion!" Why? Because God Himself instituted this religion! God is our Creator and our Creator said "That is your religion, the Religion of Jesus Christ, the Religion of the Catholic Church. Myself, I form the Catholic Church; Myself I form this Catholic Church; Myself I give you the sacraments; Myself I give you the Church, the Catholic Church: that is the religion for ALL men, all men!" And He is God. There are not two gods, three gods; there is only One God! And there is only one true religion! All Popes, during twenty centuries said that, and that is the motive of the missionary spirit of the Church. Many, many missionaries died, gave their blood, to affirm that only the Catholic Religion is the true religion! All martyrs, they gave their blood.
And so after the Council now, "all religions are good, all religions have the Truth. We look after the truth together. Where is the Catholic Church? It is the same as the Protestants, the same as Buddhists, the same as Moslems." That is impossible! That is ecumenism!
And so they reformed the Mass, [they made] the New Mass, the new sacraments, the new catechisms, the new Bible. All is changed by the spirit of ecumenism, to be closer to the Protestants. And the result is that many Catholics abandon their Faith and many become Protestants, or another religion, or they abandon all religion. We can see in your seminaries, in your convents, in your monasteries—where are the vocations? That is the destruction of the Church!
So we must keep our Catholic Faith. We must remain in the Tradition of the Catholic Church! Doing that, we follow all Popes before the Council until Pope Pius XII. He was a very holy Pope and he remained in the Catholic Faith.
It is very sad to see that Pope Paul VI and even Pope John Paul II are too ecumenical. The presence of our Pope, the Catholic Pope, in a Lutheran church in Rome was a scandal! The presence of the delegate of the Pope to [lay down] the first stone of a big mosque in Rome is a scandal! The Concordat with Italy, the new concordat with Italy by which Italy is no longer a Catholic State, is a lay State—no more religion in Italy, in Rome, the City of the Pope, the Catholic City, is no longer a holy City! And that is the reason for which the Moslems came and said, "Now we shall build a big, big mosque—perhaps larger than St. Peter's." In Rome! Do you think that we can do that in Mecca? Build a Catholic Church in Mecca, in the city of Moslems? And in our Catholic City, Rome, center for all Catholics of the world, now the Moslems build a huge mosque, larger than St. Peter's, and with the approval of the Pope! It is a scandal!
We love the Pope! We love the Pope! But it is like my father: he is always my father, but if my father does something against my Faith, then I refuse. I say, "No! That is impossible. I want to keep my Faith and to remain in my Catholic Faith. You are my father, I know, I love my father and respect my father, but if my father asks me to do something wrong, I refuse!" I want to remain a true Son of God, and they say: "You are a dissident bishop, you are a rebel bishop." I am not dissident, I am not a rebel, no more than a child who refuses to commit a mortal sin for his father, for example. The son is right; he does not commit a mortal sin even is his father says: "You must commit this mortal sin." This father remains the father of his son, and the son always respect his father, but he says: "I respect God more!" That is our situation: We are not rebels, we are not dissidents; we are true sons, true sons of the Pope. The true son says to his father that he is doing wrong. If he is doing well, no problem.
I congratulate you for maintaining your Catholic Faith—for you, for your family, for your children. This is very important for the future of the Church. You are true Catholics, true sons of the Church! I ask the Blessed Virgin Mary to bless you and to be for you an example, an example to maintain our Faith. The Blessed Virgin Mary was very strong. Do you think that the Blessed Virgin Mary could say that Jesus Christ was not God? Her Son? That is impossible! The Blessed Virgin Mary knows that she is the Mother of God. She is very humble, the Blessed Virgin Mary, but she knows that her Son is God, and that there is no other God, no other religion than the religion of her Son, Jesus Christ.
In her heart there is no other name than the Name of Jesus, in the heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary. I hope that in all our hearts there is not another name until our deaths so that we can remain in heaven with the True God—that we have in our hearts the Names of Jesus and Mary.
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
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Second Sermon - Saint Louis, Missouri
Wednesday, 24 April 1985
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
My dear brethren:
I am very pleased to be here in St. Louis. I came here and said Mass in this same place a few years ago. I know that after that time, you had some worries in this center. I will speak no more of these worries but, you know, all works of God have their trials and sacrifices and worries. Perhaps it is a sign that the work done by the priests here was a work of God. I am sure that the work Father Hogan is doing for you is a work of God, and the same for Father Laisney. They are true priests; you need these priests; you need true priests, holy priests!
You know that after the Second Vatican Council and the New Code of Canon Law, they do not give the same definition of the Church, the Catholic Church as before. Why? I do not know.
The Catholic Church had its definition for twenty centuries! Why did they change it? They changed it when they say that the Catholic Church is "the People of God," and in this "People of God" there are functions, some ministries for all "people," everyone has his ministry, everyone has his function in the "People of God." That is not true and this is not the true definition of the Catholic Church! The true definition of the Catholic Church is that in the Catholic Church there are two groups of persons: one is the clergy and the other group is the laymen—as in a family! In a family you have the parents and you have the children. God did this; that is the creation of God. It is the same for the Church: God created the Church, it is His Mystical Body; He created the Church. Jesus Christ decided that in the Church there are some persons elected by God, by the Church, to have the power to give the sacraments, to celebrate the Sacrifice of the Mass and to continue the Sacrifice of Calvary of Jesus Christ and to give the Holy Ghost to souls. That is the creation of Jesus Christ Himself! We cannot choose; it is not our creation!
We know, and you know, that now in the Church the priest becomes layman and the layman becomes priest. That is not the Catholic Church! There are some priests now who have no signs that they are priests, they are laymen and say themselves: "We are not different from laymen." This is not true! They have received the grace of the Sacrament of Holy Orders and the layman cannot say the words of the consecration. Words of consecration said by a layman have no effect: God is not come on the altar, in the Host, the Blood of Jesus Christ and the Body of Jesus Christ do not come if a layman says the words of consecration.
On the contrary, a priest, even if this priest is a bad priest, he is a priest, and when he says the words of the Consecration during the Mass, on the Host and on the wine in the chalice, at that moment Jesus Christ comes on the altar with His Body, with His Blood, with His Soul and with His Divinity. That is the teaching of the Church. We must keep this doctrine of the Church! You know this doctrine and you do not like to go to Masses where lay people give in their hands the Body and Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ! It is not the function of a layman; it is the function of the priest. The bishop consecrates the hands of the priest so that he may touch, in his hands, the Body and the Soul of Jesus Christ and give Jesus Christ to the faithful. The function of the priest is very extraordinary! We, poor sinners, poor creatures, we have the power by the words of consecration to give an order to God that He must come on the altar, continue His work of Redemption, redemption of the souls, and give to the faithful Jesus Christ Himself—give God to the faithful!
That is the privilege of the priest—great privilege, extraordinary privilege!
And if we believe in this true doctrine of the Church we understand why the preparation of the priesthood must be a good one in seminaries where the young men study; where they pray and they receive the ordination in which they become priests, true priests. We do that in our seminaries; we continue this holy Tradition of the Church so when you receive our priests you can know that these priests are true Catholic priests as the Church made priests during twenty centuries.
And so I ask you to pray—to pray every day that we get good vocations—for good vocations for the priesthood, good vocations to the religious life for the brothers and sisters. You know that in some months the Carmelites will be coming—a convent of Carmelites will be coming from Belgium to Philadelphia, and in America you will have a true Carmel, a true Carmel convent! That is very important! The religious—the sisters—they pray, they offer all of their life for the sanctification of souls. It is a very great blessing of God to have a contemplative convent and you must be very happy that now a new convent, with the true spirit of the Carmel, shall be founded near Philadelphia in August.
And from where shall we get vocations? In the schools, in Catholic schools! Where do young men and young girls have the idea of a vocation? In good families and in good schools! If we have not good families, Christian families, Catholic families, and if we have not good Catholic schools, we do not get vocations. And we can see, now everywhere, there are no vocations. Why? Because there are no more true Catholic families. Many progressivist families have no children; they do not want children; they do not want the grace of marriage; many live without the grace of marriage: "free love"! It is impossible in such a society—progressivist society, modernist society—to have many vocations!
The seminaries—in the States, in Canada, everywhere in South America, in Italy, in France, every where—the seminaries are empty! No vocations. They abandon the seminaries. They close the seminaries, the convents, because there are no vocations. And that is because they abandon the true Catholic Faith, they abandon the Tradition of the Church. Sure! When we continue the Tradition of the Church, we have vocations: we have now four seminaries, we have 250 seminarians and this year I shall ordain forty priests. Forty new priests! Where is the bishop who can say, "I ordained forty priests this year!" Because they have no more vocations! I said that the Carmelites will come to Philadelphia—that signifies that they have vocations. After five years they are making their fifth foundation: one foundation in Belgium, one foundation in Germany, one foundation in France, one foundation in Philadelphia and one foundation in Switzerland! That signifies that they have many vocations! They come from everywhere. And we have many vocations for sisters, for the Sisters of our Society, the Sisters who are in St. Mary's. All this is a sign that Tradition bears fruit, good fruit! Without Tradition, no fruit, bad fruit!
Perhaps you ask me, "What is now the situation between you and Rome?" I can say that I have relations with Rome. I am, as I said to the reporters when they ask me this question, I said we are as children in regard to their father: the father asks the children to do something wrong, to commit a mortal sin; what should the children do? The children can say to the father: "We love you, we know that you are our father, but we cannot disobey God, and when you ask us to commit a mortal sin, we cannot obey!" We are in the same situation with Rome: we love the Pope, we love the successor of St. Peter, but we say to him, when he gives us changes, the New Mass, the new catechism, the new Bible, new sacraments that diminish our Faith—we say, "No." The Catholic Faith—that is the way to go to heaven; if I no longer have the Catholic Faith, I will go to hell! So, I keep my Faith, my Catholic Faith of twenty centuries. I am not alone for I have all the saints who are now in heaven, they did the same; all martyrs who gave their blood to keep the Faith! They preferred to die, to go to heaven, to obey God. We are in the same situation. But it is a pity that it is with Rome, with the bishops, but it is a fact. It is the Passion of the Church, the Catholic Church.
You know that when Jesus Christ was crucified on the Cross, who was with Him at the foot of the Cross? No apostles except John, one! Where are the eleven? And nobody, only the Blessed Virgin Mary, His Mother, and some women; all others abandoned Jesus Christ; He was alone. The situation of the Church is the same now: the Catholic Church is crucified! Many, many of the bishops abandon the Church; they go another way. We remain with our beloved Mother the Catholic Church even if it is crucified, as we are sure that the Church is continuing and that the Church cannot die. It is the same as for Jesus Christ: He had His Resurrection; the Catholic Church shall have Her Resurrection. We must have true hope and continue as our parents, grandparents, and all holy Popes and holy saints in the Catholic Church have done for twenty centuries.
We must pray especially for our Mother, the Mother of God, to give us fortitude, this Gift of Fortitude, to renew the grace we received in the Sacrament of Confirmation, to remain very strong against the Devil and to remain true Catholics.
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
[Emphasis - The Catacombs]
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| Archbishop Lefebvre: 1986 Conference - Twenty Years of Struggle |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-07-2020, 07:49 AM - Forum: Sermons and Conferences
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The Angelus - April 1987
Twenty Years of Struggle
A Conference Given by His Excellency Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre during a Priestly Retreat at Ecône
September 1986
Part I
The Society of St. Pius X was founded seventeen years ago. On June 6, 1969, Archbishop Charriere wrote a letter authorizing the foundation of a seminary and on November 1st, 1970, he approved the foundation of the Society of St. Pius X in his diocese of Fribourg. For those who do not know well its history it will be good to record its principal steps, especially at a time and in the present circumstances in which we strive to continue and develop what Divine Providence gave us to do.
If events would bring a change towards a return to Tradition within the Church, of course, our situation would be simplified. We would certainly be welcomed by the hierarchy as we were at our beginning and those problems of our relations with the Bishops and Rome would no longer exist.
However, at the present time we must keep the authenticity of the Society which has been founded during very particular circumstances, but in a way that could have been during normal times. It was occasioned by the degradation of seminaries. But there were similar societies, such as that of St. Vincent de Paul or of St. John Eudes which were founded with a similar goal, which was and still is to give a good priestly formation to future priests, and to enable them to exercise their ministry for a true restoration in the Church.
The Society was founded, first of all, to make good priests and thus to open seminaries. This is in perfect conformity with the Tradition of the Church, to continue the traditional priestly formation for the good of the Church.
We have no other goal nor have we ever innovated except in the sense of tradition, by restoring some elements which were lacking in the formation given to seminarians, especially at the spiritual level. This is the reason why we have added to the studies of philosophy and theology one year of spirituality. This year of spirituality completes the preparation of the seminarians to the priesthood by putting them in a truly spiritual atmosphere. It is certainly not an innovation in the modernist direction but rather in the direction of the tradition of the Church.
