| Editor: Brother Bruno Bonnet-Eymard | N° 110– November 2011 |
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THE ABOMINATION OF DESOLATION
With these words, the Old Testament designates the supreme act of idolatry which consisted in the consecration of the high altar of holocausts in the Temple of Jerusalem to Olympian Zeus in December 167 B.C. (1 M 1:54; 2 M 6:2). In His eschatological discourse, Our Lord announced that this profanation would recur in the future, at the end of the new times inaugurated by Him: « When you see the abomination of desolation standing where it should not… » (Mk 13:14) That is to say, an idol erected in the Sanctuary to be the object of worship in God’s stead.
MARTIN LUTHER PRAISED TO THE SKIES.
Well! This is what we saw last Friday, 23 September at Erfurt when Benedict XVI « made himself more Protestant than the Protestants », according to Jean-Marie Guénois in the Figaro.
Before the highest representatives of German Protestantism, the Pope expressed unprecedented praise of Martin Luther: « Luther’s thinking, his whole spirituality, was thoroughly Christocentric », he declared.
Then we must canonise Luther, if truly his cause and that of Christ are one and the same! This is what Luther claimed and Benedict XVI speaks on his behalf:
« “What promotes Christ’s cause” was for Luther the decisive hermeneutical criterion for the exegesis of Sacred Scripture. This presupposes, however, that Christ is at the heart of our spirituality and that love for Him, living in communion with Him, is what guides our life. »
Yet, Luther was condemned by the Catholic Church at the Council of Trent, was he not? Of course! This, however, was an error…
« It was the error of the confessional age [that is to say: the time of the Council of Trent… and of all the other foregoing Councils since the Council of Nicaea, which all “confessed” the Catholic Faith against every heresy (Translators note: the English translation found on the Vatican website reads “error of the Reformation period”. Here we have corrected the expression to reflect the original German text) ] that for the most part only saw what divided us and failed to grasp existentially what we have in common in terms of the great deposit of Sacred Scripture and the early Christian creeds. »
Furthermore, the Pope said that the « question » that was the « driving force » of Luther’s whole life has « never ceased to make a deep impression on him ». A question, which « struck in the heart » of this reformer and that was his « deep passion », the « driving force of his life ». It was « at the foundation of all his theological searching and inner struggle »:
What question?
« The question: what is God’s position towards me, where do I stand before God? – Luther’s burning question must once more, doubtless in a new form, become our question too. »
Since the Counter-Reformation of the 16th century, we Catholics have never asked ourselves this question. We have been content be oppose to it.
To measure how absurd such a declaration is, let us quote someone who bears witness to this Counter-Reformation tradition before Fr. de Nantes: Bishop Freppel. He reflects the position of the Church until the Second Vatican Council:
« It is next 10 November, the Bishop of Angers wrote in 1883, that the birth of the Augustine monk who became one of the leaders of the alleged Reformation is going to be celebrated, especially in Germany. »
Bishop Freppel did not imagine for a moment that eighty years later a Council would accede to the “reform” of the Church willed by Luther… through the intermediary of Fr. Congar. Bishop Freppel first underscores the contradiction between this infatuation for Luther and the spirit of that time steeped in “the dignity of the human person”:
« For my part, I am unable to express sufficiently how much such an apotheosis surprises me, given the spirit of today. At a time when people take pleasure in unduly exalting reason, freedom, the strength and the dignity of human nature, it is strange to see glorified a man whose doctrinal system confines itself to saying that free will is a pure fiction; that man is powerless to raise himself towards God by any act of his intelligence and his will; that our intellectual and moral faculties were not merely weakened and tainted, but totally annihilated by original sin; that human nature was so corrupted by this fact that there no longer remains a gleam of light, a grain of goodness, an ounce of virtue. Thus, according to this doctrinal system, at the heart of each vital manifestation of man, of his thoughts, his words, his actions, and as it were, in his inspiration, there is the evil that sullies it and that taints it in such a way that all that remains in our will is evil, and that all that is in our understanding is but error and blindness. »
This is precisely Luther’s “doctrine”!
Moreover, at the Council, the contradiction was so blatant that we saw this Lutheran “pessimism” clashing with the delirious progressivist optimism of Gaudium et Spes.
