| Editor : Abbé Georges de Nantes | N° 77 – February 2009 |
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THE ALLEGED INVALIDITY OF THE SACRAMENTS,
AN ALIBI FOR SCHISM.
In his Book of Accusation against Paul VI that he took to Rome in April 1973, the Abbé de Nantes wrote: « Most Holy Father, in order that your project for a world community of religions may be achieved, you are of course required to break with the habits and rites, and with all Catholic discipline in the narrow sense of the word. » (p. 38)
In fact, the unfolding of the liturgical Reform, which had been set in motion by the Constitution Sacrosanctum concilium of Vatican II, finally achieved its goal the previous year in the implementation of a new ritual for the Sacraments, an event which overturned the ancient and wise Roman rite: old ways of doing things disappeared and new ambiguous formulas that lent themselves to heretical ambiguities, became licit... Abuses were not long in coming, to the great displeasure of the half-dumbfounded, half-scandalised faithful: false remarriages of divorcees in the diocese of Autun, collective absolution given to groups of pilgrims in the Sanctuary of Lourdes, without forgetting the numerous cases of invalid Masses. The English CCR n° 24 of February 1972 and the French CRC n° 86 of November 1974 detail these bad fruits that ripened on the tree of the conciliar Reform, and ended up « rotting » and becoming sham Sacraments conferred by priests on their way to being defrocked, or by the most zealous progressivists.
Faced with the shocking behaviour of their pastors, who were suddenly eager to vulgarise the Mass, to chuck out the confessional and to botch their cultual and sacramental ministry, the good faithful, disturbed as they were, began to doubt the validity of the new rites: could one still have faith in the new ritual actions and words to confer the sacraments?
The general licence authorised by the conniving silence of the bishops and the absence of Roman condemnations led many priests or laymen down the path of revolt. It was then that our Father intervened on two fronts: against the progressivists’ profanation and against the « intergrists’ » schismatic drift.
The annual volume of the CCR for 1977 is devoted to a monthly course of lectures on the Sacraments and characterised by unequalled perceptiveness and wisdom. Fr. Congar himself publicly admitted in Annecy on 8 February 1977 that he had « very much appreciated them » (The Sacraments, christian mysteries, CCR n° 91, General introduction, October 1977; CCR nos 93-99, 102, December 1977-November 1978).
Our Father, as a truly integral Catholic anxious to preserve Unity in the Truth, first demonstrated the effective validity of the new rites. Then, catching Mgr Lefebvre and his faithful in an act of betrayal towards the Tradition and the Roman See that they meant to save, our Father strove to outline a salutary “high ground” for the friends of the Cross and already proposed the solid pastoral theory of the Council of restoration, the Third Vatican Council of our hopes.
« THE UNACCEPTABLE INTEGRIST CONTESTATION »
In CCR n° 70 of January 1976, our Father wrote: « Due to liturgical anarchy and the countless scandals and unbearable sacrileges to which it gives rise, integrists are burning to find the sacraments conferred according to the new postconciliar rites invalid. » The parish priest of Touzac, whose story can be read in the same issue, is an emblematic case. This diocesan priest refused his bishop to come to administer the Sacrament of Confirmation to his parishioners on the pretext that he no longer used the ritual formula fixed by the Council of Trent.
In this domain, the Abbé Georges de Nantes retorted, « even if we had reasons that appeared to us to be absolutely solid we should still have to prefer to believe the Church with blind confidence rather than trust our own judgement ». In fact, « that one should find these innovations tiresome is permissible, since no infallibility governs the details of liturgical rites. That one should denounce their modernist contamination, is something graver and supposes on our part very serious study and great prudence, for any hasty judgement might wound the teaching Church. But to declare invalid a Sacrament conferred in the Catholic Church according to the new rite decreed by the Roman authority remains inconceivable: it amounts to summoning the Supreme Judge to appear before the private tribunal of our conscience! »
Furthermore, when this priest « declares to his Bishop that he will not ask him for Confirmation, does he mean that he has another bishop up his sleeve, who will enter the diocese in opposition to the Bishop of the place! » Such a situation has always been forbidden by the canonical discipline of the Church because of the anarchy that follows from it: if each bishop begins to meddle in the affairs of neighbouring dioceses, what are things coming to!?
To counter such deviations, our Father charitably recalls for the priest of Touzac that in liturgical matters the Roman Magisterium has completely lawful power to abrogate an ancient ritual and replace it with another. The constant usage of the Church has demonstrated this for centuries.
Concerning the question of the new formula for the Sacrament of Confirmation, our Father quotes the book of a contemporary Benedictine scholar, Dom Botte, who established that « from the Apostles until today, the sacramental rites have not ceased to evolve » (Le mouvement liturgique, 1973)... and Confirmation was no exception to the rule. Thus, in the first centuries, the Apostles and their successors administered this sacrament by laying on of hands before the rite evolved. If the laying on of hands remained in Rome, the essential rite became chrismation around the eighth century, namely the anointing with oil, which the bishop applied on the head of the candidate. The reason for this lies in the fact that this secondary rite of Baptism had gradually been transferred to the Sacrament of Confirmation by the Eastern tradition from the fourth century: this usage took centuries before it was stabilised in the Western Church.
