| Editor : Abbé Georges de Nantes | N° 76 – January 2009 |
|
THE NOVUS ORDO MISSĆ: THE INTEGRIST SCHISM
After the first victories of the reformers at the Second Vatican Council, as the flood of progressivism was ravaging the Church, our Father warned his readers against a bad reaction: the integrist reaction.
In fact, in his Letter to My Friends n° 151, of 1 September 1963, he explained that, of course, « the integrists want the Church to remain what she was, what she is in her unchanging essence, and refuse as a sacrilege that men subject her to the fashion of the day ». Nevertheless, against the reformers they take « defensive positions that are too rigid, capable of dragging them into error or illegitimate revolt ».
The Abbé de Nantes showed that « all the clear, acceptable grievances that are formulated against integrism come down to three charges: »
« Against all lines of reason integrism prefers the argument from authority alone, which it considers as absolutely decisive in all domains.
« It globally rejects all the new acquisitions or hypotheses of the sciences and sees in them nothing other than the disguised allies of unbelief or heresy. » The integrist fails to take into account, for example, the variety, history, and evolution of liturgical rites.
« Finally, it is unconditionally submissive to the established order in the Church as in the State, and will not hear of changing anything out of fear of revolution. »
At the end of his study, our Father concluded that there was an urgent need for working towards the existence of a traditionalist third party between progressivism and integrism « where everyone can be reconciled: faithful to his faith. A Catholic is nonetheless invited to exercise his intelligence to understand his religion, to enrich his knowledge of all the definitive acquisitions of human sciences, to seek continually the best institutions and promote them for the common good of the Church and country ».
FROM UNCONDITIONAL SUBMISSION TO REBELLION.
During the Council, the integrists were confronted with a situation that they had not foreseen: Pope Paul VI, who was won over to Congarian reformism, supported their adversaries. They found themselves disavowed by Authority; nevertheless, against all lines of reason they continued to prefer the argument from authority alone. Fr. Victor Berto, who had been trained at the French Seminary in Rome and who founded the Dominican Sisters of Pontcalec, was Mgr Lefebvre’s personal theologian. Now, after Paul VI promulgated the decree on ecumenism and manoeuvred to safeguard the schema on Religious Freedom, he affirmed:
« The Holy Father has so judged, and we are anxious to repeat that his judgement in itself and it alone suffices to entail our own. » (Pour l’Église, Vol. 2, éd. CRC, 1993, p. 104)
This is the rationale for our Father’s observation in November 1965: « This conciliar right-wing was defeated, because it deserved to be. Its integrism began with a flagrant error regarding Authority and declared that it was a show of loyalty to persons before being a show of fidelity to God and combat for the Faith. Rather than standing firm on the truth as a divine absolute, it preferred to leave everything to arbitration, to the arbitrary of a single person. I say arbitrary, because in this camp, they were in such a rush to resign that they did not even think about asking the supreme authority to intervene in this capacity, according to its function and in the sovereign line of its infallible tradition.
« They defended the truth, but conditionally, as an opinion that the Holy Father could modify, for unity, for the good, for any reason or pretext, according to his judgement. »
On the last day of the Council, Mgr Marcel Lefebvre signed the Declaration Dignitatis humanæ as well as the Constitution Gaudium et spes, that is to say, he officially adhered to them because the Pope willed so.
At the time he was the Superior General of the Congregation of the Spiritan Fathers, and his mandate should have lasted until 1974. But since the progressivist Fathers rebelled against him, he resigned from his office in September 1968, thus leaving full liberty to the chapter to proceed with the aggiornamento of the congregation in the spirit of the Council.
Fr. Berto was one of the rare integrists who finally recognised the clear-sightedness of the theologian of the Catholic Counter-Reformation. Having finally understood that Pope Paul VI was not carrying out the duties of his office, he wrote to our Father on 14 December 1967: « For a Roman of my sort, one who could not be more Roman, a Roman by oath, a Roman to the core, this debasing, this degrading of the Roman See is an unbearable spectacle, unspeakable heartbreak. But alas, in these years of an only too well-deserved chastisement, that is how things are, that is how you see them, I likewise, when both you and I would like so much for them to be otherwise. »
On 20 November 1968, at Pontcalec, a few weeks before his death, Fr. Berto praised our Father: « Monsieur l’abbé, you are Roman! » When one of his confreres – it was Fr. Barbara – protested firmly that he was Roman also, Fr. Berto interrupted him: « No, no! On the other hand, Monsieur de Nantes is Roman. » Assuredly, our Father was Roman, that is, indefectibly attached to the Church of Rome, Mother and Teacher, and she alone, of all the local Churches.
We would have to call to mind these warnings against any schismatic dissidence and separation as soon as the Modernist plot carried the day at the Council:
« Whatever the opinions of the bishops and the Pope may be, they are the Church, that is to say, they have a character, a spirit that is fundamentally counter-revolutionary. Their distraction may be great, their slowness or their likings surprising, even scandalous, nevertheless no one is in a situation to substitute themselves for them.