« Luther’s glorification seems absolutely incomprehensible to me, Bishop Freppel continued. It is impossible for me to imagine that people can think even for a moment of celebrating the memory of a man whose entire life was spent saying and repeating that the Devil can only preach good works; that works are what are most detrimental to salvation; that there is not a greater or more dangerous scandal than the good outer life manifested by good works, and that these works are quite simply the gate and the broad road that leads to damnation.
« How then can it be explained that it can come to the mind of a reasonable man to want to glorify a fanatic so lacking in good sense as to place the most wretched creatures [like Martin Luther himself!], above the greatest saints, under the pretext even more odious than ridicule “that the saint is prevented by his works from desiring grace”?
« Most Protestants have renounced Luther’s ideas on the pointlessness and the danger of good works: it redounds to their credit to have abandoned theses that are so revoltingly immoral. So why celebrate the centenary of a man whose memory it is impossible to recall without bringing to mind the most scandalous theses that have ever been upheld concerning virtue and holiness? »
Another contradiction: the Pope gathers together all the religions at Assisi for peace in the world?
« In the matter of religious doctrine, Luther is intolerance incarnate… Have you lost all recollection of his anathemas against those who did not think as he did: “Men with corrupted hearts, he said about them, three or four times diabolical, satanic and supersatanic, with hellish mouths. I would believe myself to be positively damned if I were to be in communion with such people.” How can such an energumen be transformed into an apostle of tolerance? It is doubtful whether this sentiment is shared by anyone who has not completely unlearned history. »
This is precisely the case of Benedict XVI. He has not “forgotten”, but has “unlearned”, positively denied historic Christendom.
« Luther is among those who have contributed the most to tearing asunder for centuries Christian unity, the greatest marvel that can be contemplated in the history of mankind. »
It is detested by Benedict XVI who seeks to establish another, broader “unity” between all religions and irreligions by bringing together three hundred representatives of the various religions and traditions. To these, he wanted to add four agnostic and atheist “representatives”! This initiative was misunderstood even by his sycophants, but it is the logical corollary of his claim to “purify” religions, which are considered seeds of violence: agnosticism, by definition, disarms all religious fanaticism… On the other hand, continues Bishop Freppel, « with Protestantism, a principle of division was introduced into Christian humanity, the lamentable consequences of which are still before our eyes. Without the rivalries and bloody hatreds that were the result of this break with the Catholic Church, one might well think that at the present moment, the Gospel would have been preached throughout the whole world.
« By arming the nations of Europe one against the others, and by sapping their forces in interminable struggles, it is the alleged reform that impeded the progress of the Faith from one pole to the other. Even today, the divisions of Christians in face of the infidels are the greatest obstacle to the progress of the Gospel. In places where combining efforts would obtain prompt results, a hidden or openly declared hostility hinders the success of missions, when it does not render them sterile. Let those for whom Christ is not God the Redeemer of the world find consolation in it; but for us who see the finality of things in the triumph of the Faith and Christian civilisation, we esteem that the initiators of such a devastating schism have earned themselves, by way of an apotheosis, the curses of history!
« A nation that would have taken literally the pecca fortiter [« sin boldly! », which is the principle and foundation of Lutheran “morality”] and put it into practice, would have long ago been reduced to a mindless state. Whether they admit it or not, the Protestant countries owe all the Christian elements that were able to conserve to the Catholic Church. »
Benedict XVI calls that: « What we have in common in terms of the great deposit of Sacred Scripture and the early Christian creeds. »
« The truth of the matter is that it is the Catholic Church that saved their beliefs from total ruin, by placing divine revelation under the safeguard of the principle of authority. Her doctrine is the common source from which all dissidents draw, even though they reject part of it and attach themselves to what remains. If, at the present moment, there still exists a single positive belief in Protestant countries, it is taken from the Catholic symbol which, alone, maintains it in the world with authority; all the rest amounts to nothing more than pure negations, and negations have never been a light or a force.
« Therefore, it is not to Luther’s theories, which have been universally abandoned today, and most fortunately for the honour of the public conscience, that our separated brethren are indebted for all that has survived the ravages of unbelief among them, but to the Catholic Church, the guardian of Christianity in its entirety.
« May next 10 November be a day of salvific reflections for them! May they assess on that day how far they have gone down the road of negations in three centuries! We would like to assist them in doing this by comparing Luther’s errors to the heresies of the beginnings of the Church. There is nothing more instructive, nor more conclusive in my judgement. » (Mgr Freppel, Œuvres polémiques, Vol. 6, p. 90-108)
This is the exact opposite of what Pope Benedict XVI claims!