« Thus, since it is historically confirmed that the Church had the power in the past to change the usage, it is theologically justified to affirm that she still possesses the same power today and there is nothing to prevent her from going back. » Today, ultimately, the two rites still coexist, which proves that the Roman Liturgical Commission remains rather conservative, from the viewpoint of the medieval evolution that was confirmed by the Council of Trent!
On the other hand, the Commission was bolder in changing the “form” of the Sacrament, the formula for the anointing. Our Father explains: « It is amazing that contemporary specialists consider the very ancient Latin liturgical formula: “I sign thee with the sign of the Cross and I confirm thee with the chrism of salvation in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” » too long and inexpressive. Nevertheless, it is true that it makes no special mention of the gift of the Holy Spirit, which is its proper effect and the very essence of the Sacrament.
Thus, there is no reason to reject the resolve of the conciliar liturgists, who have taken advantage of this broad reform in order to find or recover a more precise and lapidary formula that would be more explicit than the previous one, which was perfectly venerable. For the new formula, which the parish priest of Touzac stubbornly condemned, was taken... from the Byzantine rite and has been attested since the fifth century (a document dated 450 attests to it). It says: « Receive the mark of the Holy Spirit that is given you »! Our Father logically infers that the new formula is certainly « valid, as venerable as and more expressive than the old one. There indeed is a case of submitting one’s mind to the infallible Magisterium of the Church », instead of unwisely criticising the new rite by qualifying it as an impious invention!
It makes our Father indignant to see integrists spurn « not only the Apostolic Authority legislating sovereignly in an area where it has sole power and competence but also all the venerable Churches of the East who for fifteen centuries have been using this form! »
One could not have harmed more the traditionalist cause. It is thus necessary, our Father continued, « that their Bishop should present these poor stubborn people with a canonical warning summoning them to recognise the objective falsehood of their reasons under pain of excommunication. Thus the unity of the Church will be preserved in the bond of peace », far from all schism.
Alas! There was no longer any canonical warning or sanction that could make integrist passion change direction, for, at this stage of protest, it was ready to use all available means to justify its public rebellion. Thus it was that in his editorial of August 1976 (CCR n° 77), entitled The bad break, our Father explained the profound reasons for Mgr Lefebvre’s – he had become the « champion » of the invalidists – passive resistance to orders received and his indifference. Mgr Lefebvre’s purpose was to make an urgent and vital necessity out of his work of forming “true priests” for the celebration of the “true Mass” (sic), a work unparalleled in the history of the Church. He imagined that there is no longer any true Mass other than the old Mass, and that there is no longer any true priesthood or true seminary other than Écône and the priests formed in this Tradition that he meant to save, since the new rites of the Sacraments of Holy Orders and the Eucharist are reputed to be invalid.
« It is an unacceptable contestation that relays the same overused grievances », our Father states, whose fascinating demonstration must be read! Thus, concerning priestly ordination, integrists attacked the modifications of the 1968 ceremonial. Let us first make some precisions on the historical level: from the simple rite of laying on of hands that the Apostles employed (cf. the ordination of Stephen in Ac 6:6) to the eve of the Council, the age-old piety of the Church had added a good many secondary rites to the Roman Pontifical since the tenth century. These rites were allegorical and aimed at exalting and explaining in a visual way to the faithful of little culture the dignity that priestly ordination conferred...
These rites played the same role as stained-glass windows in cathedrals, which teach the Mysteries of the Faith to the faithful by means of pictures. In doing so, these rites enlightened their piety. All things considered, however, a cathedral without stained-glass windows... remains just as much a cathedral! Now, there were such a profusion of secondary rites (the vesting of the ordinand first by the bishop, then the anointing of the hands of the priest, the laying of the Book of Gospels on the head, the tendering of the chalice and paten with their oblations, for the priest) that in 1439, in his Decree on the Armenians, Pope Eugene IV was obliged to specify that the handing of these instruments (the paten and chalice with their oblations) to the priest constituted the matter of this Sacrament and the text accompanying it was the necessary form for the ordination of priests.
« Now, our Father continues, in the Apostolic Constitution Sacramentum Ordinis of 1947, Pius XII formally contradicts Eugene IV’s Decree on the Armenians by establishing that the matter and form of ordination are the laying on of hands and the consecratory prayer, two essential rites anterior to the tendering of the chalice and paten. » (The Catholic Priesthood, CCR n° 97, April 1978)
As for Confirmation, it followed that the new Roman Pontifical of 1968 legitimately modified the text accompanying this tendering of the instruments; it was abridged in order to bring to the fore the essential rite of the sacrament, which is the laying on of hands.