Thus our foundation took care to add to the studies a deep spiritual formation by this additional year, which constitutes a kind of novitiate, and which leads to the knowledge of what spirituality is and to the practice of the interior life ‑ purgative, illuminative and mystical life which requires a true conversion of heart.
Our Society has not been founded on the model of a religious congregation. Why? Because in practice it happens too frequently that there are too many difficulties encountered by religious to exercise an apostolate in the world and still respecting truly the strict poverty as it is requested in the religious congregations, where one cannot own anything and cannot use anything without asking the authorization of a Superior. In all things one must depend on the Superior. It was thus preferable not to be bound by such a vow of poverty which could not be put into practice. It was better to found a Society of common life without vows but with engagements.
Thus Divine Providence had decided that our Society would be on the model of the Societies of common life without vows. This has proved to be a good decision. And there is no reason not to continue as such.
THE SOCIETY OFFICIALLY APPROVED BY ROME
It is with this Constitution that the Priestly Society of St. Pius X was approved and erected in his diocese by Monsigneur Charriére, Bishop of Fribourg, and it is with this same Constitution that it has been approved by Rome.
This point is very important and even fundamental, and one must not hesitate to remind those who do not know well the history of our Society. This Roman document is indeed capital, because it is absolutely official. It is dated February 18th, 1971, with the stamp of the Sacred Congregation for the Clergy, and it is signed by its Prefect Cardinal Wright, and sub-signed by Msgr. Palazzini, who was at that time his Secretary, and who is today a Cardinal. This official document coming from a Roman Congregation approving and praising "the wisdom of the rules" of the statutes of the Society, cannot be considered except as "a decree of praise" and thus authorized our Society to be considered as of Pontifical right, with capability to incardinate.
Other official acts made by the Congregation for the Religious with Prefect Cardinal Antoniutti came to complete and confirm this official approbation, since they allowed Father Snyder and another American religious to be duly incardinated into the Society. These were truly official acts of Rome.
These official documents necessarily lead to the following observation: the Congregation for the Clergy considered de facto our Society competent to incardinate regularly and validly.
Personally, however, I did not feel the need to resort to this possibility, until we had been officially but illegally suppressed. Until then I had always taken pains to have Bishops give the incardinations. I turned to Mgr. de Castro Mayer of Brazil, to Mgr. Castan Lacoma in Spain and to Mgr. Guibert in La Reunion. These three Bishops would accept to provide dimissorial letters to priests of our Society who would thereby find themselves incardinated in their respective diocese. As for Father Aulagnier, he was incardinated in his own diocese of Clermont‑Ferrand, by Mgr. de la Chanonie. At that time we were doubly in order. Mgr. Adam told me explicitly: "Why do you not incardinate in your Society?" I answered: "It appears to me that it is only diocesan." I was therefore following the canonical regulations more strictly than necessary.
Indeed, these documents from the Congregation for the Clergy concerning the incardination of these two American clerics into our Society, are even more important than the letter signed by Cardinal Wright. That was incidentally the answer that I gave to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith when I was interrogated about these incardinations. I was told: "You do not have the right to incardinate in your Society." "I do not have the right? In that case the Congregation for the Clergy should be informed that it was mistaken in incardinating in our Society!"
This document from Cardinal Wright, if one studies it closely, is not only a letter but a 'decree of praise,' since it effectively praises the statutes of the Fraternity. It is a thoroughly official document. It is in no way a private letter. In this fashion, and for five years, we enjoyed the total approbation of the diocesan church and of Rome. We were rooted in the Church as a good branch in a tree. This is fundamental to the providential action accomplished by the Fraternity, and reinforces us in our existence and in our activities in general. Being truly of the Church, officially recognized by the Church, we have been persecuted.
WHY ARE WE PERSECUTED?
We are persecuted only because we maintain Tradition and in particular the liturgical Tradition.
In keeping as always the facts in their chronological order it is also of the greatest interest to reread the letter addressed to me by Mgr. Mamie on May 6, 1975, to thoroughly absorb the true reasons which motivated the Bishop of Lausanne, Geneve and Fribourg to withdraw illegally the documents effected by his predecessor and particularly the decree establishing the Fraternity as of the November 1, 1970. This is a testimony of Mgr. Mamie in which he admits, in his own writing, that the Fraternity having a seat at Fribourg was the object of a decree of establishment titled 'Pia Unio' and signed by his predecessor which "approve and confirm the statutes of the said Fraternity."
He did not have the right to act in this manner and to withdraw of his own authority this canonical recognition. It is explicitly contrary to Canon Law (Can. 493).
Now, on two occasions Mgr. Mamie in his letter refers to the liturgy:
Quote:"I reminded you of your refusal with regard to the celebration of Holy Mass according to the rite established by His Holiness Paul VI," and, "As far as we are concerned, we continue to request of the Catholic faithful and of Catholic priests to accept and to apply all of the orientations or decisions of the II Vatican Council, all of the teachings of John XXIII and of Paul V1, all of the directives of the secretariats instituted by the Council including those related to the new liturgy. This we have done, and we will continue to do even in the most difficult of days with the grace of God, because if it is the only path to edify the Church."
Such were the writings of Mgr. Mamie at that time.
Thus twice in his letter he refers to the liturgy. "Because you oppose the liturgy." This then is indeed the principal and essential motive for taking these indescribable and illegal measures against us. It is necessary to remember this fact. The matter of the priestly ordinations was a later development. In reality, the true reason we have been and are persecuted ‑ illegally once again ‑ by Mgr. Mamie, by the cardinals of Rome and the bishops of France, is our attachment to the Immemorial Mass. "Since you continue with this liturgy, you are against the Vatican Council. Since you are against the Council, you are against the Pope. It is inadmissable. Therefore we suppress your Order." The reasoning was simple.
And so they exhibited the Ordo of Mgr. Bugnini and created out of thin air the obligation of the new mass, which was imposed by the services of the Vatican and by the bishops of France. It was unfortunately in this manner that the old Mass was abandoned by communities such as the Abbey of Fontgombault, under the pretext that it was necessary to obey the bishops. All of this was imposed by force, by coercion. We also were to be coerced at all costs into abandoning this liturgy and by the same token to close our seminary.
Confronted with this imposture and the illegality with which all of this was accomplished and above all confronted with the spirit in which this persecution was orchestrated, a modernist, progressivist and masonic spirit, we felt duty bound to continue. One cannot accept something which was done illegally, with a bad spirit, against Tradition and against the Church, and for the destruction of the Church.
WE HAVE ALWAYS REFUSED TO COLLABORATE IN THE DESTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH
This we have always refused to do. Since we refused this, it is obvious that we placed ourselves in opposition to those who appear to be the legal Church. We were the outlaws of the Church and they appeared to respect the law. We believe this appearance to be in exact sense. In fact it is they who have distanced themselves from the legality of the Church and we, on the contrary, who have remained within the legality and validity. Since their actions considered objectively are carried out in a spirit of destruction of the Church, we found ourselves practically speaking under the obligation to act in a manner which appears contrary to the legality of the Church. This is true. It is a strange state of affairs indeed to appear illegal simply by continuing to celebrate the Immemorial Mass and by continuing to ordain priests according to what was the legality up until the Council. And yet this was the reason why I was struck with suspension and why the priests who accepted to be ordained suffered interdiction.
But we did not stop there with our apparently illegal actions with regards to the particulars of the law, such as the hearing of confessions, the blessing of marriages performed in our presence in the dioceses. Many of the things which we have accomplished are of themselves and strictly speaking against the letter of the law, but why did we do these things? Quite simply because we believed that that which was undertaken against us was illegal and that they did not have the right to suppress our Order.
THE FUNDAMENTAL LAW OF THE CHURCH IS THE SALVATION OF SOULS
In view of this, we have acted according to the fundamental laws of the Church to save souls, to save the Priesthood, and to continue the Church. It is effectively these fundamental laws which are at stake. We oppose certain particular laws of the Church in order to save these fundamental laws. By using some of these particular laws against us, the fundamental laws are destroyed. It is contrary to the welfare of souls, contrary to the mission of the Church.
The new Code of Canon Law contains articles which are contrary to the mission of the Church. When it is permitted to give Holy Communion to a Protestant, it cannot be denied that is contrary to the mission of the Church. When the affirmation is made that there are two supreme authorities in the Church, it cannot be denied that this is contrary to the mission of the Church. This definition of the Church as the People of God in which all of the ministries basically can be found and in which there is no longer any distinction between the clergy and the lay people, is contrary to the dogma. All of this is contrary to the mission of the Church. The fundamental principles of the Code of Canon Law are being destroyed! How are we expected to submit and obey?
In order to save the fundamental laws of the Church, we are forced not to observe certain particular laws. In all of this who is right, who is wrong? Clearly right are those who pursue the mission of the Church. The particular laws are made to support the fundamental laws, which is the salvation of souls, for the glory of God, for the continuation of the Church. It is perfectly clear.
We are reminded at every opportunity: Mgr Lefebvre is suspended and his priests are suspended, they are not authorized to accomplish their ministry. This is to invoke in this case the particular laws. But they would do well to remember that they are destroying the Church, not the particular laws but the fundamental laws through this new Code of Canon Law which is thoroughly inspired by this bad spirit of modernism which has been expressed in the Council and after the Council.
What we hope for, of course, is that everything would be normal, that we should find ourselves no longer in this apparently illegal situation. But we cannot be accused of having changed anything in the Church. We must always reflect upon and spiritually situate ourselves in the fact that we are of the Church and that we continue the Church. And why do we continue? Because we pursue the goals of the Church. If we can be accused of failing in the application of certain practical laws, no one can say that the Fraternity does not act according to the goals of the Church. No one can deny this.
Now, even in its particular laws, the Church has had the wisdom to always include an open door for the salvation of souls. The Church has foreseen cases which could be extraordinary. This applies to the question of jurisdiction for confessions. Practically, it is the individual who seeks out the priest in order to receive the Sacrament of Penance who gives the priest the jurisdiction through the intermediary of the Code of Canoe Law. Even if an individual were to seek out an excommunicated priest to hear his confession, this priest would receive the necessary jurisdiction (Canon 2261).
For marriage, Canon Law has provided an exception: those who cannot find a properly delegated priest who would marry them according to the spirit of the Church, as their parents were married ‑ and it is obviously a basic right for young men and women to be married in the same rite as their parents and not in a Rite that is not only often disgusting and in an atmosphere that is far from devotional and fitting for such an important a sacred act as the Sacrament of Matrimony. If the engaged young man and woman do not find a priest for a whole month, then they may marry. They are the ministers of the Sacrament, and in such a case they are exempt from the canonical form (Can. 1098 and 209). They can marry in front of witnesses. If there is a priest, he must be present. This priest would not have a special delegation, but he would be present at their marriage, as Canon Law requires, and he will give the Nuptial Blessing to them.
There is also an exception for the Sacrament of Confirmation. The priest has the right to give Confirmation in certain cases. This is also in the Code of Canon Law. The priest must give the Sacrament to someone who is in danger of death if he has not already received it.
A priest can give Confirmation in other exceptional cases. In the Missions, this possibility was extended to cases relating to marriage. The priests had the right before the marriage, if the couple had not yet received it.
I have never said that all modern confirmations were invalid, but one is entitled to raise questions as to the wording which is employed and certainly as regards the oil which is used. This is important after all. I have received many reports from persons who have formally informed me of the expression used by the bishop. These are invalid expressions. Simply "Receive the Holy Spirit," or, "I send you in mission." This may not be frequent, but it has occurred and it is invalid. In any case, there are numerous bishops who feel that Confirmation is a useless Sacrament, that the Holy Ghost has already been given at Baptism, that it is a supplementary ceremony to recall that which was accomplished at baptism. The former archbishop of Chambery explicitly wrote this in his diocesan magazine: "Confirmation does not give the Holy Spirit which we have received at baptism." I showed this magazine to Cardinal Ratzinger and said: "You object to my giving Confirmations, look at what the bishops think of Confirmation." The archbishop in question is now retired but was at the time seventy‑two, seventy‑three years old and was therefore trained in the old school. He had known the Sacrament of Confirmation as it had been taught previously. No doubt the faith of the bishop has no influence on Confirmation, but is it possible to treat the Sacrament in this fashion? It is the same reasoning as that of the Protestants, and it is legitimate to ask if the intention of these bishops is to do that which the Church wants to do.
If we wish to survive and for the blessings of God to continue to descend on the Fraternity, we must remain faithful to these fundamental laws of the Church.
WITHOUT THE MASS EVERYTHING COLLAPSES
If our priests came to abandon the true liturgy, the true Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the true sacraments, then it would be no longer worth while to continue. It would be suicide!
When Rome asked: "But surely you can adopt the new liturgy and continue your seminaries, that won't make them disappear," I answered: "Yes, it will make our seminaries disappear. They would not be able to accept the new liturgy, it would amount to introducing the poison of the
Conciliar spirit into the community. If others were unable to hold on, it is because they adopted this new liturgy, all of these reforms and this new spirit. As for us, if we accept the same things, we will have the same results."