MARTIN LUTHER AGAINST MARTIN OF TOURS
« The day after 10 November, the Catholic Church will celebrate the memory of the saint whose name the monk from Wittenberg received at his baptism, Saint Martin of Tours! Ah! The latter will never be blamed for having torn asunder the Church, his Mother: he did not arm the peoples one against the others; he did not cause torrents of blood to be spilt; he did not unleash on Europe the scourge of civil and foreign wars. He is there, standing in history, attracting all eyes by this great figure of a bishop, in which humility, chastity, charity, all the Christian virtues shine with incomparable brilliance. Germany who saw his birth and France where he exercised his marvellous apostolate can both take great pride in his name and his works. These are the men whom it would be proper to propose to the recognition and admiration of peoples, for the honour of humanity, in the interest of the Christian Faith and morality. »
THE ASSISI GATHERING.
At Assisi on Thursday, 27 October, for the third time in twenty-five years, we have seen « the abomination of desolation standing where it should not ». The first time was on 27 October 1986, during the pontificate of John Paul II and on his initiative. At the time, Cardinal Ratzinger was his right-hand man. Having become Pope, it is not surprising that he wants to renew this appalling scandal, the fruit of the major heresy of the Second Vatican Council, according to which religious freedom is an inalienable right of the human person.
What is alarming is the blindness of the “good”, of the elect themselves who, like Jean Madiran in the 11 October 2011 issue of Présent, maintain that « it is not Benedict XVI who took the initiative of this commemoration and that he probably hesitated to participate in it ».
He only resigned himself to attending with the firm intention « of controlling its meaning ».
What proof is there?
A (private, confidential!) letter, a passage of which Madiran publishes. It is addressed to the Lutheran pastor, Peter Bayerhans, who was Joseph Ratzinger’s colleague at Tübingen and who remains his friend:
« I understand very well your concern with regards to my participation at the Assisi gathering. This commemoration, however, has to be celebrated in any case [in virtue of what infernal necessity? We wonder] and, after all [sic! It is true… after all!], it seemed to me that the best would be to go there in person in order to try to determine its meaning in this way. I will, however, do everything I can to make a syncretic interpretation of the event impossible. » He did this by arranging not to have a time for praying together, and above all by inviting agnostics even if it meant depriving this gathering of its religious character! Nevertheless, he gave his friend an assurance that: « I will always believe and confess what I brought to the attention of the Church in the declaration Dominus Jesus », published on 5 September 2000 by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith of which Cardinal Ratzinger was the prefect. It reads: « the revelation made by Jesus Christ exists in a complete and definitive form in the Catholic Church ».
What good news! Jean Madiran can rest easy: Joseph Ratzinger’s personal conviction remains and will always remain the same as he professed it in Dominus Jesus, i.e., that the Catholic Church alone possesses the words and the sacraments of salvation. It must be pointed out, however, that this declaration did not make the slightest mention of the Virgin Mary. So, true to himself, Benedict XVI did not invoke Her at Assisi. She was the most notable absentee last Thursday, in contrast to Monday, 27 October 1986, when a mysterious procession had tried to introduce Her on a litter covered with flowers, « as a heavenly sign in a long, cold, joyless day, without faith and without light, when God seemed deaf to the prayers that rose to Him. » (CCR n° 195, December 1986, pp. 9-10). The day of 27 October 2011 was in every respect similar, and it is indeed true that the Pope seemed to be bored to death! He was pitiful. I thought I could hear Jacintha saying: « Poor Holy Father! We must pray very hard for him! »
People came and went, passing before him without the consideration due to the Vicar of Christ. He was seated on a chair, like everyone else, between this lousy Bartholomew of Constantinople, and Rabbi David Rosen, the representative of the Chief rabbinate of Israel… Rowan Williams, the pope of the “Anglican communion” clung to the Pope like a leech…
The most notable absentees were Jesus Christ and His divine Mother. The participants received small lamps evoking the « light of the world » that this « rabble » (Nb 11:4) claimed to be. The contributors followed one another at the microphone in order to « make a commitment » to impose peace in the world through justice, as though Jesus had not said: « I am the light of the world » (Jn 8:12), et « Without Me, you can do nothing. » (Jn 15:5).