It raised a storm among integrists! Since « the sacrosanct rites had been altered », there were from then on as many false priests and false bishops as there had been ordinations conferred under the new rite! Such an insane accusation leads straight to sedevacantism and to the conclusion that the Roman Church no longer exists today. Even though all the followers of Mgr Lefebvre did not follow this line of thought to its conclusion, they succeeded, however, in leaving the souls of their faithful in a state of uncertainty. But « here ignorance that insinuates suspicion is inexcusable », our Father hammered out without fear of being refuted:
« The universal tradition, which is now generally known, although unknown to St. Thomas and Eugene IV, proves that the supreme Authority of the Church had the power in the past and can still today change the ritual actions or words of the Sacrament, without thereby affecting the validity or essence of the Sacrament, which lie elsewhere. »
Ultimately, if integrists did not contradict themselves, they would applaud the restoration of the ancient apostolic rite against the « innovations » of the Middle Ages! But no: their passion to justify their rebellion rather than defend Tradition, their will to find an alibi rather than seek the scientific, historical, honest truth, blinded them.
This dishonesty still retains all its virulence today. The liaison bulletin of Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet n° 239, of June 2008, stakes its all on it. Here is the sledgehammer argument, the unstoppable thrust, the casus belli: « One would no longer be sure, as before the Council, that the matter used for Confirmation and Extreme-Unction is really olive oil... » (p. 12)
If the day before yesterday, the Apostles confirmed without olive oil, if yesterday the anointing was given only slowly with variable oils or formulas, in what way today would the validity of the Sacrament be affected by this insignificant detail from which the legitimate Authority legally dispenses us?
Let us conclude and recall three indisputable truths:
1° The development of rites is normal and traditional.
2° The Sovereign Pontiff has complete power in virtue of Our Lord Jesus Christ’s promises, to reform the sacramental rites without their validity suffering from it.
3° To judge for oneself the validity of the rites against the Authority and the usage of « the Church, who was, is and always will be the infallible interpreter and faithful legislator of the Lord’s Will » amounts to denying faith in the Holy Catholic Church, which is an article of our Creed.
HE WHO SOWS SCHISM SHALL REAP HERESY
The Sacraments in their post-conciliar form are unquestionably valid; such is the first certainty that our Father develops even more thoroughly in his theology of the Sacraments. He derives his theology from the best of the old (St. Thomas and St. Robert Bellarmin) and modern specialists (Beaudouin, Sesboüé, Congar), even if it means finding in passing errors that have favoured the disproportionate reaction of integrists.
Here is the first error productive of integrism: its « dogmatism poorly adapts itself to the complexity and variability of the sacramental symbols in the course of history » (CCR n° 91, General Introduction, The sacraments, Christian mysteries, October 1977). Unchanging dogmas in liturgical matters do not exist!
The integrist would like to stop time in order for rites to be at last defined once and for all: one may as well ask a cartographer to draw a map of the world on which borders between countries would no longer ever change! For no one can stop the work of the Holy Spirit, who constantly enriches the Church’s liturgy, on condition that souls go along with His inspirations in the course of the centuries!
THE CHURCH’S ACTION.
This lack of understanding of the relative character of ecclesiastical traditions first plays into the hands of Protestant reformers: « Thus, when Luther’s and Calvin’s criticism fell on the rites of ordination as being inventions subsequent to Christ », they troubled those who had no more discernment and held them as quasi revealed truths (CCR n° 97, p. 11). The error of integrism, which results from its “dogmatism”, was in fact to throw itself headlong into the converse of Protestant error by stating that Christ had instituted Sacraments with more or less the same rites as in the sixteenth century: « Heresy accuses the Church of having invented the Sacrament of Penance and denies that the Church has the power or the right to forgive sins whether it be through the ancient form of public penance or the more recent form of private confession. With regard to the latter, which consists essentially in being obliged to confess all one’s mortal sins to a priest, heresy denounces that practice as an abuse of power and the proof of an unhealthy appetite to domineer souls on the part of priests: a practice that terrorised sinners have only accepted with repulsion. In other words it is characteristic of clerical oppression.
« The Church’s reaction to these formidable accusations was to move in the opposite direction. Jesus Christ, it was said, gave His Apostles the power to forgive sins and He wished that confession of faults be the necessary condition for absolution. Private confession, therefore, is of divine institution and as such has always existed in the Church.
« Consequently, those historians who claim that private confession only appeared in the Church towards the end of the sixth century and became general in the seventh, are necessarily falsifiers. Anyone who admits variations in the history of this Sacrament likewise falls under the anathema of the Council of Trent… and those who would suggest the possibility of new ritual forms for reconciliation deserve the same reprobation.
I find myself caught out!