This is why we must absolutely maintain our traditional line, in spite of the appearance of disobedience and the persecutions of those who use their authority in an unjust and often illegal manner.
We are driven more and more by continually worsening circumstances. If only things seemed to be improving, if we could see tangible signs of a return to Tradition, then everything would be different. But, unfortunately, the situation is worse. The bishops who replace those who retire or who die, have received less theological training. They are imbued with the spirit of the Council, with this Protestant, modernist spirit and it is increasingly serious. Confronted with this continuous worsening of the situation, are we not obliged to take measures which are obviously extraordinary? Our attitude is justified by all of these events. After all, the progressive priests challenge us whenever they can, saying: "You do not have the jurisdiction, you do not have the right to hear confessions." Soon everything that we do would be invalid according to them. It is almost as if to say that our Mass would not be accused of being invalid. This is the state of mind among those fanatical progressives who oppose and insult us. We must not hesitate in responding that it is necessary to take advantage of the laws of the Church which the Church permits in exceptional circumstances of extreme gravity.
God knows that we are confronted with those circumstances!
[Emphasis - The Catacombs]
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| Archbishop Lefebvre: 1985 Sermon - The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass (in three Parts) |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-07-2020, 07:42 AM - Forum: Sermons and Conferences
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The Angelus - June 1985
Archbishop Lefebvre Ordination Sermon: Three Deacons and Four Priests
19 May 1985 at Ridgefield
My dear brethren,
We are reunited here anew for this magnificent ceremony of ordination to the diaconate and the priesthood; and this in a liturgical time that coincides perfectly with these moving ceremonies. Indeed, Our Lord, after His Resurrection, spent forty days with His Apostles to prepare them for the descent of the Holy Ghost, and for the exercise of their priesthood; and then He ascended into heaven. During this time the Apostles awaited the coming of the Holy Ghost, and were united around the Virgin Mary in the Upper Room to receive the sacerdotal consecration which would make them missionaries—apostles of Our Lord Jesus Christ. It is in this environment also, my dear friends, that you will receive the priesthood; you will be filled anew of the Holy Ghost to preach the realm of God; because it is on this notion above all that Our Lord Jesus Christ insists: to preach the Realm of God, Regnum Dei. I would like, during these moments, to insist on the program of your priestly life which is realized in an admirable manner in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Our Lord giving us, transmitting to us His Sacrifice, wanted at the same time for us, priests, this Sacrifice to become the ideal of our priestly life, and at the same time the source of all the grace that you need to become an ideal priest.
The Apostles have said this phrase which sums up the definitive sacerdotal ideal: "Nos autem praedicatione verbi et oratione instantes erimus—we, priests of Jesus Christ, we will be particularly occupied and destined to prayer and to preaching the Word of God." And it is that which definitively represents and which is in reality the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
One may recapitulate the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass in three parts. The first is the preaching of the Faith, from the beginning of the Mass up to and including the Creed. The priest devotes himself to deepening his own faith and to preaching the Gospel. My dear friends, what a magnificent role, what a splendid ministry Our Lord has given us! To communicate the Faith, to believe in the Divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ! That is the synthesis of all our preaching: to communicate to souls this profound faith in the Divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ and hence in all this which has realized the Son of God on earth to save our souls, to unite us with Him.
You will preach this Faith that you have studied long and meditated upon during the six years of seminary; you will preach it to children in the catechism. You will try to communicate to these souls of children the love of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the veneration of Our Lord. Jesus loved the children. He loved to bless them. He loved to see them approach Him, and he even said that if one wished to enter heaven, he must be like these children. You will also love the children, to speak to them of Our Lord, to lead them on the way to heaven. And then you will preach to the adults by all the means at your disposal today. One must admit that we have more means today than in the past to make known the Word of the Gospel: by writing, and even by the radio, by all the occasions we are given, by the rapidity of our travel, speed which permits us to attend well the faithful as was not possible in the past. So the modern means can be put at our disposition to communicate the Faith, preserve in the Faith those who have received it. That is the great task, more particularly today when atheism is everywhere, when the sects spread errors on the subject of the Catholic Faith. You will preach courageously and firmly the Catholic Faith in its integrity. That is what the first part of your Holy Mass represents. And you will rely in your preaching on Tradition particularly, and the Scriptures which communicate to us Revelation, which communicates to us this fundamental revelation of the Divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ. May God help you, May the Holy Ghost enlighten you in your preaching and in the diffusion of the Faith that you will preach so as to convince those who will hear you and to give them this desire to unite themselves to Our Lord and to better know Him.
When the Apostles said that they will give themselves to prayer, it seems to me that the two other parts of the Mass, that which goes from the Credo until after the Pater Noster, and that which follows the Pater Noster, are summed up in prayer, are a great prayer. Particularly the second part which has as its center, like its summit, the Consecration which is the re-enactment of the Sacrifice of Our Lord on the Cross.
The Cross of Jesus was His great prayer, His offering: could He have had a prayer more pleasing to His Father than His divine Sacrifice, His total offering to His Father for the glory of His Father? All His words on the Cross are manifestations of His love: love of His Father when He said: "Father, I commend My soul into Your hands"; when He said "All is consummated"; love for his neighbor when He said to the good thief, "Today thou shalt dwell with Me in paradise"; when He gives St. John as a son to His Mother and when He gives His Mother to St. John; it is also to continue the action of His Mother near the Church, near the Apostles. All is love in Our Lord Jesus Christ upon His Cross.
You will love, my dear friends, to meditate, to contemplate the Cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ, to live the Sacrifice of Our Lord Jesus Christ, most particularly in the contemplation of the Most Holy Trinity, in this love that you should have for God. Because it is this love which should be the love which will make you love your neighbor. Don't upset the order of ends. The end for which we should love our neighbor is the glory of God, it is love of God, and consequently, it is really the love of God. There is only a definitive love: the Love of God to which relates the love of neighbor.
Oh, be men of prayer, my dear friends; be men of meditation, be men of contemplation! Do not be among those who say: "We are not monks, we are not contemplatives because we are not enclosed in a monastery." What a grave error! Each priest—and each Christian besides—should be a contemplative, should meditate on the great Truths of our holy religion, which are the realities—which represent the realities of heaven, the great realities of heaven and earth. Then—may this sublime part of the Mass encircled with mystery by the silence in which the liturgy envelops it—may this great mystery be the object of your continual meditations.
That is the second part of the Mass: be men of prayer in loving particularly your sanctuaries. Make the sanctuaries in which you pray beautiful, uplifting to souls, conducive to prayer, may all be clean, proper, worthy of the Divine Host Who inhabits the sanctuary. Love the beautiful liturgy, love therefore to uplift souls to the Good Lord by the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
By the words of consecration you realize the Sacrifice of Our Lord anew, and you realize also the Sacrament of the Eucharist. And that is the third part of your life: to give Jesus to souls. What an extraordinary mystery—this union of the Sacrifice of Our Lord with the Sacrament of the Eucharist. In effect the third part of the Mass will consist of preparing souls to receive the Sacrament of the Eucharist and to give them Jesus, the Savior! Can you, my dear friends, give a gift more magnificent, more sublime, to the faithful than Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself? What dignity has the priest to make Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself descend on the altar and then take Him to the faithful, to give Him in all His reality, in all His divinity, to give Him to the faithful. And it is that which is the definitive ideal of the priest: after having preached the Faith of Our Lord Jesus Christ, after having contemplated Our Lord Jesus Christ on His Cross in his prayers, his role is to give Jesus to souls, to communicate this Victim to souls in such a way that the souls penetrated by the Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ, penetrated by the divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, march courageously towards heaven among all the difficulties, the pains, and the trials of this life.
The Sacrament of the Eucharist, as St. Thomas explains so well, is the center of all the sacraments. From the Sacrament of the Eucharist radiate all other sacraments: they are all made for the Eucharist, to unite us to Jesus Christ—Baptism, Confirmation, the Sacrament of Penance, and the other sacraments, sacraments which sanctify—the Sacrament of Marriage, the Sacrament of Holy Orders, and finally, the Sacrament of Extreme Unction which prepares us for life eternal—all flow from the Eucharist. Therefore in giving the Sacrament of the Eucharist, you give this radiation of grace in souls. Prepare them—these souls—because they receive grace and the Holy Ghost in the measure of their good dispositions. It is, then, the role of the priest to prepare souls to receive the grace of Jesus with the most richness possible. Again, what a beautiful ministry! What beautiful functions are those of a priest! Therefore your life is all radiating the divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ and His apostolate.
Thank God, my dear friends, that you receive this grace. You are specially chosen for that, distinguished from the laity. The priest is a man who is "assumed," which is taken for becoming a priest, for receiving the priestly consecration. So remain in the choice of Our Lord; be worthy of the choice.
Ask particularly of your good Mother in heaven to be your Protectress, to lead you by the hand, She who is the Mother of the Eternal Priest, she who lived with Him, who prepared Herself for His Sacrifice for thirty-three years. She followed Him. May She follow you also during the years of your priesthood. May She lead you also one day to the definitive union with the Eternal Priest.
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
[Emphasis - The Catacombs]
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| Archbishop Lefebvre: 1984 Consecration of the Society to the Immaculate Heart |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-07-2020, 07:38 AM - Forum: Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre
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From The Recusant:
Consecration of the Society of St. Pius X to the Immaculate Heart of Mary
8th December, 1984
To Thee, O Immaculate Mother of God, do we have recourse in this supreme hour of mankind's need, amidst such storms indeed as have never been known, shaking Mother Church to her very foundations. Thou who, standing by the foot of the Cross, didst once share so closely in the sufferings of thy divine Son, with what compassion art thou not moved today for the suffering of His Mystical Body, the Church!
Whilst outside the Church, Communism has so spread its errors in all directions that the Church herself is infected by them, at the same time within her very bosom the virus of a false ecumenism poisons souls without number, either tearing them away or keeping them outside of the unity of the true faith and the one and only Ark of Salvation.
Amidst so many ruins, so many betrayals, may it please Almighty God, following an ancient example, to prepare this priestly Fraternity of ours, a small band of rebuilders who, being truly aware of their own frailty, turn today to Thee, Virgin most powerful, Help of Christians. For, distrusting in our own strength, so little before the magnitude of the task entrusted to us, we wish to place ourselves under thy motherly and powerful protection, O Virgin who art terrible as an army arrayed in battle, to whom from the beginning it was promised thou wouldst tread upon the head of the serpent. Amidst these dangers hanging over our heads, we beg and beseech God, who has deigned to call us to the service of His Church, that He deign to seal and confirm our calling through thee, O Ark of the Covenant.
And so, O Immaculate Virgin, before thy throne of grace today we prostrate ourselves, and, desiring to increase thy praise and glory so that to the filial love of Christ thy Son towards thee, O most sweet Mother of ours, we may add our humble contribution, here and now to thee beneath the most special title of thy Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart,
WE IRREVOCABLY CONSECRATE OUR PRIESTLY SOCIETY OF ST. PIUS X,
with its priests, seminarians, and brothers, sisters, oblates and tertiaries, with all its spiritual family.
In order that thou shouldst be now the Lady and Queen of our Society and Fraternity, by a perpetual donation into thy hands, we offer and we entrust our possessions and our homes that they may truly belong to thee; our bodies and also our souls, indeed our whole selves, we hand over and consecrate, that thou mayest ever have us ready at thy command.
The souls also entrusted to us we hand over to thee that thou mayest guard them beneath thy motherly care; finally our apostolate we commend to thee and we relinquish it that it may be wholly Thine, O Queen of Apostles!
Thus,
OUR SOCIETY IS NOW WHOLLY THY DOMAIN!
Hold it so firmly, O Tower of David, that it may never turn from the right path, O Virgin most faithful. Keep every member most unshakably attached to it. Guard our Faith virginally intact, O Virgin most pure, thou who hast received the power to crush all heresies throughout the entire world. Keep for the Church, O thou who art Full of Grace, her Sacrifice of the Mass according to the ancient and venerable Roman rite, sure conveyor of grace, and to it keep us most faithful. Cause to flourish within us, O Queen of all Saints, the holiness of the priesthood, of religion, of the family. Guard, O Mother of Divine Grace, our Society as a fruitful and ever-living branch of the Holy Roman Catholic Church. Obtain for us the grace, O Mother of the Church, whereby we may from day to day become in the hands of God an instrument more docile an ore apt for the saving of the greatest number of souls. That we may know that thou hast heard our prayers, O Virgin most clement, send us those many workers whom the Divine Lord of the Harvest calls into His mission fields. Grant us finally, O Mother of the Sovereign High Priest, the grace by which to work for the restoration of the Catholic priesthood and thereby for the splendor of the priestly soul of Christ, illuminated by Whose rays may persons and families and nations at length obtain the establishing of His Kingdom.