« Their authority alone, on the day that they have the definite will legitimately and really to exercise it and not speak or act according to their personal whim or human tactics, their divine authority alone will be able to save everything, and all the more rapidly, more perfectly if a thousand small groups have not disoriented and detached from them their best subjects. » (Letter to My Friends no 129, January 1963)
After the Council, the integrists entered onto two unfortunate paths:
« Some, our Father related, held firm to submission to Authority and modified their behaviour to conform with the new way of praying, believing, and acting. They renounced their convictions while swearing that they had not! The others held firm to traditions and swore that neither the Pope nor the Council would ask of them anything new. They established themselves in disobedience while swearing that they had not! » (J’ai lutté seul, CRC n° 83, August 1974, p. 1)
Their disobedience became plain for all to see and caused the “ Bad Break” in 1970 when Paul VI wanted to impose on the whole Church the liturgical innovations that were in accordance with the orientation and decisions of Vatican II. « No longer familiar with the necessary distinctions, weary of their contradictions and fluctuating opinions, they suddenly came out of their submissive position and in a single stroke entered into dissidence. »
These rebels refused the Novus ordo of the Mass by recalling the warning that St. Pius V made in the bull promulgating his Missal:
« If anyone dare attempt [to alter] this [decree] (...) he will incur the wrath of Almighty God and of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul. » (Quo primum, 1570)
Liturgists replied to them that in the Constitution Divino Afflatu of 1 November 1911, the holy Pope Pius X announced the revision of the Roman Missal. Thus, St. Pius X had not judged the work of his predecessor definitive or irreformable. Furthermore, Pius XII had affirmed in the constitution Sacramentum Ordinis of 30 November 1947, with regards to the rites of ordination:
« Every one knows that the Church has the power to change and abrogate what she herself has established. »
« It must be granted, our Father observed, that the liturgists are right in saying that Paul VI had the power to modify the rites and prayers of the Mass and that the malediction fulminated by St. Pius V against any eventual falsifiers of his Missal was aimed at all men with the sole exception of his successors! » (The Reform of the Mass: Idle Dream or Reality? CCR n° 80, November 1976, p. 14)
We are now going to recapitulate the controversies concerning the Novus Ordo Missæ. Then we will see the integrists’ schismatic drift, and our Father’s efforts to instil supernatural wisdom into his friends.
HERETICAL DEFINITION OF THE MASS
Pope Paul VI very closely conducted and monitored the works of the postconciliar commission that revised the rite of the Mass known as the Tridentine Mass. Mgr Martimort bore witness to this: « Nothing was decided without Paul VI being informed, having received the plans that he marked in his own handwriting, manifesting his preferences and sometimes his demands or refusals, so much so that at certain moments it created veritable crises. » (Pour l’Église, Vol. 3, p. 95)
When the project for a new normative Mass, i.e., to serve as a reference point, met strong opposition in the synod of 1967, it was Paul VI who decided to carry on regardless.
Why did the Pope have this passion for change? What intention did he have when he promulgated the Novus Ordo Missæon 3 April 1969?
« The only possible explanation, Our Father wrote addressing himself to Paul VI, lies in your desire for union with the Protestant bodies. It is the idea of ecumenism that underlies the replacement of the Mass of all ages, known as the Mass of St Pius V, by the Mass of Paul VI. You had never told us this, but our eyes were opened when we saw on the cover page of Documentation catholique for 3 May 1970 the “six non-Catholic observers who had taken part in the latest meeting of the Concilium for the Liturgy”. Their faces are covered with broad grins; they have every reason to be pleased! And there you are next to them with a sad smile; it makes me think that you had sold your right of First-born for a dish of lentils. » (Liber accusationis in Paulum sextum, éd. CRC, 1973, p. 42)
Article 7 of the General Introduction of the Novus Ordo, which summarises in a compact formula its other 340 articles, gave a Lutheran definition of the Mass:
« The Lord’s Supper or Mass is the sacred synaxis or assembly of the people of God united under the presidency of the priest, in order to celebrate the memorial of the Lord. »
Thus, the Mass seemed to be likened to the Lord’s Supper and characterised by the presence of the “assembly” and by the celebration of the “memorial of the Lord”, which can be understood in the sense of a simple commemoration of a past event that is finished.
Such a definition ignores the real and substantial presence of the Body and Blood of Christ, the reality of the present sacrifice that is objectively carried out at each Mass, and which renews the sacrifice of the Cross, the sacramental nature of the priest who consecrates, the intrinsic value of the Eucharistic sacrifice, which is renewed irrespective of the presence of the assembly. It therefore does not contain any of the dogmatic elements that are essential to the Mass, which however constitutes its true definition. Any Protestant could subscribe to it.
In the second part of this article 7, it is affirmed that « there applies in a particular manner to such a local assembly of Holy Church the promise of Christ: “where two or three are gathered in My name, there am I in the midst of them.” (Mt 18:20) » This worsens the equivocation and strengthens the heretical interpretation, for such a promise only concerns the spiritual presence of Christ, but the Eucharistic presence is substantial and physical.