« Fortunately, the Church has long since rounded the cape of this kind of integrism, which always plunges into the opposite excess of every heresy to make sure of not yielding an inch to any of them. In the fullness and depth of her truth, the Church overrules these conflicting positions. She knows that she is invested by Christ with the power of binding and loosing in accordance with her wisdom and judgement and according to the formulas she chooses. Thus a sincere history of the sacraments and their rites will scandalise no one. We know that any invention in this domain, be it posterior to Christ or even to apostolic times, is not merely a human invention, for the Church is divine in her institution, in her authority and in her power.
« To make a dilemma of the conflict would rule out any third solution. The dilemma appears as follows: either there has been an invention of new forms in which case Jesus Christ has been betrayed, Rome is no longer Rome and the Protestants and modernists triumph; or there have been no inventions in the Church and everything practised today goes back to Jesus Christ Himself, in which case Church historians over the last hundred years must be denounced and rejected as liars and impostors in order for us to remain firm in the Catholic Faith.
« We are in a better position today, than we were in the days of the religious wars, to say that that is a false dilemma. The solution lies elsewhere. Christ gave all power to His Church and Penance is found to have been sufficiently instituted by Christ when He conferred on Peter and then on the other Apostles the “power of binding and loosing on earth”. As for forms and particular discipline – de minimis non curat fundator – the Lord left the Church to arrange all those details on her own authority in the course of ages. With that in mind, it is fascinating to learn the scientific history of what the Holy Spirit inspired the Church to do throughout the ages, and through this study we penetrate more deeply the essence of the sacrament.
« In so doing we discover the admirable perfection of the Sacrament of Penance, which is as far removed from the accusations of heresy as it is from the narrowness of integrism. The dilemma is thereby shattered. For the integrists the essence of the sacrament lies in the obligatory confession of all grave faults: the very difficulty and shame of confession are a necessary means of obtaining remission. For the Protestants and Modernists, confession is an ignominious priestly invention contrary to the will of Christ and His liberality. Did He Himself not forgive sins without any confession of faults? So why do otherwise than He did? And so the dispute goes.
« If we leave behind the two sides of this controversy, we come back to the admirable mystery of reconciliation. In the first place we recover the good spirit of Christian piety. The bad spirit consists in assuming that sinners detest making a confession of their faults and that priests delight in hearing them. The good spirit of Christian piety knows that sinners desire ardently to make a thorough and sincere confession of all their faults to a priest so that with full knowledge of the case he may make a judgement and so give absolution. For his part, the priest prompted by holy zeal and deep compassion will be eager to grant absolution at the first sign of true contrition. The sinner’s confession of sin is really no more than proof of his contrition; it is not the essence of the sacrament. I am writing this on the feast of St. Mary Magdalen, from whom Jesus did not require a list of sins before granting her pardon. Re-read the Gospel for today, 22 July (Luke 7).
« By leaving the old controversies aside we also come back to a really profound theology of this Sacrament. The Church is endowed with the power of absolving whichever of her sinful members she wishes and for this purpose she has only to heed her maternal Heart. The conditions fixed by the Church for granting pardon will also be ratified by God: they will, therefore, be God’s conditions.
« Going further still we find that by entering the Church, the catechumen obtains his justification and the gift of sanctifying grace; his very reconciliation with the Church gains God’s pardon for him as a penitent through the prayers of Mother Church, the Mother of Mercy. As for all the rest, the degree of contrition, the extent of the confession of sin and the length of penance, Jesus ruled nothing and stipulated nothing. He left all that to the judgement, wisdom and indulgence of His Spouse, the Church.
« And if by heeding her heart the Church sometimes shows herself to be generous and compassionate and runs to meet sinners, who is to take exception? Many priests wrote to say that they read my proposals with interest and approval. One needs to have been a confessor to know what remains to be done in this domain. » (The seven sources of life, CCR n° 102, September 1978, pp. 14-15)
CHRIST’S ACTION.
Since the integrist considers that the acting Person of Christ belongs to the past, his third error after his dogmatism of principle and his misunderstanding of the Church’s power, is no longer to enclose the sacrament and its grace in an action but in the matter: in water, in oil. When we come out of the present anarchy, we shall have to recognise that the Abbé de Nantes has imparted a decisive advance in the theology of the Sacraments. Such an advance is the principle and foundation for the rebirth of all pastoral action. Read on:
« There is certainly oil and water! There is bread and wine, yet those elements no longer exist, since only their appearances subsist. But that is all... The other sacraments have no distinct matter or separate “thing” to be considered as a vehicle of grace. The system, therefore, that defines the sacrament according to its matter is false [...].
« The Sacrament of God, of Christ, of the Church consists in their action, in all its human unfolding, in response to the fully human move on the part of the one seeking grace. This action can put inert matter into operation, such as the oil and the water, but the sacrament is the total action, requiring the use of this element, but in no way contained therein! The element is necessary, otherwise the action would not be true: to pour water without any water is to do nothing at all, and similarly to anoint without oil! But the visible reality of the sacrament is neither water nor oil nor any material thing, it is the accomplished action in itself.