Relying on our title of the Apostles of Jesus and Mary, we promise thee, O Queen of Martyrs and Confessors, that we shall labor until our last breath for the restoring of all things in Christ, for the spreading of His Kingdom, and for the preparing of the glorious triumph of thy Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart, O Mary. Amen.
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| Archbishop Lefebvre: 'The Mystery of Jesus ' excerpt "We Must Have No Rest..." |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-07-2020, 07:35 AM - Forum: Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre
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The Mystery of Jesus, The Meditations of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre
"Placed before the image of the Infant Jesus in the crib, some might be moved to say, “It is not possible, He could not possibly have created the earth; he was just born.” To these St. Paul gives the reply: He was just born, yes, but His Person is a divine Person, and this Person is God, the Word of God. It is truly the Word of God who is there present in the crib, who assumes this body and soul. It is the Word of God, it is this divine Person whom we address. When you speak to someone, you address the person. This Person was the Word of God, by whom all was created. How can anyone then say that this Person who is the Word of God made Man is not Savior, and Priest and King, the three great attributes that this Person gives to this creature of God by the grace of the hypostatic union?*1
"Has any man then the right to be indifferent to the presence of the Word of God in our midst? It is inconceivable. God has willed to come among us; who then has a right to say, “Just let me live my life: I don’t need Jesus Christ to live.” It is unthinkable, especially since He came to save us from our sins. Consequently, we are all affected because we are all sinners. He came to die on the cross to redeem us from eternal damnation; can anyone then be disinterested? And how can they dare to compare this Person who is our Lord Jesus Christ to Mohammed or Budddha or Luther? How can a Catholic who has the Faith utter such words? How can they even speak of “the religions, all the religions, the cults” as if they were equal?
"Pope Pius VII manifested his indignation when presented with the Constitution of France in which was affirmed the freedom of all the religions. He reacted against the words “all the religions.” By these words they were putting the holy religion of God, of our Lord Jesus Christ, on the same level as the heresies and schisms. He was outraged, and he wrote to the Archbishop of Troyes: “Go and see the king. Tell him that it is inadmissible for a Catholic monarch, for a king who calls himself Catholic, to allow the freedom’ of all the religions,’ without distinction.” The Pope was indignant. This should be the conviction of every Catholic.
"It is not possible to be a Catholic and not feel outrage when they speak of “all the religions,” placing thereby our Lord on a par with Buddha and all the rest. They do not believe that our Lord is God. They do not believe that it is the Person of God who is before us. Clearly not. Are there several incarnations of God? In Buddha? In Mohammed? In Luther? No, there is only one, in our Lord Jesus Christ. This fact has enormous consequences, and we should sense this in proportion to our belief in the divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ.
"What St. John says on this point is very important, as we have seen. It can be summed up in this way: He who affirms that Jesus Christ is God is of God, and he who denies that our Lord Jesus Christ is God is an antichrist (cf. I Jn. 2:22). Antichrist! and, consequently, a devil. St. John, for one, had the Faith, and he knew how to draw the consequences.
"It can be wondered today if there are any real Catholics left among those who call themselves Catholic, because everyone finds it natural to speak of freedom of religion and the liberty of worship. Yet that cannot be conceded, because it is contrary to the dignity of our Lord Jesus Christ. They will accuse you of being intolerant. How many Catholics think the same thing, even m our own Catholic families?
"If you affirm there is only one true religion, the religion of our Lord Jesus Christ, and all the others come from the devil, that they are of the Antichrist because they deny the divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, they will accuse you of being intolerant. “So, you want to go back to the Middle Ages,” they will sneer. No, we only want to restore what is: our Lord is King. The day when He comes suddenly in majesty upon the clouds of heaven they will say, “Ah, indeed, He is King; we did not believe it was possible.”
"Yes, our Lord is King, and He will be the only one, there shall be none beside Him. People are not able to convince themselves of it. They are infected by liberalism, by the secularism that affects many. Our Lord Jesus Christ is no longer ascribed his true place.
"His reign must be established on the earth as in heaven.
"It is He himself who said so in the prayer that He taught us, the Our Father: Thy Kingdom come Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven. And this must be the object of our prayers, the intention of our sufferings, and the purpose of our life. We must have no rest until our Lord’s reign is established. A Catholic whose heart is not animated by this profound desire is not a Catholic. He is not one of the faithful of our Lord Jesus Christ.[2]
Notes:
1. The union of two natures, divine and human. of Jesus Christ in one unique person, the Person of the divine Word. From the fact that this man Jesus Christ, is God, he is necessarily Savior, Priest, and King.
2. The Mystery of Jesus, The Meditations of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre [Kansas City: Angelus Press, 2000], pp. 23-25.
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| Archbishop Lefebvre: 1983 Conference - 'Holy Church Was Betrayed in Three Ways' |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-07-2020, 07:27 AM - Forum: Sermons and Conferences
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Conference Of His Excellency Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre
Long Island, New York
November 5, 1983
I THINK THAT, like all traditionalist Catholics, you would like now to hear how things stand; at what point relations are between the Priestly Society of St. Pius X and the Vatican in Rome. So I shall give you a rapid summary.
Why do I maintain relations with Rome? Why do I keep going to Rome? Because I think that Rome is the center of Catholicism, because I think that there cannot be any Catholic Church without Rome. Consequently, if our purpose is to find a way of setting the Church straight again, it is by turning to Rome that maybe, with the grace of God, we may perhaps manage to set the situation straight. It is not one single bishop like myself who can set the whole situation straight in the Catholic Church. That is why I strive to keep on going to Rome and to plead the cause of Tradition. Because I am persuaded that it is by Tradition that the Catholic Church will recover its position as it was before the Second Vatican Council, and the means of its true progress. In the first place, I must tell you that I am under no illusions the situation in Rome is very grave, very grave. Let me sum up the whole situation as it took place at the Council and such as, unfortunately, it still exists even today, by saying that there were, in fact, three betrayals of the Church. Holy Church was betrayed in three ways in a very direct and concrete fashion.
The first betrayal was the betrayal with the Freemason, the second with the Protestants, and the. third was the betrayal with the Communists.
There was an understanding before the Council and during the Council through men commissioned by the Church who were the instruments of these betrayals, namely, the Secretariat for the Unity of Christians, which was specially created for that, directed by Cardinal Bea with, as Vice President, Msgr. de Smedt, Bishop of Bruges, and with, as Secretary, Msgr. Willebrands, who became Cardinal of Holland. These were the personalities who were the instruments of betrayal. There were direct contacts precisely between Cardinal Bea and the Masonic Lodge here in New York and in Washington, with the B'nai Brith, the Jewish Lodge numbering 75,000 members, and with the lodges of the whole world.
Why did these contacts take place? Why did Cardinal Bea come in the name of the Vatican, in the name of Rome, to meet these Freemasons? In order that we would accept the “rights of man” at the Council. How could we accept them? By accepting Religious Liberty, which is one of the “rights of man.” Hence, to accept Religious Liberty was in principle to accept the “rights of man” within the Church. Now, the Church has always condemned these declarations on the “rights of man” which have been made against the authority of God.
The second betrayal was the betrayal with the Protestants. It is Msgr. Willebrands who was entrusted in particular with the fostering of relations with the Ecumenical Council of Churches in Geneva. He went to Geneva to make peace with the Protestants, and the Protestants said to him, we can make peace with you, we can all unite and work together, but you must remove everything in the liturgy of the Church and in the concept of the Church which does not agree with Protestant principles. Hence, the whole liturgy and the whole structure of the Church was to be modified and there was to be a new Canon Law to establish this new structure of the Church and to put it into practice, a democratic structure. This is what was then accomplished by Msgr. Willebrands.
The third betrayal was through Msgr. Willebrands also, and Cardinal Bea, through their meeting with delegates of Moscow at Constantinople and also in Greece, with representatives of the Orthodox Church, the Patriarch Pimen of the Orthodox Church delegated by Moscow. What had to be done in order to please the Communists? The Communists required that there should be no condemnation of Communism at the Council, firstly; secondly, that all the bishops opposed to the Communist regime should be dismissed and replaced by collaborating bishops. Well, these various requirements: Religious Liberty required by the Freemasons, the changing of the whole interior and the Constitutions and the liturgy of the Church by the Protestants; the non condemnation of Communism and the changing of the bishops by the Communists all this was agreed to and granted by the Church. The Church said yes, that’s all right, we accept Religious Liberty, and it was Msgr. de Smedt, the Vice President of the Secretariat for Christian Unity, who was the reporter at the Council for the schema on Religious Liberty, together with Cardinal Bea, who was behind him and who supported him. Five times there was an attempt to refuse this schema, five times they brought it back, and finally they succeeded in having Religious Liberty passed.
What that meant was the laicizing of all the Catholic States, which is very grave, excessively grave. The Protestants also were given what they wanted and you saw the Protestants present at the liturgical reform. They were there: six Protestant pastors were present at the liturgical reform, and they asked these Protestant pastors what might be displeasing to them in the Catholic Church, and Pope Paul VI did everything he could to satisfy them. Hence, they changed our Mass in order to please the Protestants, and that is what they call “ecumenism.” And the Communists were promised, Communism will not be condemned at the Council, and it wasn’t condemned at the Council. I myself carried 450 signatures to the Secretariat of the Council in order to have Communism condemned. I did it myself! Four hundred and fifty signatures of bishops were put away in a drawer and they were buried in silence whereas sometimes the request of a single bishop was listened to. In this case, 450 bishops were ignored. The drawer was closed, we were told, no, no, we have no knowledge of that, there will be no condemnation of Communism. And they replaced the anti Communist bishops: Cardinal Mindszenty by Cardinal Lekai, Cardinal Beran in Czechoslovakia by Cardinal Tomasec. The same happened in Lithuania, and in Czechoslovakia, all the bishops became priests of the Pax movement, collaborators of the Communist regime. You can read in the book called Moscow and the Vatican how the Lithuanian priests wrote to their bishops a letter in which they say:
“We no longer understand. Before, our bishops used to support us in the fight against Communism and they died martyrs, many are still in prison, others are dead, martyred because they supported us against the Communists in order to fulfill our duty as priests, and now it is you bishops who are condemning us, it is you who are telling us that we don’t have the right to resist, to fulfill our apostolate, because it is contrary to the laws of Communism, it is contrary to the government.”
How is that possible? That is the situation in the Church. These are real betrayals which took place!
So, you can understand that when I go to Rome and when I refuse the principle of Religious Liberty proclaimed at the Council, I am told, “you must accept the Council, you must accept the liturgical reforms.” And, then, I refuse. These are not trifling matters. Religious Liberty did not get passed in the Council as easily as that. It is a whole program. Consequently, for the last six years I have been going to Rome, always to try to have them reform the Council, to have the schemas of the Council reformed which are no good, like the one on Religious Liberty. Obviously, I meet with a continuous refusal on the part of the Vatican, though when I met the Pope himself, at the end of 1978, he did agree to name an intermediary between himself and myself, Cardinal Seper. Then Cardinal Seper died and the Pope named Cardinal Ratzinger. But we are still running up against the same problems. In the latest letter which I received from Rome, the Pope continues to regret that I am unwilling to accept all the acts of the Council, that I am unwilling to accept the liturgical reforms in the Holy Church. But there is no way round these. And in fact, there is even an additional obstacle, which is the new Code of Canon Law, which has been made in the same spirit I’ve just been speaking to you about, the spirit of the Council, a bad spirit. Hence, obviously, I run into great difficulties. But since they are willing to sit down and discuss, who knows? Almighty God is all – powerful and so, I say to myself, if the Good Lord wishes to make them understand, wishes one day to give them a particular enlightenment, perhaps one day we shall manage to make them accept a correction of the Council, to come back to Tradition in the liturgy and to come back to Tradition in the Church. Well. I am well aware that it is very difficult, because I have now been going for six or seven years to Rome in order to achieve this purpose and we are still at the same point we started. Hence, when they say I am seeking a compromise with Rome, there is no question for me of compromising over anything whatsoever with Rome I am simply asking for the return to Tradition, which is the only way for the Church to truly recover her perfection and her sanctity, as before.
There is the situation such as it is at present, and I must admit that, for the moment, I see no great hope. The only little success which might be on the way is this famous decree still in suspense, still being put off, a decree to enable all priests to say the old Mass, to leave them freedom and no longer to persecute them. Now, this decree was due to appear, but for three years they have been talking about it and for three years it has still not been published. For, you must realize that, at present, the situation at Rome is very difficult. Modernism is still all powerful at Rome. The Modernist and progressive Cardinals are in the majority; thus, even if there are one or two cardinals who are more or less traditionalists and who have at least a desire to come back to Tradition, well, they are immediately stopped by five or six cardinals who have all power and who put pressure on the Holy Father to stop any return to Tradition. It is they who are preventing this decree from appearing. They say to the Pope, “If you make this decree appear, if you liberate the old Mass, the traditional Mass, then everything that we have done since the Council is over and done with.”