In the new rite of the Mass, all the truths that the Protestants refuse are toned down, blurred, effaced.
With regards to the altar, our Father remarked « The fact that the altar has been replaced by a table and the Cross removed is a sufficient indication of the real intention of the 20th Century reformers, which is no different from that of the 16th Century reformers: it will end in forgetting and then denying that the Mass is a propitiatory sacrifice – the Sacrifice of the Cross perpetuated and renewed on our altars in an unbloody manner. » (At the Heart of the Church, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, CCR n° 52)
In the prayers of the new rite, the real presence is affirmed less. We no longer find in the consecratory words the Pauline insertion mysterium fidei (1 Tm 3:9), which was an immediate confession of faith on the part of the priest in the reality of transubstantiation and the sacrifice of the Mass, mystery of faith, that is carried out by the hierarchic priesthood. Its eviction and transfer into an acclamation said by the assembly changes its meaning and its import. It can now be interpreted in a Protestant sense: Mystery of the faith of the faithful, which makes Jesus Christ present in a spiritual manner in their midst.
Later on, assessing the liturgical reform, the Abbé de Nantes exclaimed: « The New Mass demonstrably conveys that abominable heresy that denies the reality of the sacrifice, whence it loses its precise and strong sense of the Real Presence with the result that the sacrament falls into disrepute through being celebrated in a purely human manner as though it were some secular festivity. Added to which, Communion is now distributed to public sinners, heretics and infidels alike. » (CCR n° 102, p. 16)
« WITHOUT INFERENCE! WITHOUT INFERENCE! »
As the Abbé de Nantes had acquired great authority among the traditionalists since his campaign against the new catechisms, the integrist rebels wanted to secure his support for their schismatic enterprises.
In fact, on 21 July 1969, several integrist priests came to visit Maison Saint-Joseph. They judged the Novus Ordo Missæ heretical and wanted “to continue the Church”. You had to hear it to believe it! These integrists said that they would go everywhere to say the Mass of St. Pius V, hear confessions, baptise, and preside at marriages universally, without worrying about submission to the bishops or about jurisdiction.
Our Father warned them that they would constitute a schismatic Church: « We have no jurisdiction unless it is delegated to us by our bishops; there is no other, whether it comes from Heaven or from elsewhere Confessions and marriages carried out without the ordinary powers of jurisdiction are null and void. »
It was dinner time. The Abbé de Nantes took them to the refectory. Suddenly the doorbell rang. It was Fr. Coache and Fr. Guérard des Lauriers. While serving the soup himself, our Father pointed out to Fr. Guérard:
« We also read your article. Although you did not sign it, we recognised your style. However, it remains without a conclusion.
– The conclusion speaks for itself, explained the Dominican. The New Mass is heretical and invalid. The hierarchy, in the person of the Pope and the bishops, has foundered.
– But Father, supposing that you are right, it will still be necessary to get the rest of the Church to admit this.
– Without inference, without inference! » Father Guérard cut in. For him, the fact was immediate, unambiguous, definite. No more Pope! No more bishops! Since they were heretics, they were spiritually dead.
– « But Father, replied the Abbé de Nantes, you have neither the authority nor the competence to declare the Pope and the bishops to be formal and complete heretics. Only the sovereign judgement of the Church can rule on heresy and excommunicate the heresiarch. Before declaring Paul VI deposed from the sovereign pontificate on account of heresy, it is necessary to obtain a judgement from the Church specifically concerning the heresy of the Pope. »
Everyone was listening to our Father with attention. Their minds were gripped by his arguments. Suddenly Fr. Coache burst out laughing: « Are you still harping on about that! To expect the official Church to pass a judgement is quite ridiculous. Fr. Coache no longer had any faith in the hierarchic Church.
Fr. Barbara proposed a compromise to our Father: « Clearly, you refuse to subscribe to their plans; but you will not publicly declare your disagreement, seeing that we are in doubt.
– Ah! excuse me, said the Abbé de Nantes, but I do not have any doubt. I show you that you are going to enter into schismatic dissidence. If you do this, I will personally denounce your culpable schemes."
TOWARDS THE TRIAL OF PAUL VI FOR HERESY ?
In autumn of 1969, the whole question was to know what the attitude of the hierarchy would be towards the Novus Ordo missæ. At the beginning of October, when it was about to become compulsory, Cardinal Ottaviani, the Prefect emeritus of the Holy Office, agreed to sign a petition to the Holy Father asking for the exequatur between the ancient and the new Missal, that is to say, the permission to use one or the other. He joined to it a Brief Critical Examination of the Novus Ordo missæ, which was written by several integrist theologians.