« Does this action contain grace? The expression comes from St. Isidore. St. Thomas and later the Council of Trent accepted the expression as being of tradition, but without insisting on it. It would be more correct to say that grace passes through the action because an action cannot remain in suspense. Grace cannot be stopped or enclosed in a fluid action; grace passes through the action whereby it is procured and with it to the soul, the object of grace. »
Our Father concludes: « It is because decadent theology enclosed the sacrament and its grace in “matter”, that is in water and oil, that it lacked the courage to conserve the doctrine of the sacraments’ physical causality – which was henceforth badly understood. How could water physically bring about grace or how could oil confer the unction of the Holy Spirit? Then one sidesteps the difficulty by inventing a moral causality, a causality of example, or as the great Cardinal Billot held: the sacraments have an intentional causality. But all these suppositions, thus strictly integrated with matter, are untenable. How could water, even blessed water, cause grace to be born in the soul? Such theories logically lead outside the Catholic Church and end in Protestantism or Modernism, wherein matter is regarded simply as an empty symbol or as an ineffective and conventional sign of man’s desire and faith. » (Georges de Nantes, Theology of the sacrements, CCR n° 91, October 1977, p. 10)
Still the minister of the sacrament must become the docile instrument of Christ and of the Church who act:
« The minister of the sacrament is not to be considered as another instrument, still less as a new intermediary in a series of beings, more and more remote from the Divinity, transmitting and effecting the grace awaited, each according to his own particular nature. No, the minister merely lends his word and action to the Church, so that his word and action is none other than the Church’s. What the minister adds thereto may be very individual, arbitrary, certainly visible and noticeable, and perhaps shocking even, but it makes no difference. This human element strikes against the human surface of the Other without the substance of its soul being affected for good or ill. What penetrates the substance of the soul, there to operate the grace signified by the sacrament is the work of man purely as minister and servant of Christ and the Church. That alone penetrates and nothing else, hence the minister cannot obstruct the Divine, Christic and Ecclesial action, he can only add his own minimal merit.
« In this context the famous question of the minister’s intention arises – a question that has been so passionately discussed these last few years and so badly understood by most of the debaters. »
This question is not only discussed by integrists: « Pourrat is not good on this subject (La Théologie Sacramentaire pp. 351-361) nor is the Dictionnaire de Théologie catholique (art. Intention). The exactness of the intention stands in inverse relationship to the instrument’s submission to its cause. Let me explain. A brush has no intention of its own to formulate because it is entirely passive in the painter’s hand; a child, on the other hand, sent on an errand by his mother has to be very attentive and docile to carry out correctly what he has been told to do, for his mother is not there behind him! Those who place the maximum weight on the minister’s intention in order to ensure the validity of the sacrament, consider the minister not as the instrument of Christ and the Church, but as a veritable secondary cause, as an autonomous intermediary acting in proportion to what he is, thinks and wills... In that case what possible effect could be produced other than human, however much disposed the minister might be to effect a Divine work?
« Whilst hoping that the minister has the most conscious and attentive intention possible, we can, however, gain a correct idea of his role as the human instrument of a work that is directly and supremely Divine by understanding that the necessary intention consists in the minimum that is indispensable for any human act: to know what he is doing and to agree to be the instrument for a sacred work, the dispenser of a Christian mystery. Roguet (Revue des Jeunes, note 108) and Schillebeeckx (113-121) both express it precisely as having the interior intention to accomplish an external rite, excluding parody and falsehood, whose mysterious content the minister may neither know, believe in nor will.
« Obviously the role of minister is very great by virtue of Him for whom the minister acts as unworthy co-operator! Thus, in order to fulfil this function the man must be divested of himself and clothed in Christ and for this service he must adopt a sacred attitude, follow a fixed rite, instituted by Christ and determined in detail by the Church. So that the minister distinguish himself from his function, he must show the faithful that he intentionally makes himself the docile instrument of sacred forces acting in, by and through his words and action on Christ’s own order. This docility imposes a limitation on spontaneity and creativity and at the centre of the action this is a radical requirement. There is spontaneity and creativity, however, but it is not man’s; it is the Church’s, the Spouse of Christ. Any other form of creativity arising from individual or collective caprice, humanistic rather than evangelical, would be a blur and a sacrilege resulting in an unauthentic or even a disfigured work rendering it non sacramental. It is here that the notion of liceity and validity becomes most useful, as a guarantee of the Church’s fidelity...