There is a true struggle going on in Rome between the few traditionalist Cardinals Cardinal Oddi, Cardinal Ratzinger, Cardinal Pallazini, on one side, and all the progressive cardinals on the other: Cardinal Casaroli, Cardinal Pironio, Cardinal Baggio; and all those who are in the Congregations of Worship: Cardinal Casoria with Msgr. Virgilio Noe; and then in the Congregation of Faith, Msgr. Hamer, a Dominican, all these are Modernists and each time that they go to see the Pope they say, “Above all, no turning back, no return to Tradition, out of the question!”
Now the Pope is not strong willed. He seems a strong man, but he is not a strong man, he is weak. I saw that myself in the audience I had with him. He was ready to sign a paper giving me freedom, saying that I and the Priestly Society could celebrate the Tridentine Mass, “Oh, that’s not important, you prefer that Mass, oh, if you like, that is not important. It’s a disciplinary question.” And then, he summoned Cardinal Seper to say that he would be the intermediary between the Pope and myself, and when he told Cardinal Seper, “After all, there aren’t really many difficulties in the case of Msgr. Lefebvre. We could grant him the right to celebrate the Tridentine Mass with the Society.” “Oh, no!” cried out Cardinal Seper, “Oh, no, Holy Father! They are making this Mass into a battle flag! We cannot accept!” And then the Holy Father was like a naughty child caught in the act, he seemed to be afraid, and he said, “All right, all right. Listen, you talk with Monseigneur, I have a great deal of work. Cardinal Baggio is waiting for me. He has a great deal of work.” And then the Holy Father left. That is not behaving like a true Pope! A Pope who knows what he is doing should have said to Cardinal Seper, “Listen, I am the head, I know what I am doing, and if I wish to sign such a document for Msgr. Lefebvre, I am quite free to do so!”
Here is why I have always thought that I had to go to Rome, that I had to write, that I had to visit these cardinals in order that they should not say that we are doing nothing or that we no longer recognize them or that we wish to have no contact with them. They cannot say that I have not done everything in my power to try to stay in contact with them. However, I think what counts much more are the facts, than the words or writings, even for Rome. What are the facts which count for us? The seminaries! To make priests! To make traditional priests, priests according to Tradition, to make good and holy priests in our seminaries. That is the work we must carry on with and the work which counts in Rome. Why does Rome still go on receiving me? Why do they still consider me with a certain respect? Because they know that I have seminaries, that I have now ordained nearly 200 priests since 1970 and that I have 250 seminarians in my seminaries. They know that very well and that’s what counts at Rome. They no longer have any seminaries. Their seminaries are empty or they are Modernist seminaries. Now they know that at Ecône, at Ridgefield, at Zaitzkofen, and at Buenos Aires, we are forming true priests. They know that very well and they admire our young priests. So, that is what makes even more of an impression on them than my words, writings or meetings. They are well aware that this year I ordained thirty priests. So that’s what I think it is. And they are perfectly well aware that our priests are spread throughout the world. They know of the existence of our traditional groups throughout the world, and a little everywhere in the world. We are striving to extend. They know we have many priories in Europe, in all the European countries. They know, moreover, that there are other traditional priests, that we are not alone, that we support other traditional priests in their work. So all of that scares them a little. They are forced to reckon with us. And that is how I think we will succeed one day in convincing Rome that they must return to Tradition. They will say, we can no longer ignore these seminaries, these priests, not only the priests of the Society, but all traditionalist priests as well. We can no longer ignore them. That is the task before us, and I have never changed!
And that is why I will now proceed to say a few words, as we must do, on the sad situation in which the Society found itself this year in the Northern District of the United States. Well! I have been accused of changing. Changing what? The Mass that I say, the Mass that was said a few moments ago by Fr. Schmidberger, is the Tridentine Mass! It’s the traditional Mass! I have never changed anything! It’s the same Mass attended by the poor priests who left us: Fr. Kelly, Fr. Sanborn, and the others, while they were at Ecône. And how long were they at Ecône? Fr. Kelly spent two years in Switzerland, Fr. Sanborn three, or maybe, four years, Fr. Dolan the same, Fr. Collins was also at Ecône, they always had the same Mass there the one we say today. So, we have not changed a thing. How can they now say, “The Archbishop is changing”? What? What am I changing? They know perfectly well they spent years at Ecône that they had there the liturgy which we now have, that we have not changed one iota, not one thing. They are the ones who have wanted change, who have wanted to go back to an older liturgy or to older practices. They are the ones who wanted change. We wanted to change nothing, not one thing. We have made no compromise with Rome. That charge is not true. So it is very sad to think that these priests who were ordained by myself and who, after all is said and done, receiving everything from Ecône and the Society, should now be turning against the Society. Why? They say we are making compromises, they say we are going to accept the New Mass, they say things of this kind, which are absolutely false. You can see that for yourselves.
So, I think that the good sense of the faithful will triumph and that, little by little, the faithful will understand that a certain number of our priests have taken up an attitude which is not normal. In fact, they are children rebelling against their parents. Their father in priesthood is me. They are rebelling against me, whereas I have changed nothing, nothing, nothing. This attitude is unacceptable, absolutely unacceptable. And not only are they rebelling, as you see, but also it is I, obviously, who asked them to look after the development of the Society here in the United States. Consequently, through them we obtained Oyster Bay Cove and acquired Ridgefield, Armada, and the other chapels, and all this was agreed between us we granted them the necessary authorizations. And now they are saying, “All that property is ours.” Not only are they rebelling, but also they are claiming the properties, properties for which, in the case of Ridgefield, I sent the money from Switzerland! I sent $500,000.00 from Switzerland to buy Ridgefield! And now, it’s meant to belong to them? It’s inconceivable! It’s plain theft! It’s unreal, it’s unbelievable! They deliberately put all their names on the boards of the corporations, whereas I was asking them to put the usual names on them, as everywhere else in the Society: those of “Superior General, Econome General,” and so on. True, they put my name in, but my name is the only one in these corporations, in place of the others we asked them to put in, they put in all their own names, telling us all the time, “Oh, yes, Monseigneur, we’ll change them, we’re going to do what you want” . . , but they never did. And now they thought they were strong enough to break away from us, so they are saying, “The properties are ours.” Did you ever hear anything like it? It is really unbelievable. It is really sad to think that priests formed by ourselves could reach such a point. However, in our day and age, alas! trials are all too common. Obviously, we are living in an age of confusion within the Church and we have to get used to such trials. However, I hope that the situation will be straightened out and that maybe some of them will come back to join us once more, that some of them will do some thinking, and that God will give them light.
In any case, I thank all of you here for remaining faithful to us, and we will remain faithful to you. We will carry on with what you have always seen in the Society. I gave Confirmation today just as I have given it in Oyster Bay Cove, in Armada, and elsewhere, in all the centers. I have changed nothing. So, I trust you will remain faithful and that we will be able to continue working together for the greater good of the Church, because there is nothing more disastrous, even in the face of Rome, than these divisions, because these divisions weaken us and weaken our fight for Tradition. So, let us pray that everything will be sorted out.
Personally, I am not seeking to harm these priests may God be their judge! And I ask you not to get into polemics, but simply to follow us. You now have here a magnificent chapel. Come and attend Mass in this chapel with the priests of the Society, and, in the various centers, bring about a regrouping of the faithful staying with the Society, so that they keep their bond with Rome and with the Church. It is very important that there should always be the bond with Rome if we wish to remain Catholic; even if we do not agree with everything being done in Rome, I think the bond is absolutely indispensable.
That is what I wished to say to you. I thank you warmly for your attention and for your support. I congratulate you on all the work you have done here it is a minor miracle. For I had been saying to Father Kelly for the last ten years, we must have a chapel in New York, and now, in the space of a few months, the chapel exists and we have at last got a chapel in the New York area. So, I thank the Good Lord, I thank you all, and I trust that this chapel will be the means of a return to genuine Tradition.
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| Archbishop Lefebvre: 1963 Letter - On the Wearing of the Cassock |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-07-2020, 07:20 AM - Forum: Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre
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Archbishop Lefebvre on the Wearing of the Cassock
The present text is a reflection of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre on the significance of the cassock which was written during his time as Superior General of the Holy Ghost Fathers.
Paris, February 11, 1963
Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes
Letter to All Members of the Congregation of the Holy Ghost on the Wearing of the Cassock
My dear Brethren,
The measures taken by certain bishops in various countries in the matter of ecclesiastical dress are deserving of thought, since they may have consequences which are by no means unimportant to us.
In itself, the wearing of the cassock or clerical dress has meaning only in so far as this dress marks a distinction from that of the laity. The matter is not primarily one of propriety. At most, the high-buttoned waistcoat of the clergy marks a certain austerity and decorum; this the cassock does even more.
It is rather a mark of the cleric or of the religious by means of his dress. It goes without saying that this symbol should be characterized by modesty, decorum, and poverty, not their opposites. Clearly, this distinction in dress must give rise to respect and suggest detachment from the vanities of this world.
It is well to lay particular stress on the chief quality which distinguishes the cleric, the priest, or the religious as do the forms of the soldier, the police, or transport workers. This idea is manifested in all religions. The religious chief is easily recognizable by his garments, often by their accompaniments. The faithful attach great importance to these distinctive marks. A Moslem leader is immediately identifiable. The distinguishing marks are legion; rich garments, rings, necklaces, and surroundings declare the presence of one particularly honored and revered. The same is true of the Buddhist religion as of the whole Christian East, whether Catholic or no.
The feeling of the faithful, particularly in its reverence for the sacred and its wish to receive the blessing of heaven on all rightful occasions through the ministers of God, is a legitimate aspiration.
Until the present day clerical dress seemed designed to distinguish a person consecrated to God, but with the least possible outward sign, especially in those countries where the suit is exactly like that worn by the laity. In some countries such as Portugal and, not long ago, Germany, the jacket was knee-length. Priests accustomed to wearing clerical dress in those countries think of it as an outdoor suit, not worn indoors. Moreover, the wearing of such garments outdoors was made compulsory by anti-Catholic State legislation. That explains the desire to return to the cassock as soon as the priest was within clerical buildings, presbyteries or churches. The spirit in which clerical dress is worn in these countries is thus vastly different from the attitude taken by some priests to its adoption.
To estimate the import of the measures taken by the bishops, the considerations to which they refer must be studied. Confronted with the wearing of lay dress bearing no indication of the clerical state and in order that they may the more strongly forbid this practice, the bishops have authorized the wearing of clerical suits, but have not encouraged it and, still less, made it obligatory.
Now, it is observable that since these episcopal rulings the wearing of lay dress has made enormous progress, even where it had not previously occurred. In many dioceses these measures gave rise in practice to the abandonment of any sign distinguishing the priesthood. The rulings have been wholly overstepped. The question is no longer one of the cassock in the presbytery, or even of the jacket in the parish. It is important to ask ourselves: is it or is it not desirable that the priest should be marked out, recognizable among the faithful and the laity; or, on the contrary, bearing in mind the efficacy of his apostolate, should the priest no longer be distinguishable from the laity?
To this question we will reply by the conception of the priest in the eyes of our Lord and His Apostles, the considerations brought to us through the Gospel, that we may know whether they still hold good today. In St. John, Chapter XV, particularly verse 19:
Si de mundo fuissetis, mundus quod suum erat diligeret, quia vero DE MUNDO NON ESTIS, sed ego ELEGI VOS DE MUNDO, propterea odit vos mundus-If you were of the world, the world would love his own, but because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, the world hates you (v. 19). Nesciunt eum qui misit me-they know not Him that sent me (v. 21); et vos testimonium perhibebitis, quia ab initio mecum estis-and you also shall bear witness, because you have been with me from the beginning (v. 27).
In St. Paul to the Hebrews, Chapter V, verse 1:
Omnis namque pontifex ex hominibus ASSUMPTUS pro hominibus constituitur in iis quae sunt ad Deum-for every high priest chosen from among men is appointed to act on behalf of men in things pertaining to God.
It is clear that the priest is a man chosen and set apart from others. St. Paul (Heb. 7:26) says of our Lord that He is "segregatus a peccatoribus-separated from sinners." This is what the priest who has been especially chosen by God should be.
To this first consideration must be added that of the witness to God, our Lord, that the priest must bear to the world. "Et eritis mihi testes-you shall be witnesses unto me" (Acts 1:8). Witness is a word often on our Lord's lips. As He bears witness to His Father, we must bear witness to Him. This testimony must be seen and heard without difficulty by all. "Men do not light a candle and put it under a bushel, but upon a candlestick, that it may give light to all that are in the house" (Mt. 5:15).
The priest's cassock achieves both these ends clearly and unequivocally. The priest is in the world without being of the world. Though living in it, he is one set apart and protected from evil. "I pray not that Thou shouldst take them out of the world, but that Thou shouldst keep them from the evil, for they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world" (Jn. 17:15-16). The witness of the word, which is indeed more essential to the priest than the witness of the habit, is yet greatly aided by the clear manifestation of the priesthood given by the wearing of the cassock.