« The accompanying critical study, he wrote to Paul VI, demonstrates that the Novus Ordo Missæ represents, as a whole and in detail, a striking departure from the Catholic theology of the Holy Mass as it was formulated in the twentieth session of the Council of Trent, which, by fixing definitively the “canons” of the rite, erected an insurmountable barrier against any heresy which might attack the integrity of the Mystery. »
The Abbé de Nantes, however, learned that at Rome, all the other cardinals as well as the bishops of the Synod that were approached to sign this petition had refused, except Cardinal Bacci. In these circumstances, the lay promoters of the petition, members of the association Una Voce, hesitated to pursue their action and pushed back the ban on publication until 30 October. Our Father, disregarding the embargo, published it on 15 October in order to prevent the two cardinals from withdrawing their signature, frightened as they were to find themselves alone.
After twenty thousand copies had been distributed in a supplement to the CCR of October 1969, Cardinal Ottaviani was forced to send it to Paul VI.
The theologian of the Catholic Counter-Reformation presented the petition to his readers under the title “First Warning of the Roman Clergy to Pope Paul VI”. His entire aim was to create and favour an opposition of the hierarchy to the reforms that the Pope had decreed in order to obtain in the end his impeachment for heresy, schism and scandal.
If a reaction had taken shape, if dozens of cardinals, hundreds of bishops had publicly adhered to this petition, in short, if the hierarchy had rejected this Missal, « it would be stillborn, and it would appear among the documents and incriminating evidence for the proceedings instituted against Paul VI for heresy » (CRC n° 82, p. 11).
Nevertheless, the liturgical innovations could not be the essential material of this trial because in the liturgical domain it is always difficult to give apodictic, that is, indisputable, proof of heresy. In fact, the liturgy does not have the perfection of the divinely inspired Scriptures or the unchanging character of dogmatic definitions. The criticism that was formulated against the Novus Ordo did not have the value or the solidity of the dogmatic accusations that the Abbé de Nantes brought against the doctrinal innovations of Vatican II and Paul VI.
THE EVASION OF MGR LEFEBVRE AND CARDINAL OTTAVIANI.
It became rapidly apparent that no one dared adhere to the petition known as the Ottaviani Intervention: not a single bishop in the world gave hierarchical force and formed an ecclesiastical bloc of opposition to the Novus Ordo.
Mgr Marcel Lefebvre did nothing. As he did not want openly to enter into conflict with the Pope, he did not publicly express an opinion on the new Missal. On 28 November 1969, Jean Madiran wrote to him:
« You tell me that numerous bishops throughout the world realise the situation. Very well, but where are they? At this moment, only one French priest, the Abbé Georges de Nantes, and throughout the whole world only two cardinals have spoken openly. »
What the Abbé de Nantes sensed in mid-October 1969 happened in the course of the winter. Cardinal Ottaviani retracted:
« For my part, the prelate wrote, I only regret that my name has been abused in a way that I did not desire. »
« I rejoiced profoundly on reading the discourse by the Holy Father on the question of the Novus Ordo Missæ, and particularly at the doctrinal details contained in his discourses at the Public Audiences of 19 and 26 November 1969: after which, I believe, no one can be genuinely scandalised any more. »
As for our Father, he was scandalised to hear Paul VI declare without circumlocution: « It will be pious people who will be the most disturbed » by the new liturgy because they will be forced to « come out of their little personal devotions ». The Pope explained that the reform was going to impose on everyone « a great sacrifice, a weighty sacrifice » i.e., the abandonment of Latin as the liturgical language. « We are becoming as though intruders and profaners in the literary domain of sacred expression. We are thus losing for the most part this admirable and incomparable artistic and spiritual richness that is Gregorian chant. » (Audience of 26 November 1969)
THE MEMORIAL OF THE LAST SUPPER OR THE MEMORIAL OF THE CROSS?
What value did the supposed “doctrinal details” that the Pope provided have? Had he unequivocally taught that the Mass is the memorial of the Cross?
Oh, no! On 19 November, he had affirmed: « The Mass is and remains the memorial of Christ’s Last Supper. »
In his Liber Accusationis, the Abbé de Nantes comments: « This as it stands is definite heresy and it is this phrase that passed from your mouth into the hearts of thousands of priests, and corrupted their faith. But you had been careful to incorporate this definitive error into a theory – little known and rather unusual – emanating from Father de la Taille, according to which the Supper and the Cross form a single liturgical act, a single Sacrifice. Thus you safeguarded yourself and were able for all practical purposes to adopt a Protestant heresy without formally abandoning Catholic doctrine. It was very cleverly done! But your priests can see through it, Most Holy Father, and they understand well enough that your intention in devising the Novus Ordo was to bring us closer to Protestantism, an example which they are not slow to follow. » (p. 42)
For his part, our Father gave the true “doctrinal details”:
« In dying on the Cross, Jesus willed both to accomplish the Sacrifice prescribed by His Father and to institute the Sacrament of the Eucharist for us. Jesus wanted it to be His Unique definitive Sacrifice and He also wanted it to be perpetual, universal and offered to all. That is why He anticipated His Sacrifice at the time of the Last Supper and taught the Apostles the Sacramental Rite of this Sacrifice. “Do this in memory of Me”. So it is stupidity, thoughtlessness or formal heresy to make the Eucharist the memorial of the Last Supper. One might just as well say that the Mass I said this morning was the memorial of the Mass I said yesterday, or of my first Mass! But if the First Mass, the Last Supper, under the special form of an anticipation, was the memorial of the Cross yet to come, then all the Masses that take up the words and gestures of the First Mass are also the memorial of the Cross. » (CCR n° 52, p. 6)
This is what Paul VI did not want to teach clearly so as not to displease the Protestants.