« To act as a functionary in total divestment of oneself is no mechanical action! On the contrary, the maximum attention, intelligence and fervent application, although not absolutely necessary, make of the minister an even more worthy instrument of Christ and the Church, and a channel of grace. Nevertheless, even though the minister’s zeal augments the Lord’s affective union with His minister, it in no way creates an affective bond of indebtedness between the minister of the sacrament and the beneficiary. Let the minister receive his stipend without delay but never let him bind to his person or put under any obligation those who have received from him the Divine Life, wherein he is a simple instrument. “You are unprofitable servants” (Lk 17:10) said Jesus, and “For one is your Father, who is in Heaven.” (Mt 23 :9). »
« In the year 411, St. Augustine demonstrated this point to the Donatists: the unworthiness of the minister takes nothing from the validity of the sacrament he administers, because it is Christ Himself who effectively works everywhere in His Church, through the ministry of men, no matter how unworthy they may be. Whether the pipe be made of gold or of lead, both are equally effective for conducting water from the source to the house. The power given to the Church is so great that the essential sacraments administered correctly even in schism or in heresy and by false brethren, are still fully valid, according to the unfailing and infallible teaching of the Church. » (CCR n° 78, September 1976, p. 2)
A NEW FORM OF DONATISM.
« That is why the Church neither rebaptises nor reordains, and she never re-confirms » unlike Mgr Lefebvre’s practices: he ended up re-confirming the whole world and founding chapels, on the pretext that he no longer found on earth anyone other than “defective” ministers.
This “Donatist” error results in two disastrous consequences: on the one hand, it elevates the free will of the faithful to the status of supreme and infallible judge of the minister’s deeds, since each person infers whether sacraments are valid or not, which is the final degree of Protestant subjectivism; on the other hand, it grants sufficient credibility to “impeccable” priests for administering sacraments validly in place of all the other pastors, who are considered the ”scum of the earth”: it is a disciplinary fault characteristic of schism!
Such was the Donatists’ thinly disguised pride that directly led to anarchy, which St. Augustine immediately unmasked; such was in the twentieth century the pride of a new Donatus who claimed to be able to dispense with the powers of jurisdiction that Rome alone confers in order to administer the sacraments of Penance and Matrimony. To entitle himself to do so, Mgr Lefevbre attempted to extend unduly the extreme cases – provided for in Canon Law – of persecutions or of faithful isolated in hostile lands, to include « extraordinary moral circumstances », such as the increasing scandals in parishes and the culpable inertia of bishops. Canon Law, however, does not authorise this sort of amalgam; these motives, which are forged for the sake of the cause, transgress both the letter and the spirit of the Church’s canons:
« The Code of Canon Law knows of objective extraordinary circumstances, that is to say, circumstances that are specified by law and necessarily recognised by episcopal or Roman authority. The Code provides for these circumstances precisely in order to prohibit any subjective interpretation and to stop any personal feeling entering, because such feelings are always prompt to find expedients to escape from ordinary episcopal jurisdiction.
« Thus, it is recognised that any priest, even an irregular one, has the right to confer the sacraments of salvation on a person who is in proximate danger of death. But for a priest to organise a regular Catholic ministry outside the knowledge and power of the Ordinary of the place, three conditions are necessary. 1o The priest must himself be a bishop, 2o the local hierarchy must have been destroyed, annihilated or impeded, 3o the Sovereign Pontiff’s moral consent must be positively certain. (cf. Dom Grea, The Church and her divine Constitution, pp 235-238).
« Mgr Lefebvre personally fulfils the first of these conditions, but not the others. To say that the second condition is fulfilled is to have judged without appeal – and I use that term in its strict juridical acceptation – that nowadays there is no longer any episcopal Body on earth or at least no bishop in this country... As for the third condition, that can only be maintained by resorting to invented stories of a drugged or substitute Pope, or quite simply by declaring that there is no longer any true Pope... »
« Consequently. Either there is still a visible, hierarchical, Catholic, Apostolic, Roman Church, whose divine order is maintained according to the rule of Canon Law at present in force, in which case Mgr Lefebvre’s attempted justification is valueless: confessions and marriages without the ordinary powers of jurisdiction, and in the case of marriages without the parish priest’s personal delegation, are indisputably null and void in law. » (An important text from Mgr Lefebvre, CCR n° 83, February 1977, pp 15-16)
The parable of the speck and the beam is carried to its extreme: to declare invalid sacraments that are not so, while at the same time invalidly administering sacraments oneself! The founder of Écône invokes Providence to justify himself... But Luther too said that he was directly inspired by God in order to impose his Reform. Likewise the conciliar Fathers said that they « were commissioned by a new Pentecost » in order to preach openness to the World!
After that, integrism is convinced that it can mend the rent made by progressivism? By this alibi, it does nothing but sorely tear it further: to tell the truth, all, whether integrists or progressivists, love their coterie to the point of spurning the City of God, finding themselves united against it! Therefore as a true and loving son of his Holy Mother Church, our Father outlined a wise “high ground” between schism and heresy for the League. In doing so, he has prepared the restoration of an intense sacramental life that will flourish again... when the Immaculate will triumph!