The clerical coat, though it goes some way towards this, is more ambiguous. It is not a specific mark of the Catholic priest. As for lay dress, it does away with all distinction, renders the bearing of witness more difficult and the preservation from evil less effective. This disappearance of any outward witness by means of dress clearly indicates a lack of faith in the priesthood, a failure in respect for the religious attitude of one's neighbor, besides cowardice and a lack of courage in one's convictions.
Lack of Faith in the Priesthood
For almost a hundred years popes have continued to lament the progressive secularization of societies. Modernism and Sillonism (1) have diffused their errors on the duties of secular societies to God and to the Church. The separation of Church and State, accepted and sometimes regarded as the best constitutional solution, gradually penetrated every sphere of State activity, particularly that of the schools, with atheism. That harmful influence is still continuing, and we cannot but observe that many Catholics, and even priests, no longer have any clear concept of the place of religion, even of the Catholic religion, in a secular society and all its activities. Secularism has invaded every field, even our schools and our Catholic colleges. Religious practice is clearly on the decline in these institutions. There are fewer and fewer communicants.
The priest, living in a society such as this, feels increasingly remote from such a world. He begins to feel out of place, a relic from a bygone and outworn past. His presence is tolerated. Such, at heart, is often the feeling of young priests. Thence arises the wish to fall into line with the secularized, dechristianized world, which betrays itself today in giving up the wearing of the cassock.
These priests have no longer any clear conception of the place of the priest in the world and in regard to the world. They have traveled little, and their judgments in such matters are superficial. Had they lived for some time in less atheistic countries, they would have been heartened by the realization that, by the grace of God, faith in the priesthood is still keenly alive in most countries of the world.
Understanding the Religious Sense of One's Neighbor
Secularism, official atheism let us say, has at one blow killed the discussion of many religious questions in divers environments. Religion has become very personal, and a mistaken deference for the opinion of others has relegated it to the rank of personal concerns and questions of conscience. Hence, every human milieu thus secularized, is pervaded by a false shyness of such a subject of conversation. That is why we gratuitously assume that those about us in our business or chance relationships are areligious. True as it may be, alas, that there are countries where many know nothing of religion, it is a mistake to believe that such people no longer have any religious feeling, and an ever greater one to think that all the countries in the world are alike in this respect.
There, too, travel has much to teach us, and shows us that by the grace of God, mankind is still deeply preoccupied with the question of religion. It is to know little of the human soul to believe it indifferent to the things of the spirit and the desire for those of heaven. It is far otherwise. These principles are essential in the daily practice of the apostolate.
It is Cowardice
Faced with secularism and atheism, to fall completely into line is to capitulate and remove the last obstacles to their spread. Through his habit, through his faith, the priest is a living sermon. The seeming absence of any priest, especially in a large town, is a serious setback to the teaching of the Gospel. It is the continuance of the baneful influence of the revolution, which despoiled the churches, and of the separative legislation which drove out monks and nuns and secularized the schools. It is a denial of the spirit of the Gospel, which foretold the difficulties to which the world would expose priests and disciples of our Lord.
These three considerations have grave consequences for the soul of the priest who turns secular, and bring in their train the swift secularization of the souls of the faithful. The priest is the salt of the earth. "If the salt lose its savor, wherewith shall it be salted? It is good for nothing any more but to be cast out, and to be trodden under the foot of men'' (Mt. 5:13). Alas! Is that not the result which always awaits those priests who no longer wish to be seen as such. The world will love them none the better, but despise them. The faithful, on the other hand, will be grievously affected by no longer knowing with whom they are dealing. The cassock was a guarantee of the true Catholic priesthood.
In the present instance and in the context of history, we are not concerned with the circumstances, motives, and intentions of a trifling matter, a question of ecclesiastical fashion of purely secondary importance. It is the very role of the priest in the world and in relation to the world which is at stake. It is this which those priests and religious who wear lay dress despite the episcopal prohibitions claim to judge. It is for this reason that the authorization of the clerical jacket has had no effect where the wearing of lay dress is concerned; on the contrary, it has served as an encouragement to do so. The question is no longer whether the priest will keep the cassock, or whether he will wear a clerical coat outdoors and a cassock in the church and in the presbytery. It is that of knowing whether the priest will keep his ecclesiastical habit or not.
In these circumstances, our own choice has been to keep the habit, that is the cassock, in those provinces where it has been customary until now and the clerical coat in those provinces where it is habitual, while wearing the cassock in the community and in the church.
We say "in these circumstances," for it goes without saying that in the event of new regulations on ecclesiastical dress which would safeguard the two principles aforementioned-the outward symbol of the priesthood and the Gospel witness, and that in a discreet and seemly, though clearly distinctive, manner, we should not hesitate to adopt them.
My dear Brethren, may these reflections bind us to our priesthood and to our mission in this world with our whole soul. May we, when our life draws to its end, be able to say, "Father, I have manifested Thy Name unto the men whom Thou gavest me out of the world-I have glorified Thee on earth, I have finished the work Thou gavest me to do."
(1) Marc Sagnier, a neo-modernist condemned for seeking to weld the Church to a particular political school of thought, gave the name of Le Sillon (The Furrow) to his organ of publication.
Contained in the volume enitled A Bishop Speaks: Writings and Addresses 1963-1976 (Angelus Press: 2007, pp. 1-6) and reproduced here with permission. Source
[Emphasis - The Catacombs]
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| Archbishop Lefebvre: 1986 Interview - 'Paul VI and JPII are both Liberal Modernists' |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-07-2020, 07:15 AM - Forum: Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre
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Interview with Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre
January 1986
His Grace granted this interview to Don McLean, Editor of Catholic, an Australian publication. There is much in it to give us encouragement. Archbishop Lefebvre faces difficult decisions in the near future, some alluded to here. and in this difficult time he must be supported by our prayers. Our thanks to Mr. McLean for permission to reprint this interview for our readers.
Q. Can you tell us something of your visit to Colombia so soon after the tragic earthquake?
A. We learned of the disaster while we were in the West Indies. Everybody in Colombia was very shocked to learn of a town of 20,000 people disappearing. There was great disquiet that the volcano might erupt again. As far as the Church is concerned, it seems that not only in Colombia, but also in the entire continent of South America, the Catholic tradition will have a greater future among ordinary people rather than among an intellectual elite who understand the principle behind the present reform in the Church. The people and their spiritual needs are more and more being abandoned by their priests, and the people are turning to priests who will provide them with the Sacraments and the devotions such as they have always known and require.
Q. You have just conferred the Sacrament of Holy Orders at the Society’s seminary at La Reja, Argentina for the first time. Eight more priests for the Society, and Bishop de Castro Mayer was present?
A. The presence of Bishop de Castro Mayer was a very great event for the Society. This was the first time that I assisted at Ordinations in one of our seminaries conferred by another bishop. It was a great joy for all and a great satisfaction for Bishop de Castro Mayer.
Q. Does he still ordain priests for the Diocese of Campos and other places?
A. His Lordship, Bishop de Castro Mayer conferred the Tonsure and the Minor Orders on a certain number of seminarians at the Seminary at La Reja. This day, December 1, 1985, was a memorable one at the seminary.
I do not know if he will ordain other seminarians at other places.
Q. There are only two bishops who speak out against Modernism. Are there others who support you?
A. Many other bishops among those nominated before Vatican II are with us in their heart, but they do not dare to express this publicly.
Q. The seminary has just finished an extensive building program. What was your impression of it compared to the other three seminaries of the Society?
A. The seminary at La Reja has the great advantage of being constructed according to a total plan. There were no existing buildings, and therefore we were able to construct the seminary exactly as we liked. 1t is very favorable for the formation of the seminarians and for the development of their piety and recollection.
Q. We have heard that you have ordained more priests this year than any other bishop. Is that so?
A. I ordained thirty-nine priests last year. This is the greatest number which has ever been ordained by me in a given year. Henceforth the average number will be about forty every year. I do not know if I will ordain more priests this year than any other bishop.
Q. You ordain priests for other communities?
A. Yes, for communities which, in normal times, would be recognized by the Dioceses and the Holy See.
Q. You had a chance to confer with Bishop de Castro Mayer at the seminary?
A. Certainly. We spent several days together, and so we were able to speak about the state of the Church today. We were able to speak of the various problems which have developed, and will develop after the Synod.
Q. Did you speak of the Episcopal Manifesto sent to Rome after your last visit to South America in November 1983?
A. We spoke of the recent letter which we sent to the Pope rather than the Manifesto of 1983. This letter is a grave warning to the Pope, and a further appeal to him to return to Tradition, and to cease spreading the errors of the Second Vatican Council.
Q. Has there been any reaction to that letter, or the Manifesto?
A. Not yet.
Q. Last May, in Canada, you spoke of "pertinacity in error." Could you expand upon what you mean?
A. It is because of' this pertinacity that we sent our recent letter to the Pope. If he continues to promote the reforms in the Church, which are becoming more and more grave, then he can certainly be described as pertinacious. Soon, perhaps, Bishop de Castro Mayer and I will produce another document which will outline the gravity of the situation.
Q. You had difficulties with Pope Paul VI. Do you have the same difficulties with Pope John Paul II?
A. Pope Paul VI and Pope John Paul II are both Liberal and Modernists, favorable to the Conciliar Revolution. We have the same reasons to mistrust John Paul II as Paul VI. In practice they have adopted all the consequences of a false principle which may be expressed thus: "All religions are means of salvation." Therefore the Church is no longer the unique means of salvation. This is to establish the Revolution in the Church and by the Church. We refuse this change and this Revolution.
Q. You said in an interview in Paris in December 1983 that Pope John Paul II was a Pope who was not doing his duty, with particular reference to his not condemning Communism. Do you still hold that position?
A. In consequence of a fundamental change of principle, it is logical that Pope John Paul II does not publicly condemn Communism, which is a form of atheistic conviction.
Q. In the same interview in 1983, you did not rule out the possibility of consecrating a bishop. But you said that "it would be in circumstances more tragic than today." Would you comment?
A. Today I remain in the same position, but the circumstances have become more serious during the last six months.
Q. Cardinal Ratzinger recently said: "I see no future for a position that, out of principle, stubbornly renounces Vatican II." Do you have a comment on that?
A. I could equally ask Cardinal Ratzinger if he sees a future in the present progressive policies in the Church. Not only is there no future in them, but according to his book The Ratzinger Report, there would seem to be total ruin. That is not the case with our Society of St. Plus X.
Q. On page 21 of his book (English edition). Cardinal Ratzinger says: "Clearly everything possible must be done to prevent Archbishop Lefebvre’s movement from giving rise to a schism peculiar to it that would come into whenever Msgr. Lefebvre should decide to consecrate a bishop which, thank God, in the hope of reconciliation, he has not yet done." Could you comment on this statement?
A. These are in fact the words of Cardinal Ratzinger.In our last letter we warned the Pope that we would perhaps consecrate a bishop if the diffusion of error continues as before, and the reform continues in the same manner.
Q. Rome these days, seems to be over-run with Modernists. Do you have any real friends there?
A. They who might be our friends, and who recognize the damage which Modernism is causing to the Church, have not had the courage to uphold it, and so it is possible to say that Rome is almost completely occupied by the Modernists. All that is done there is done according to modernistic principles.
Q. Professor van der Ploeg, in an article in the Dutch magazine, Katholiecke Stemmen for October 1985, speaking of Fr. Hans Küng, decries the fact that: "Küng has not been suspended from his priestly functions as was, for example, Archbishop Lefebvre who adheres to the Faith that the Church has always confessed." Would you comment on that?
A. The case of Hans Küng is only a particular incident. Entire Episcopal Conferences should be suspended if they do not retract their writings. For example, a recent document issued by the German Episcopal Conference no longer makes a clear distinction between Catholics and Protestants in mixed marriages.
Q. Would you comment on the Church in France today?
A. The great majority of the bishops in France are apostate, and have abandoned the Catholic Faith to become Modernist. Their new catechism is evident proof of this.
Yet, there is in France, an extraordinary resistance on the part of many priests, the faithful, and very many young Catholics. This is a great hope. The Catholic Church survives and is organizing itself against the persecution of the Conciliar Revolution.
Q. There are now five members of the Sisters of St. Pius X from Australia, including Sister Mary Michael who joined soon after your first visit to Australia in 1972. Can you tell us when a foundation of the Sisters might be established here?
A. This decision depends upon the Mother General of the Sisters, but I feel sure that it is her intention to found a community here quite soon.
Q. What do you say to people who claim that the Society of St. Pius X will die out?
A. God is the Master of all things, and He could make it come about that our Society should disappear. However, as the Church cannot disappear, then we are an important element in the continuity of the Church. I think that Providence will continue to support us, as It has done up to the present.
Q. Last April, Your Grace, the Archbishop of Melbourne, Sir Francis Little, welcomed Dr. Robert Runcie, head of the Anglican Church in England, as a brother bishop into St. Patrick’s Cathedral here in Melbourne. Could you explain to our readers why this was wrong?