Article 7 was not withdrawn or corrected, but supplemented: the affirmation of the truth was simply juxtaposed to the error that was maintained therein.
The Abbé de Nantes commented: « As long as there is no condemnation of the heretics, the innovators’ professions of Catholic faith will seem to us destined to protect their conquests and exploit them without being bothered.
« There has been no disavowal of those who interpret and practice the new Mass in a Protestant or Modernist sense. They are pulling the wool over our eyes » (CRC n° 32, p. 12 et no 82, p. 11)
THE LESSON OF THE CHURCHES
In the spring of 1970, the schismatic integrists publicly denied the validity of the new rite, and thus they claimed that they could not make their Easter duty if they could no longer find the Tridentine Mass.
In such dramatic circumstances as these, our Father wanted to sound out the life of the Church, to know the practice of the Church of Rome and the local Churches. In March 1970, he went to Madrid where he met some of the leaders of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Antonio-Maria Claret, which comprised six thousand Spanish priests. Our Father learned that they had almost all adopted the new rite, albeit reluctantly, but they had adopted it.
Then he went to Rome where he noticed that everywhere the Novus Ordo Mass was said: « While a few Spanish priests who still celebrate according to the old rite do so openly without being censured by anybody, in Rome itself the Roman Tridentine rite is only celebrated in secret, for fear of this being reported to the Vicar General, and Cardinal Dell’Acqua does not treat such indiscipline as a light matter! »
On his return to France, he received the same information from several foreign countries, notably from Portugal where an old priest from Coimbra informed him that he was the only priest in his city still to say the old Roman Mass.
Our Father drew “The Lesson of the Churches”, i.e., the new Mass is certainly valid:
« The entire Church could never have accepted, even out of obedience to the Pope, a mere simulacrum of the Sacrifice. It is because this new liturgy, however ambiguous, was still capable of expressing the true faith and bringing about the authentic Holy Sacrifice that the Churches have all accepted it. This argument is categorical: if today, all over the world, the mass of Catholic priests were celebrating an invalid liturgy, giving the faithful nothing but bread and wine to adore and consume in place of the adorable Body and Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and if the whole Catholic community were taking part in the deception in a mistaken faith, then the promises of Christ to His Church would be void, the Gates of Hell would have prevailed against her and there would no longer exist a Church of God! »
Let us understand well the strength of the argument. The Novus Ordo had been received by the totality of the hierarchy, that is, by the essential part of the Church, while the opponents were not even a fraction of the teaching Church.
Thus, on the grounds of the assistance of the Holy Spirit that was promised to the Church, the Missal of Paul VI was certainly susceptible of a Catholic interpretation. The Church’s intention in adopting this Novus Ordo could not be confused with that of its inventors and its promoter, Pope Paul VI. The rite in itself could not be judged as its authors might. For « every rite promulgated by the sovereign Authority of the Church and accepted by the entirety of the Catholic hierarchy is, as a necessity of faith, theologically valid and canonically licit, even though, secondarily and indirectly, it may present grave equivocations and constitute a very real danger for souls » (CCR n° 52. p. 14).
CHRIST IS THE AUTHOR AND PRINCIPAL AGENT.
« The Catholic Faith, our Father writes, holds for certain that the words of consecration alone effect the Real Presence, the Sacrifice and the Sacrament in all their truth and fullness. » (CCR n° 52, p. 13)
The words of consecration had not been greatly modified in the new rite. « Paul VI had not dared to touch the essential, and, furthermore, Almighty God would not have permitted him to do so! »
Our Father completed his demonstration by giving the “internal proof” of the validity of the new Mass:
« Its matter is bread and wine as Christ instituted. »
« Its form consists of the words of consecration, preserved without essential change. »
Assuredly, the quod pro vobis tradetur had been inserted in it: « This is My Body that will be given up for you. »
The integrists saw in it an ecumenical intention that they reproved, for the quod pro vobis tradetur is found in the Protestant Lord’s Supper.
The liturgists replied to them: « The “quod pro vobis tradetur” comes from the account of the institution of the Eucharist, which St. Paul related (1 Co 11:24). It was retained in the Ambrosian liturgy and in the Eastern rites. »
For his part, our Father underscored that “given up for you” conflicts with the theories of the Protestants, who, nevertheless, adopted it because they were over-zealous in coming back to biblical texts. It seemed excellent to him that it be reintroduced into the consecratory words of the Roman rite because this “given up for you” illustrates the sacrificial character of the Mass:
« In spite of my personal absolute fidelity to the centuries old Roman rite, I too, often feel a great desire to add quod pro vobis tradetur. I ask you, would there be anything wrong in that? »
But let us continue our review of the conditions for the validity of the Mass. A priest must pronounce the consecratory words over the bread and wine with the intention of « doing what the Church does ».