THE CHURCH, MEDIATRIX OF ALL GRACES
« I found myself rejected and cast aside... For some I was disqualified and suspended whilst for others I was a renegade or even a traitor. It was an unpleasant situation but it providentially left me free in mind and independent to study and re-examine the old and the new with no other thought than that of helping to conserve truth, charity and unity in God’s Church. For fifteen years we had been saying that the conciliar Reform was like a well-sugared pot of tea to which a few drops of arsenic had been added. Our immediate reaction was to say that a poisoned drink must be thrown out with no further examination. But in order not to be taxed with the charge of furious prejudice and having tracked down the poison to Vatican II, we are now engaged on separating the sugar from the arsenic. If the Church of Vatican III will reject its phial of arsenic we shall accept with confidence the traditional brew together with the sugar of the best restorations and contemporary creations.
« It was with complete freedom of mind with regard to the factiousness of some and the exasperation of others, be they our own friends, readers and benefactors, that we approached this study of the sacraments. For me it afforded the opportunity to devote myself to this subject and to disentangle the skein of our present-day quarrels in the light of Tradition, Holy Scripture and the constant teaching of the Magisterium. I thought, and have not been disappointed in my expectation, that an unprejudiced knowledge of the entire tradition would enable us to appreciate serenely the exact value or worthlessness of the post-conciliar novelties. Sapientis est ordinare: it is wisdom to place everything in its proper order and to appreciate all according to their true worth neither more nor less. » (The seven sources of life, CCR n° 102, September 1978, p. 8)
WHAT LITURGY FOR TOMORROW?
Already for the Sacrament of Confirmation, our Father outlined the basis of a restoration:
« Since we have the opportunity – the sad opportunity, alas – and the formidable privilege of having to reconstruct everything after the Church’s outrageous autodestruction, it would be good if we could rediscover the great Catholic theology from the sacramental signs in all their richness. Neither Lutheran, Calvinist and Jansenist pessimism, nor naturalist optimism from Rousseau to Teilhard correspond to the baptismal liturgy’s strength and splendour. Still less can the old formalism or the modern socialism, in the form of Masdu, perceive the prodigious effects of the gift of the Spirit in Confirmation.
« We must hope that a great synthesis will be made that will recover the wide vision of Christian Initiation’s three inseparable rites, Baptism, Confirmation and the Eucharist so that their immense effect is made manifest on sinful man who is thereby transformed into a son of God, and on human society which is thereby reconstructed as the City of God. » (CCR n° 94, p. 7)
The theologian of the Catholic Counter-Reformation immediately traces the essential lines of such a synthesis by recalling that Baptism, which is a radical healing of the original stain, results primarily in wresting us from the world in order to aggregate us into the Holy City that is the Church:
« By baptism the convert has acquired a horror of the world, which the Church cannot contradict. » (ibid., p. 10)
Hence, these pastoral consequences:
« One would like to see the rite of immersion brought back into force (…) in order to engrave on the mind of the catechumen that he is being entirely purified of this wicked World and that he has been for ever converted from his former sin to be reborn into a new life and a new society. » (ibid., p. 12)
Similarly, it would be good to restore the pre-conciliar exorcism, under its brief and significant imprecatory form: « Depart cursed Devil! » in order to show that Satan is from now on kept from this creature, who has left his control; even if it means keeping only a single exorcism, instead of the three that the priest pronounced before the Reform.
After Baptism and during the years of catechism, our Father continues, « we would happily see the rite of enrolment re-established, so would we welcome the various scrutinises, the handing on of the Gospels, the Profession of faith, the renunciation of the Devil and finally the profession of attachment to Jesus Christ, culminating in the ceremonies of Solemn Communion and Confirmation.
« Then during the course of life there will be an opportunity every year for the truly faithful to renew their baptismal vows in a liturgical and sacramental form at the Paschal Vigil – that was a magnificent restoration we owe to Pope Pius XII. We would also like to see the Consecration of Virgins and Religious vows in general likened to a renewal of the gift of baptismal grace in a very official way. It is not that these ceremonies reiterate the unique and definitive sacrament of baptism, but they can reawaken the benefit of the sacrament. Thus baptism would constantly recover its meaning throughout life, even in each Asperges with holy water or when making the Sign of the Cross. It goes without saying that these restorations would have to be made in the Christian perspective of flight from the World and of hatred for Satan, Prince of this World, and, of the struggle against the flesh! Otherwise any liturgical restoration would be no more than a work of archaeology or of folklore. »
We see that every renewal of the sacramental life begins by restoring the true doctrine and condemning the present Modernist pastoral practice that binds us to the World.
In this spirit, our Father proposes a project of overall liturgical and pastoral reform: « During their final year of catechism, the children (and adults to be confirmed) should gather regularly in the diocesan cathedral where they will hear the Bishop’s chrismal Catechesis, which will take place from the beginning of Lent to Pentecost. This will be accompanied by a number of ascetic preparations to convey the seriousness of the gift awaited. At Easter the children and adults to be confirmed will make their profession of faith and their Solemn Communion in their parish churches under the direction of their parish priests. Then during the octave of Pentecost they will go to the Cathedral in large numbers where they will receive the sacrament of Confirmation with great ceremony from the hands of the Bishop, who will be joined in this liturgical act by the priests under his effective presidency.