A. All of these ceremonies, whether performed by the Pope or other bishops,result in religious indifferentism. In other words, they give the impression that all religions are good, that there is no distinction between the Catholic Church and other religions. The essential distinction between true and false religion is therefore lost, with the result that heresy is spread throughout the world. This heresy being that the Catholic Church is no longer the one true Church founded by Jesus Christ.
Q. Pope John Paul II recently created twenty-eight new cardinals. There were from Australians among them. We maintain that there were none worthy. Could you comment?
A. Given that many new cardinals are unworthy of their designation, any from Australia would only have added to that. In effect, the choice of cardinals is now made by reason of their total adhesion to the Conciliar Revolution, apart from a few rare exceptions.
Q. Do you have a message for Australia’s bishops?
A. Bishops, what have you done with your diocese, with your seminary, and your convents, with your schools, and with your Faith? The ruins are before you, and you persist in continuing the destruction of our holy religion. Reflect that you will soon have to render an account of your charge. "Redde rationem villicationis tuae," says Our Lord. Come back to the Church of before the Council, and all will flourish again.
Your Grace, thank you most sincerely. May the remainder of your visit be rewarding, and may our Immaculate Mother ensure your safe return to Switzerland.
Source
[Emphasis - The Catacombs]
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| Archbishop Lefebvre: 1984 Conference - The Tridentine Indult |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-07-2020, 07:06 AM - Forum: Sermons and Conferences
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The Church, The Priesthood and the Tridentine Indult
Conference of His Excellency Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre to Priests
29 October 1984 - Stuttgart, Germany
My dear brethren:
I would like to speak to you today on three things in particular: first, a little bit about the general situation of the Church, next a few words on the spirituality of the priesthood, and finally, a few thoughts on the decree which has just appeared.
First, I would like to give you a little overview of the general situation of the Church, and particularly of Rome, especially the Pope, because it is the Pope, I would say, who leaves his particular influence on the actual state of the Church. In our present epoch it is difficult to deny that we find the Church in a painful state - for nearly twenty years - because the principles of Liberalism have penetrated the Church.
Journalists often say to me: “But, Monseigneur, you should have better relations with Pope John Paul II because he is a traditionalist. He stresses the importance of the cassock or religious habit; he is very devoted to the Blessed Virgin Mary; he wants discipline in the seminaries. He gives the impression of 'reacting' against the changes of Paul VI - you should certainly have better relations with him!”
It is indeed true that on some particular points Pope John Paul II does desire a certain return to the old discipline in the seminaries, in religious life, in certain exterior aspects of the Church. Unfortunately, however, we would not be correctly judging the mind of the Holy Father were we to judge only by these kinds of things, which are certainly secondary. It cannot be denied, and he himself said it, that one of the principal goals of his pontificate would be religious liberty - he himself says it - and ecumenism as well, He said it again in Canada when he was there. He said it to the World Council of Churches: "Ecumenism cannot be turned back, thus we must continue towards this end," and, for him, as he often repeats, it is one of the principal ends of his pontificate. One can see it also in his discourses published in Documentation Catholique: "One of the goals of my pontificate is ecumenism, and religious liberty."
Ecumenism, such as it is actually practiced, and religious liberty, are principles, which come from the Declaration of the Rights of Man. It is written in the constitution of the Rights of Man that every man has the right to his religion according to his conscience, and thus he has the right to express and publicly practice it according to his conscience. It is one of the rights contained in the Declaration of the Rights of Man, condemned by Pope Pius VI (1775-1799).
Now, it is clear that it is the Freemasons who drew up this document, against the Ten Commandments - their own answer, as it were, to the Ten Commandments - against the will of God, against the authority of God. It is, for all that, a very serious thing to believe, and rightly so, that it was the idea of the Liberals to introduce that into the Church. And when the head of the Church himself begins to propagate these ideas - and he has frequently praised the principles found in the Constitution of the Rights of Man; he did it at Berne before all the members of the Swiss government - that is serious, very serious, because that goes absolutely against the rights of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
We are not "free" in religious matters any more than we are free in moral questions; we do not have the right to follow whatever morality our conscience suggests; we do not have the right to follow whatever kind of faith conforms to our temperament and way of thinking. Faith and morals are imposed upon us by God, and Our Lord Jesus Christ is God. It is thus inadmissible to give the impression that all religions are equally good, that all moral teachings are equal.
We must not forget that the Conciliar reforms of the liturgy, the reforms of the Bible, the changes in the internal structure of the Church, of the constitution of the Church - all these things are a result of the ecumenical spirit. That is clear, since Protestants were present for the changes in the Mass - six Protestant ministers were photographed with Pope Paul VI who thanked them for having come to participate in the liturgical commission, which transformed our Catholic Mass! Everything was done in this ecumenical spirit: liturgical reforms, catechetical reforms, an ecumenical Bible - which is sold in the bookstore at the Vatican. There was then, a considerable Protestant influence.
And the Pope himself says that he is the spiritual son of Pope Paul VI, that he must continue the Council, to put the Council into practice. He has repeated this more than once.
"Well, the consequence of all this is that the abuses start to appear as, for example, catechetics in France. When it becomes too obvious that the consequences are disastrous, the Pope takes notice. He sends Cardinal Ratzinger to stop, to finally put a limit, a certain limit, to this destruction of the catechism. But since the principles are still there - the principles behind this catechetical reform have not changed - they find themselves in an ongoing contradiction. They do not have the courage to go to the logical conclusion. They ought to have suppressed these new catechisms, but since they, themselves, said that a change was necessary, to transform these things according to the modern spirit, to modern man's way of thinking, they are caught in contradiction.
The same is true of liberation theology. Liberation theology is Marxism pure and simple - communism, and that frightens the Pope a little. Yet, what is this liberation theology if not the conclusion, the putting into practice, of the Rights of Man; it is the Constitution of the Rights of Man that liberates him, liberates him from all authority, from the authority of God, from the authority of the States, from the authority of parents, of godparents ... And so the Pope, on the one hand, praises the Rights of Man and, on the other hand, opposes liberation theology. He find himself in a contradiction, and that is why one gets a strong impression that he conducts this battle against liberation theology without a firm conviction, and thus he does not follow through on it. All you need is for a few bishops to stand up and say: No, no, liberation theology is not that bad; besides, we must support the people, the rights of the people, the rights of man, etc., and the Pope backs off.
It is the same thing with the new catechetics in France. The bishops stood up, showed their displeasure, and Cardinal Ratzinger backed off as well. Why? Because they don't have real conviction, they are using false principles to combat the errors of liberalism, and so they are in a constant inconsistency. Until they go back to the principles of tradition, they will not succeed in stopping the progress and the consequences of the Council and the Conciliar reforms.
THERE IS ALSO another aspect of the situation of the Church which is very serious, an idea which is spread far and wide within the Church, the concept of the salvation of man: salvation which from now on is for all men in all religions. That is no longer the old conception of the Church, which demands Baptism, which restores the soul, which takes away Original Sin and provides a remedy for souls, which have fallen sick. The Holy Ghost comes as a remedy to save us, and the sacraments are to help us save ourselves, and give us health of soul. That is no longer what they believe, but rather, the Protestant notion is little by little entering the Church, the idea that the whole world is saved. Just look at the burial rites now: they are joyful ceremonies, the soul is evidently saved, there are no prayers said for it; instead they have chants of thanksgiving to God, or praise, etc. No more purgatory - that doesn't exist anymore.
And they no longer have the notion of asceticism, of a spiritual combat. The idea of a spiritual combat has practically disappeared in the Church, and they have done away with all the prayers, which made mention of the enemies of the Church, or enemies of our souls. All that has been suppressed in the liturgical prayers, or any notion of contempt for the world, for example: "contemnere terrestria et amare caelestia - to despise earthly things and to love heavenly things." That has been eliminated from the orations as if to say that we must not despise the world, that it is an error to eschew the world. Now in the spirit of the Church, to take no heed of the world is in the same spirit as Our Savior, Who said that He did not pray for "the world" since the world is under the influence of Satan. It was in this spirit that the Church spoke that way. All these things have been changed; now there is a completely different attitude.
You may have noticed this in the Pope's Wednesday conferences - I don't know if you read them - but, if you read them, you can see: for well-nigh five years almost ad nauseam, he has spoken of the theology of the human body; we have really had our fill of it, we must say. There is no ascetical theology in it, and for him it seems that marriage will be sublimated right up to heaven and become, I don't know, some sort of celestial mysticism. Incredible! Incomprehensible!
I don't think anybody understands what he says; so mysterious is all this theology of the human body. One searches in vain for the old asceticism. All he does is praise marriage, praise the union according to the flesh, without a single mention of concupiscence, it's unbelievable, since we must never forget that even after receiving Baptism, as St. Thomas says, we still have four profound wounds in our soul. He calls them the fomes peccati (remains of sin), which are: ignorance, malice, weakness and concupiscence; these are the four wounds which remain in us and of which we stand in need of a cure, and for this cure we need the merits of Our Lord. Well, all that is over with, finished. They say Baptism remits our sins and, most importantly, makes us members of the Christian community. There it is, exactly like the Protestants.
Now this different vision of Christian spirituality is exceedingly grave because it excludes once and for all the Cross, it excludes sacrifice, it casts aside the Cross and the Sacrifice and the Redemption of Our Savior.
ANOTHER GRAVE PROBLEM now undermining the Church is found in the new Canon Law. The new Canon Law is very serious for it goes much further than the Council itself.
In the Council they succeeded, for example, in avoiding the creation of two supreme powers in the Church: the Pope on the one hand, and on the other hand, the Pope and the bishops as two ordinary powers in the Church, which is contrary to the doctrine of the Church. There is only one supreme ordinary power in the Church and that is the Pope. The Pope communicates his supreme power in extraordinary cases like a council, but the Pope and the bishops are not an ordinary power in Holy Church. Besides, it is contradictory because the bishops could claim this power from the Pope if the Pope acts alone, saying: "We also have supreme power with you, therefore you must consult us." The Pope could say, "But I alone have the power" - "Yes, but we have it with you," and thus he would be in continual conflict with the bishops. That is inadmissible. Our Lord did not found the Holy Church in such a way that there would be a continual conflict between the Pope and the bishops.
Then another thing, which is very seriously flawed in the new Canon Law, is the definition of the Church. For me, that is perhaps what best characterizes the new theories of the Church since the Council: the Church is the "people of God." The Church no longer consists of clerics and the laity, with only the clergy exercising the ministry from which all the graces are communicated to the laity, while the laity must receive these graces from their ministry. No, now it is all one "people of God," everyone is admitted, according to his function, according to his capacities, to different ministries, as if there were no more distinction between the clergy and the laity.
This is extremely serious. It is, fundamentally, the destruction of the Church. Now one could say, "No, look at the following chapter and there is, all the same, a distinction made between the clergy and the laity." Yes, but that does not take away the contradiction. The error exists. It is there even if later on it is more or less "corrected" by an affirmation of the distinction between clerics and laypeople. Notice however that it is precisely this which becomes the leit motif of the following chapters, when they speak of the munus docendi - in the chapter on the Church's Teaching Office - the Teaching Office is given to the People of God, it is not given to the priests; the mission of sanctifying is given to the People of God; it is incredible! What power will they leave to the priests then? There remains only the power of jurisdiction; that is a little more difficult to change; so they published an article in L'Osservatore Romano on the powers which the laity now has in the new Canon Law, in which they said: you may have taken notice of the fact that the Teaching Office and the mission of sanctifying have been attributed to the People of God; as for the power of jurisdiction, that is a bit more delicate, what they say about that is less precise. There you are! These are grave errors. For example, with the Teaching Office and the mission of sanctifying, they make an absolute link between the role of a parent with respect to his children, and the role of the priest. The priest has a role: the Teaching Office and the mission of sanctifying with regard to his parish. The father of a family has a role: a teaching office and mission of sanctifying of his family. All this comes from a false vision of the Church. It will mean the definitive disappearance of the essential distinction between the priesthood of the faithful and the sacramental priesthood.
The priest has received a sacrament, the Sacrament of Holy Orders, which confers a character on the priest and which gives him alone the power to pardon sins, the power to pronounce the words of consecration at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, and the power to administer the sacraments. It is really unbelievable to have made this kind of comparison between the priests and the faithful.
THERE IS ALSO MORE and more of this democratic spirit in the Church. You are aware of all the councils they have - although they are only "consultative" - but they still have them all the same: a parish council, a bishops' council - at least two councils in the parish and one or two for the bishop - there is the Synod of Bishops at Rome, which is now a recognized institution in Canon Law, so that the authorities, in practice, are obliged to take them into account, and it is no easy thing to govern when one is continually obliged to seek the counsel of a majority vote, or to hold a vote to see what the assembly thinks. Those in authority have their hands tied. Not that there was no such thing as consultation in the old Code of Canon Law, there were certain consultations which the bishop had to make, but they were much more discreet, much more reasonable than now. Now it has become an institution, which really limits the powers of the bishop.