The dissident integrists claimed, along with Mgr Lefebvre, that the new Mass might be invalid because of lack of rectitude in the celebrant’s intention. Because the new rite, they said, is no longer the sufficient expression of the Catholic faith, it can no longer be known if the celebrants still have the intention of offering the expiatory and propitiatory sacrifice.
Our Father replied to them: « It has never been required that the priest think and believe as the Church believes and teaches; nor that he should want what the Church wants. He is simply there as an instrument whose thoughts, deepest desires, virtues and personal intentions do not enter into consideration at all. He is simply required to perform the action and say the words of the Sacrament seriously: that is his office. The rest concerns Christ alone. If a priest is asked: “Are you going to say Mass?” and answers: “Yes”, the required intention is adequately stated. »
« As for the rest the priest might personally have every vice; schism, heresy, and apostasy are this kind of moral depravity. He might even have the express will of making his Mass into something other than what it is: for example he may will that it not be a sacrifice but merely express a vague spiritual presence of the Lord – his will would still have no repercussion on the essence of the Mass. Since the priest is not the master in this matter, it is the thought, the will and formal intention of the Principal Agent that counts. The Principal Agent is Christ and the Church, who although invisible, is yet sovereign and the secondary agent will always be subordinate to Him. »
Mass is thus valid from the moment that the priest manifests the exterior intention of celebrating it to accomplish his function: « He puts into play a Divine energy, a Power that operates the Mystery of Faith, against him or without him. » (CCR n° 52, p. 15)
FOR THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH
In order to draw the faithful into their separated chapels, the integrist rebels went so far as to ban attending the Novus Ordo under pain of sin.
« Who gave you the authority to declare that it is a sin to celebrate this Mass or to attend it? » the Abbé de Nantes asked them.
« This new Mass is licit because it was promulgated by the sovereign Authority of the Church. No one can declare illicit what has been declared licit by the Pope and bishops, for in doing so one would have to arrogate for oneself an authority superior to theirs. This is precisely where schism lies – in claiming the power to legislate, ordain and forbid as supreme authority in religious matters, outside of, in place of or against the Pope and the bishops. »
« But you, integrists objected, you refuse to celebrate the Novus Ordo, don’t you? »
« Indeed, the Abbé de Nantes replied to them, I discern such frightful intentions and such a dampening of true piety that I refuse to conform to it. I have a serious objection of conscience to celebrate the Novus Ordo. I therefore cannot morally consent to it. For in the last resort, each one can and must, consult his conscience, the immediate judge of good and evil, by which we must always abide. »
« But my conscience in these matters has no authority whatever beyond myself. I can explain my reasons to my superiors, to my fellow priests and to all the faithful but I shall never have the right to transform the judgement of my conscience into an ecclesiastical law condemning, not to say excommunicating, those who obey the decisions of Authority, nor shall I ever have the right to impose on others the law of my conscience, my personal law, contrary to that of the Authority of the Church.
« There is a discipline in the Church. If we set up another discipline and claim that that is the law of the Church we thereby constitute a separate Church. » (CRC n° 54, p. 4 and CCR no 52, p. 16)
The theologian of the Catholic-Counter Reformation was always opposed to the withdrawal of the traditionalists into chapels where only the Mass known as the Tridentine Mass would be celebrated:
« I do not wish to see a Tridentine Mass party claiming to be the true Church, the Church of the good priests, the Church of the just, anymore than I want to see the other party – that of the Reform. A party cannot be the Church. »
« We repudiate any integrist “esprit de corps” just as we suffer agony and death as a result of the reformist “esprit de corps”, which has enlisted against us the whole hierarchical chain of oppressors of the Church, from Cardonnel and Küng even to the Reformer John-Baptist Montini, who is also our Pope. »
Not only did Paul VI and the bishops tolerate all liturgical innovations, whims, disorders and scandals, but they forbade the ancient rite.
For them, the new rite was the rallying sign for the new conciliar religion, for Congarian ecumenism, for the humanism of Gaudium et Spes. « Ah! they are attached to it. That is why they are uncompromising », remarked our Father who fought against the banning of the Tridentine Mass by inviting in particular the Bishop of Nancy to meet with him publicly because he invoked our Father’s instructions in order to reduce the integrist opposition in his diocese:
« You who speak so scornfully to them, who refuse to listen to them and shut the door in their face to the last Roman Mass in Nancy, you ought to realise what a temptation there is for them to give in to their disgust and flee from this horrible “postconciliar Church” whose only charity and liberty is upon its lips and which holds out to them nothing but spitefulness, treachery, and brutality. »
« I am very concerned, Excellency, about the spiritual health of these faithful whom you are thrusting aside, and about the future of the Church. We must rise above our worst disagreements and each one of us must bring our thoughts back to the Catholic community. We must apply our lips to the open wound made in the Heart of the Church by the spear thrust into it by the aggiornamento. (CRC n° 32, May 1970, p. 1)
SUPERNATURAL WISDOM
In his editorial Supernatural Wisdom, our Father drew from the Judgement of Solomon an allegory of the present situation of the Church, as he had already done five years earlier in the middle of the Council.