« In his homily, the Pastor of the diocese will explain that this ceremony is the crowning of their long instruction as adolescents, but not the end of Christian life; on the contrary it is their initiation and introduction into the service of the Church. Now begins the catechism of perseverance; tasks as adult Christians now await them, for which the Bishop is about to give them the gift of prophecy and of martyrdom that is to say the strength and wisdom to witness to their faith and if it be God’s will to shed their blood for it. » (CCR n° 94, p. 13)
For this renewal to be concretised, a return to the hierarchical order which has been expurgated of the poison of “collegiality” is needed. The reason is that « identified with Christ through episcopal consecration and tied to his people by the designation and particular gift of it made by the Pope to him, the Bishop exercises all the powers necessary for the care of his flock by virtue of this sacrament of the Covenant »: preaching, distributing the sacraments and governing the Catholic Christian community (The catholic priesthood, CCR n° 97, April 1978, p. 19).
Thus will be reaffirmed the paternal, pastoral, and personal authority of the bishop in his diocese:
« Vatican III will have priests enter the ranks of the church’s officers, as members by Order of the teaching, sanctifying and governing Church. Instead of keeping priests, by right, in a passive state of submission as part of the taught Church, the Bishop will have them work as collaborators in the priestly ministry and consider them no longer as hired servants but as friends. Thus the notion and reality of the “presbyterium” will be restored and recovered. The presbyterium is as old as the Church but it now needs exorcising of the democratic and class-warfare poison. »
What about the faithful? Precisely this: « In the times to come we should witness a wonderful restoration of the Sacrament of Confirmation. During the last forty years there has been such ill-considered talk about the common Priesthood of the people of God and of the laity’s participation in the hierarchical apostolate in the form of specialised Catholic Action. It is time to set all that in order.
« In my opinion this should not be done by approaching it either from the baptismal vocation or from the sacerdotal ministry but always as an extension of Confirmation, the gift of the Holy Spirit over the entire people of God. Each function exercised by a layman within the community would need to be recognised by the bishops as a “charism” developing the Sacrament of Confirmation’s grace of active militancy.
« What were called the minor orders could be restored not as inferior degrees of the Priesthood but as superior developments of Confirmation. For them to have a practical value, it would suffice that they be held as a function conferred by the Bishop locally and temporarily, thus putting the power of Confirmation into effect, accompanied by a sacramental rite of official recognition and simple blessing.
« These inferior ministers would make up the ranks of the Church’s non commissioned officers. Thus re-established, these charisms would visibly flourish, as is generally hoped today, in the form of catechists, infirmarians, almoners, alms-collectors, sacristans, teachers, bellringers – why not? – gravediggers, and so on, as various as all the different subordinate functions of a great City, of our Holy City, the New Jerusalem! » (ibid.)
For this purpose, here is what our Father proposes: « Let it be recognised that the Bishop alone has the faculty of the laying on of hands, at least canonically, for he is a constituent element of that sacramental sign, the power of which is at his disposition for whom he wills. In memory of the gift of the Holy Spirit and as a sacramental made efficacious by the Church’s decision, let the Bishop’s laying on of hands be adapted for certain missions and functions within the Church, thereby strengthening those Christians selected for special tasks. St. Paul clearly alludes to such a practice: “Impose not hands lightly upon any man”. (1. Tm 5:22) »
The only sufficient and necessary condition required for this new order to be born is that the priestly pyramid know and want once again to be to the service of God in order to turn souls towards Heaven and not to the service of the World... We are light years beyond the divagations of Cardinal Suenens, who agreed to have his charismatic flock lay hands on him in order for him “to receive the Spirit”!
In order to help reorder earthly views by turning them towards Heaven, our Father does not hesitate to make his own certain of Fr. Sesboüe’s propositions regarding the Sacrament of Extreme Unction: « It is the Middle Ages that held on to the essential in its obsession with Death, Judgement and Eternity and its insatiable desire for the remission of sins, of purification and grace. The Middle Ages kept to the essential rather more than did the Orthodox East or the modern(ist) current displayed at the Second Vatican Council, for whom the sacrament is the healing of the body and joy of living here below. » (CCR 99, June 1978, p. 17)
« Priests, therefore, will have to renounce the facile lie “It’s good for your health Madam”. No! We must not be dictated to by popular ignorance but by the zeal to save so many souls, who have to be taught the fear of Hell, acceptance of death, resignation to suffering, horror for sin, the taste for divine things when the pleasures of this world are lost. » (ibid)
Pastoral consequences. It will be good to administer this sacrament in the presence of the family or of the community. Let not death be excluded from everyday life but instead be « given a holy, thoughtful and accepted welcome », just as an invitation to turn our eyes towards Heaven, where true life lies. Amen!