All this means that the new Code of Canon Law, to my way of thinking, goes considerably further than the Council itself.
The giving of Holy Communion to Protestants - eucharistic hospitality, as they call it - is a dogmatic error. One does not have the right to give Communion to someone who does not have the Catholic Faith, that is a real rupture with what has always been most precious in the Church: the Body and Blood of Our Lord, and faith in Our Lord Jesus Christ. One does not give the Body and Blood of Our Lord except to someone who truly has the Catholic Faith, faith in Our Lord Jesus Christ, and not simply faith in the Real Presence while he perhaps denies the divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
Before passing to the second point, which will be somewhat shorter than this one, I would like to make a little comparison between the preceding and what Mgr. Bugnini said. Last year there appeared an enormous book of his on the liturgical reform, published posthumously, by one of his confreres. I recommend, if you ever come across this book, that you read the general principles. They are very instructive, and absolutely incredible - right in these general principles Archbishop Bugnini says, this liturgical reform is a profound one, aiming at restoring to its true place - for him, according to what he says - the People of God. It is very curious to find here this notion of the People of God, which is in the new Code of Canon Law, published after the death of Archbishop Bugnini. He could not have gotten it from the new Code, so these ideas must have been around well before it. It is stupefying to read in the Documentation Catholique that the Lutheran - Catholic Commission of the Secretariat for Christian Unity, and thus an official Roman commission, said in effect that numerous points in the Council were drawn from the teachings of Luther, one of them being the notion of the People of God. They say it explicitly; so with this doctrine of the People of God, they are restoring the assembly to its true place, to give it an important role in the liturgy, implying that before the assembly did not exist, or that its role was minimal, that there was no participation; and that, now, thanks to the new liturgy, there is finally participation.
There comes to mind an objection made by a certain Benedictine Abbot at the conference which Archbishop Bugnini gave before twenty-four Superiors of Religious Orders - I myself was present at this conference - at Rome, before the publication of the New Mass. When he introduced to us his "normative mass," Archbishop Bugnini spoke to us precisely about this participation of the faithful, active participation, as if before Vatican II the faithful had never participated in the Mass. And so an Abbot got up and said, "Father, if I understand correctly, we should not say private Masses any more, since there is no congregation, and thus no participation by the people in our Masses." The response was, "Quite truthfully, we have not envisioned that." Incredible! As he himself said, this idea has inspired the liturgical reform, an idea which reverses the roles, giving the greater role to the assembly, and no longer to the priest and the sacrifice, the Sacrifice of Our Lord.
I HAVE BEEN ASKED to give you a few reflections on the spirituality of the priest. I cannot very well separate the spirituality of the priest from the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
To my mind there are not two different kinds of priestly spirituality, there is only one: that of his Mass, that of the Sacrifice of Our Lord, because the priest is essentially the man of sacrifice. I would say there is a transcendental relation between the priest and the sacrifice, and between the sacrifice and the priest. One cannot imagine sacrifice without a priest, and the priesthood without sacrifice. And so there is a relation there that is more than essential, transcendental really, a relation that goes beyond even the essence of the priest. So, we must go back to the idea of the Sacrifice. One can say that our sacrifice, the sacrifice which Our Lord has put into our hands, the sacrifice which Our Lord has left us, is a thing without limit, inexpressible, so divine and mysterious is it, that it surpasses everything we can imagine.
To think that we are really "other Christs," and that it is His words, His words that produce His presence, that we recite these words each morning, that it is not simply a narrative but also an action, and that we say, "This is My Body," we do not say, "This is the Body of Jesus Christ." But we say, "This is My Body," "This is the chalice of My Blood" - it is we ourselves who pronounce it! Consequently we are truly in the Person of Christ, it is truly Christ that we represent. It is no longer we who speak; it is Our Lord Who makes use of our lips, Who makes use of us to pronounce these words anew. There it is, I truly believe, the great program of the priest, the program of priestly life: his Mass. That is why the Mass is so important. And this program, it is not really complicated, it is very simple.
The first part of the Mass consists in teaching: "to teach all nations," that is our role. We have to teach precisely because we have the Teaching Office. Our Lord said to us, to priests, "Teach all nations." He did not say that to just anybody, He said that to His Apostles, and so we have this role and we must teach. That is what we do in the first part of the Mass, more especially than in the other parts. May we be solicitous that our teaching truly be the teaching of the faith, that our teaching truly be the teaching of the Church! And may I point out that the faith is essentially connected with Revelation, and Revelation is essentially connected with Tradition: Faith, Revelation, Tradition! And that is why, when we say we are traditionalists, we are right. We must be traditionalists; there can be no Catholics who are not traditionalists. Tradition is part of our faith. We should not forget that there was a time of prophecy, as St. Thomas says. There was a prophetical epoch which began with the first prophets, continuing right up to the Prophet Who is Our Lord Jesus Christ: He is the Prophet, there is none greater, none holier, none more perfect, than this Prophet.
Thus the prophetical epoch continued right up to Our Lord Jesus Christ. The Apostles were joined with Our Lord Jesus Christ to announce the Gospel. After the death of the last Apostle, the prophetical epoch came to a close, was finished; there is no other prophet, there can be no other prophet after Our Lord. Who could surpass Our Lord? Who could say: "I come after Our Lord to complete what Our Lord said"? Who could say such a thing? God Himself has come, who can make himself greater than God? There are no more prophets; the time of prophecy is finished, terminated.
St. Thomas goes on to say: "Then followed the dogmatic epoch," the time of definitions, that is, the time in which the contents of Revelation were defined, that which was revealed, that which is in the deposit of faith. And the Popes have no other role than to define what is in the deposit of Revelation - not to add a single truth, but simply to say: "This is in the deposit of revelation." That is where Tradition comes in: Tradition, from generation to generation, from Pope to Pope, from council to council, the tradition of the Faith, of what has been defined, and to the extent to which it is defined it is untouchable, one can no longer touch this truth, it is defined for all times.
When a Pope uses his infallibility, it is the deposit of faith, the treasure of our faith, there is thus a tradition, which we cannot avoid, which we must keep, hence the importance for us to always refer to the past, to refer back to what the Church had always taught. Now, this is the great error of Cardinal Ratzinger, the great error of those who are in the Church today, who say to us: "The Church is a living body and so it evolves, always changing, always in evolution, the Church is not a corpse." Truth is always the same. When I said to Cardinal Ratzinger, "Look, religious liberty and Quanta Cura are incompatible," "Oh," he said, "we are no longer in the times of Quanta Cura." We are no longer in the times of Quanta Cura, then tomorrow we will no longer be in the times of their own new truths - this is not possible!
Now in this first part of the Mass, which, I would say, is the model for our own teaching, we must refer back to that, to Tradition. The essence of what St. Paul said is: "Tradidi vos quod et accepi - I have passed on to you what I have myself received." Already in his time he said that, and he said: “If an angel himself says the contrary of what I have handed on to you, or if I say the contrary of what I have passed on to you, may I be anathema!" And that is serious! And so neither do we have the right to deny what was handed down to us.
THERE ARE TWO other parts of Holy Mass, the part with the consecration, the Sacrifice, and then the part where the priest communicates, which are united because we are united to our Victim, Our Lord.
First, the Sacrifice. I now make a distinction betweengratia sanans (grace healing) and gratia elevans (grace elevating), the grace which Our Lord gives us in Baptism, which He also gives us in the Sacrifice of the Mass. The augmentation of this grace has the aspect of "healing" and "elevating.” - Grace healing that is the sacrificial, penitential aspect, of compunction for our faults, of everything that heals us. It is the Blood of Our Lord, it is in the Sacraments, in the Sacrament of Penance ... then, there is "grace elevating” which lifts us up, the Holy Ghost Who elevates us with Our Lord Jesus Christ in contemplation, in the love of the Father, in the love of the Holy Trinity. In the Sacrifice of the Mass we find ourselves as it were on the Cross again with Our Lord. That is the sacrificial and penitential aspect, the healing aspect, but also the aspect of love, of charity, of the contemplation of Our Lord.
Next comes the third part: the communion of the faithful. Fundamentally we cannot give them more than Our Lord Jesus Christ, but we must prepare them, precisely by teaching, and then we are the doctors of their souls by the Sacrament of Penance, by the advice we can give. We must do this in such a way that souls receive Our Lord Jesus Christ under the best conditions, so that they can receive this gratia sanans and gratia elevans, and unite themselves with Our Lord the Victim, Our Lord Who praises His Father for eternity.
These are, in summary, the different aspect of the Most Holy Sacrifice, which are very important, essential, and which are an entire program of life, this is practically our entire program of priestly life. I wish that we could always gain a deeper understanding of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. There you can see the change on the perspective on the Mass: if one insists only on the meal, as the progressives do now, on the meat the table, the table of the eucharistic banquet the sharing of bread, the sharing of the word-they leave aside the aspect of the Cross, the sacrificial aspect which [...] us up to heaven. Let us not separate the aspect of Our Lord which lifts us right up to the bosom of the Trinity, in the midst of praise, the propitiatory aspect of sacrifice which covers us with the Blood of Our Lord, which heals us of out maladies, precisely this "healing grace." We ought not to forget that there is "healing grace" and "elevating grace"-there are these two aspects of grace.
I WILL FINISH THIS TALK with a few words on the new decree which has just come out. Is it a boon, or not? It would be difficult to say that it is not a good thing, since many people have asked Rome for this liberty, that those who say the Old Mass not be persecuted. I myself also during these years have not ceased asking of Rome: leave us this liberty! And so, faced with the insistence of many people, and mine also, they finally decided to do something. Unfortunately however they have added to it incredible conditions. It's absolutely unimaginable, after all this, to be interrogating people on their opinion: Do you reject the New Mass? If you reject the New Mass, then you don't have the right to say the old one. That surpasses the imagination. For as I said to my confreres, if one of you were asked, or, if for example, we take the Abbey of Fontgombault in France, the Benedictines, they like the Old Mass, but they have accepted the New Mass out of "obedience." Now they will surely ask for the Old Mass again. And they could ask them: "Why do you opt for the Old Mass?" "Ah, because we prefer the Old Mass. You see, the New Mass has certain features . . ." "Ah! You don't like the New Mass! Neither then shall you have the Old!"
That is ridiculous, because if we choose the Old Mass it is because we find it better than the new one. If you reject the new one, you don't have the right to the old one! They could quibble back and forth like that.
To my mind, this decree is a typical example of the present mentality at Rome, the progressive mentality. This is a progressive decree; it is not a traditional decree where Rome would act out of consideration for the holiness of the Mass, for the holiness of the faithful, for the apostolate and good of souls, the glory of God. No, it's not that. It's pure politics. They conducted a referendum ... a poll ... to see who were in agreement; because there was still a small group holding out, they decided to make a concession, but to also add some conditions. That is politics, the same kind they practice in democracies - it's not supernatural at all. Be that as it may, I think Providence has willed this nevertheless for now we have a foot in the door and never again will they be able to shut it! The old era is finished, now we have a foothold, and I think that the good God will permit, little by little, that there will be a return to Tradition. It has triggered the common sense of many of the faithful who say, "Finally this business is over with! Finally we can go to the Old Mass! Finally the dispute is over!"
They aren't really taking the conditions into account. There was even a radio station in Switzerland that said, "Pope Paul VI condemned Archbishop Lefebvre and now John Paul II has condemned Paul VI." That is not altogether accurate, but that is the impression the faithful will get from this decree.
Will we, in our priories, in our traditional groups, will we lose much support? Personally, I don't think so; on the contrary. For one thing, we must say, this decree will unfortunately be difficult for those priests who have charge of a parish, for example, to have the Old Mass when their faithful are divided. Some want the Old Mass, some want the New; some want Communion in the hand, some don't want Communion in the hand; some want Mass facing the people, some don't want Mass facing the people. That will cause interminable divisions. Thus it will be very difficult to have the Old Mass in this environment. And so I believe that many of our faithful, even if they were accustomed to going to an environment like that, where they see the faithful receive Communion in the hand, where they see the priest celebrate the Old Mass facing the people, they will say: No, no, we will go to those who keep Tradition in its entirety. I don't believe that we will suffer losses. If that is what they figured, I believe they are mistaken. If they calculated beforehand: we will isolate the Society, we will isolate their priests, we will drive the faithful from them - for my part, I believe they are mistaken; I believe, on the contrary, that we will have more support than ever. Already some have said to us, "Oh, now we will be able to come to you." Before they were afraid and thought it would be disobedience to the priests, to the bishops who said to them: "You disobey if you go to those Masses." Now that issue of disobedience is over, so now we can go there, the faithful believe.
That is why, after all is said and done, we must look beyond the actual text of the decree, and the divisions it will cause, and the difficulties it will cause with the bishops: look at it as the good God sees it. I believe it is providential, a first step on the road back to Tradition and so, I hope, God will see to it that other steps will follow. ++
[bolded emphasis - The Catacombs]
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