In fact, in his Letter to My Friends no 195 of 25 January 1965, he wrote:
« The Council resembles King Solomon’s court. Two women are disputing over one child before the supreme tribunal: “Bring me a sword... Divide the living child in two and give a half to each.” The Protestant Reformation has already torn the Western Church and before that the Eastern Schism had broken Her unity and earlier still there had been the Monophysites and the Arians. Hearing them shout at each other, one fears for the child. The final judgement is slow in coming…
« Will the Church remain whole and alive in the hands of the traditionalists, who have reared Her and brought Her up, or will she pass into the power of those reformers, who want to emancipate her and marry her to the world? Or will she once more be cut in two, divided by some mad gesture or human folly? The whole question lies in recognising the true Mother from the foster mother. »
Let us now quote the essential points of this remarkable editorial of April 1970, in which our Father renewed his exhortation – O how moving it is! – not to cut the living Church in two:
« Thrust aside by our Pope, our bishops and the many priests who follow their example or go beyond it, exasperated by the uninterrupted string of their heartbreaking and disastrous reforms, and alarmed at the prospect of our families being engulfed, crushed and carried away upon this sea of apostasy and immorality, we are ourselves tempted to crime and are provoked to join them in splitting the Church from top to bottom.
« Humanly, reasonably speaking, we cannot see any other solution: You can keep your Mass, and I will have mine; you can have your Communion in the hand, your married clergy, your revolution, your gimmicks and your jazz. You can keep the lot. We shall have our catechism, our Mass, our Gregorian plainchant, our processions, our faithful priests, our meetings and our little chapels. You asked for it, that is what you are expecting. So here we go, let us split the Church in half, let us cut into her living flesh, we integrists on this side and you progressives on the other! »
« This is how the two women in the Book of Kings came to push each other towards the barbarous solution of dismembering the child so that neither should take it home alive. Only the wisdom that spoke to the heart of the true mother was able, through a heroic sacrifice, to save this young and innocent life and re-open the gates of hope.
« This same wisdom must now prevail amongst our friends, giving them the courage to remain on the narrow path of Catholic fidelity.
« To preserve our unity in defiance of the modernists would be the signal to divide the Church. The question for us must be that of preserving Catholic unity, preserving it against everything that undermines it and splits off from it, whether to the right or to the left, whether for good reasons or bad. The Catholic communion comes first, because the Church alone belongs to Christ and because we have access to Him to the extent that we are faithful to Him, and to her. »
Our Father comes back to the biblical account:
« But all such tactical considerations were far removed from the heart of that mother who allowed her child to be handed over to the hateful shrew who had laid unjust claim to him. It was love alone, and not any calculation, that inspired her to this heroic generosity.
« Similarly, it is our love for the Church that inspires our conduct when we refuse to dissociate the Roman Mass from the new one – since any valid Mass is a true Mass – and to divide the clergy into faithful and unfaithful priests, and the People of God into parties.
« This good mother had no foreknowledge of the judgement of Solomon, but she had an infinite love for her child and an absolute trust in her King. Similarly, we have an infinite love for the priests our brethren and for all Catholics of good faith, whom we do not wish to divide, injure and scandalise by our fights. And we have an absolute trust in Jesus Christ, the King of kings and Lord of lords, into whose hands we place our cause. It is He, through the prayers of His Blessed Mother, who will keep alive in the hearts of this deceived and enslaved people “the faith of ancient days”. It is He who will at last return the child to his true mother, and we will certainly not desist for an instant from imploring Him by our prayers and tears, our cries ascending towards Him and towards His Vicar until, worn out by them, They will at last do us justice! »
This was, this still is the solution: an appeal to the Vicar of Christ for him to restore liturgical law, order, and unity within the whole Church. « We should all be in agreement » for « demanding the innovating Pope first to justify himself in his faith by proscribing Lutheran and Modernist heresy, by excommunicating the heresiarchs and by fighting against the appalling liturgical disorders through having the noble discipline of the Church respected. » (CCR n° 63, p. 6)
THE SIN AGAINST CHARITY
When our Father began to warn his readers against the integrist schism, Mgr Marcel Lefebvre blamed him for doing so by writing to him on 2 May 1970:
« I still have some reservations about the form with which you reprimand the Holy Father, and also about the interpretation that you give to Fr. Coache’s texts and the importance that you give to schism, to the alleged integrist schism. One would think that it is equivalent to the progressivist and modernist schism! All this controversy makes our friends suffer cruelly. It would be best to say these things through private letters or in conversation rather than to make them the object of a public debate. »
Mgr Lefebvre did not want a public controversy on this subject because he himself was beginning discretely, surreptitiously, cunningly to implement what our Father was denouncing as a schism. He founded his priestly fraternity and the seminary at Econe claiming that the only true Mass was the ancient one. In a conference in August 1972, he stated:
« All the efforts that are made to reorganise, reconstruct, rebuild, all of that is sterile because we no longer have the true source of holiness, which is the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Profaned as it is, it no longer gives grace, it no longer conveys grace. » (Un Éveque parle, Vol. 1, p. 167)
What Mgr Lefebvre wrongly said about the new Mass is precisely applicable to the Masses celebrated by the schismatic priests of his Fraternity: « If the Mass is schismatic, the Abbé de Nantes writes, Christ is there, but the Church is absent. The Sacrifice is carried out in Christ, but its fruits are kept for the Church and not the scission. » (CRC n° 60, p. 2)
Allegedly to save the “true Mass”, Mgr Lefebvre formed an unofficial, parallel Church that he claimed to be the Catholic Church, nothing less! Here is the dilemma with which he said he was confronted: « Either accept the reformed, liberal Church, or maintain his membership in the Catholic Church […]. This house of Econe has resolutely chosen the option of belonging to the Church of all time and refused belonging to the reformed, liberal Church. » (Letter to Friends and Benefactors, 3 September 1975)
Our Father commented: « It is contrary to the Catholic Faith, insulting to the Word of God and taking His promises as vain to declare that “There are two churches”. Where do you see two churches? There is the Church of Rome, the historical, hierarchical, visible Church spread throughout the earth and…? and what? and who ? If anything were to claim or demonstrate itself to be another church, it would be a new, private and therefore false church, as St. Augustine already proved to the Donatists.
« For the Donatists of today, the malice of saying that there are two churches is only a specious, transitory way of assuring the passage from the old universal Church, to the new, private one, which, we are told, is also the true and faithful church, whilst awaiting to proclaim definitively that it alone remains the only faithful and holy Church, the Church of Rome no longer being in existence. » (CCR n° 76, p. 1)
« I wish to be condemned by you, he wrote to the Archbishop of Paris, so that the entire world may know that you and yours are no longer Roman Catholics, that you no longer belong to the Church of Jesus Christ. So that any case of mistaken identity may be cleared up and that people may finally realise where the Roman Catholic Church is. »
Fr. Ducaud-Bourget still claimed to administer the Sacrament of Penance to the faithful when Cardinal Marty had expressly withdrawn from him the power of hearing confessions in a communiqué dated 1 June 1977: « From now on, therefore, any absolution provided by Fr. Ducaud-Bourget and any priest who assists him will be invalid. »
These integrist priests were sinking into schism, for, as our Father writes, « to rebel against and reject the doctrinal, pastoral and juridical authority of the Apostolic and Roman Hierarchy is evidence of schism » (Act of Union, 28 September 1974).
« Jesus, our Father also explained, only wanted and only founded one Church, on a single Rock, visible and easily identified, unshakable, which is Peter, and this Church is incontestably the Roman Church of which the Pope is the head. She is One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic. She alone. Whoever separates himself from her commits the gravest of sins against charity, according to St. Augustine: the sin of schism. By leaving her, he separates himself from Christ and his descendents inherit this separated situation, like a defect. » (CRC n° 57, p. 12)
TO PROCLAIM OUR HOPE
In order to turn traditionalists away from the road to perdition and to maintain them in the visible, historic, hierarchical communion of the Church, the Abbé de Nantes founded the League of the Catholic Counter-Reformation in 1970:
« We must, inasmuch as it is superhumanly possible – and grace will never be lacking to us for this –, remain in contact with our priests and with other members of the faithful, working together to preserve the faith, we with them and they with us. We have no right to effect a division, to draw the frontier between what is still Catholic – we others! – and what is no longer Catholic. » (CRC n° 30, p. 9)
In 1971-1972, in the context of the preparatory work for a Third Vatican Council, our Father demonstrated that the debasement and ruin of the liturgy, like all the other postconciliar destructions, had as its unique and universal cause: the Reform of the Church that the baneful Second Vatican Council decreed, and that Pope Paul VI pursued.
« The Mass, he explained, is the apple of the Church’s eye, but it is suffering from the sickness of the whole organism and mainly from the illness affecting the Head. It is the entire body that must be cured, and first of all the ill Head. Then the eye will be healthy because the entire body will be cured. »
While our Father denounced the evil in its entire scope by indicating to the hierarchy the remedy: a Third Vatican Council to restore the Catholic Faith and law, the schismatic integrists scorned his project. « They scorn it, our Father said to his readers, because they want you to have confidence not in the hierarchy, but in them alone. »
« I warned you that our great temptation would be to despair of the visible hierarchical Church: no longer to believe because we see nothing happening. The CCR means hope in the Church, a hope against all hope. To belong to it, to wear its emblem, is to proclaim one’s confidence in the future of the visible Church, a Church which, despite everything, will always be immortal and divine. » (CRC n° 35, p. 13)
That was forty years ago. It is still true today.