THE YEAR OF APOSTASY.
To bring the « disorientation » to a climax capable of leading astray the elect themselves, the Pope announced a “year of the faith” that will begin on 11 October 2012, on the fiftieth anniversary of the Second Vatican Council’s opening, and will end on 24 November 2013.
« It seems to me that half a century after the opening of the Council, linked to the blessed memory of John XXIII, it is opportune to reaffirm the beauty and the centrality of the faith… »
He could not have expressed it any better, but the whole question is to know whether this should be done by celebrating the Council or by rejecting it…
To answer this question, it suffices to read the wishes addressed by Benedict XVI to the Jewish community on the occasion of the Jewish “New Year” on 29 September 2011 A.D., which is the 5772 year after Adam and Eve, according to the Jewish calendar:
« On the occasion of the feasts of Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Sukkot, I send you my most sincere wishes, to you, esteemed Dr. di Segni and to the entire Jewish community of Rome, that these most significant feast days [significant of what, good God!] may be the occasion for numerous blessings from the Eternal [sic!] and a source of infinite grace. »
Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Sukkot, sources of infinite grace?! Where are we? At any rate, we are not in the Catholic Church!
Rosh Hashanah, the beginning of the Jewish New Year, marks the entry into a cycle of ten days called « Techouva »: during this period, the faithful are invited to ask for forgiveness and make reparation for the faults committed against God and neighbour. People wish each other a « good and sweet » (« tova ou metouka ») year and they eat pieces of honeyed apples, which evoke this sweetness concretely and procure it: a « source of infinite grace »!
Ten days after Rosh Hasanah, the Jewish “New Year”, that is, 8 and 9 October in 2011, the Jewish community celebrates Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement: fasting marks this day of prayer and repentance. « Infinite grace… »
A few days after Yom Kippur, Sukkot, the « feast of Tabernacles » commemorates the forty years that the Jews passed in the desert after their departure from Egypt. Huts are built… Children are delighted. They find it very amusing to eat meals in a hut installed on the balcony or in a garden. « Infinite grace… »
On these occasions, the Pope wishes that « amongst us may increase the will to promote justice and peace in the world that has such a great need for authentic witnesses of the truth ».
What is « truth » for Benedict XVI? He declared it last 15 October, in Rome, in the Paul VI audience hall, the hall of the Synod, before eight thousand « new evangelisers » who had come from throughout the world: « Today, the world needs people who announce and bear witness to Christ, who teach his way of live, the way to true happiness. »
How is it that Benedict XVI neither announces nor bears witness to Christ in his letter to the chief rabbi of Rome? The reason for this is simple: it is not a question of eternal salvation, for him or anyone else, but only of the « way of life » in this world, of the « way to true happiness »… on earth. Everyone has his own, « each one with the other and no longer against the other, all peoples on the move, from different regions of the earth, in order to gather together in one single family » declared Cardinal Peter Kodwo Appiah Turkson, President of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. « The building of a better world » requires, the Ghanaian cardinal continued, the commitment of « all » men of good will, and not only of men of faith. It is along the same line that the Pope insisted:
« I am convinced that the new evangelisers will always increase in number in order to give life to a veritable transformation that the world today needs. »
It is undeniably a question of this world! A modus vivendi must be reached in it between all religions and irreligions.
« It seems to me that half a century after the opening of the Council, linked to the blessed memory of John XXIII, it is opportune to reaffirm the beauty and the centrality of the faith… » What « faith » ?
SCHISM OR HERESY?
« The Lefebvrists hesitate to accept Rome’s offer » (La Croix, 10 October).
What is it all about? It is about the signing of a “doctrinal Preamble” presented on 14 September to Bishop Bernard Fellay, superior general of the Society of Saint Pius X, by Cardinal William Levada, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. This text specifies the conditions laid down by Rome for the possible recognition of the SSPX in the form of an international territorial prelature.
Then, it is no longer a matter of doctrine, but of diplomacy…
If it were a question of defending the faith, it would be simple. The work has been done by Fr. de Nantes, the unnamed one, the unmentionable one, the opponent who fought alone because these people who should have supported him, especially Archbishop Lefebvre, were only concerned about their respective business.
What is the « doctrinal » content of this “Preamble”? It is a secret! Thus, after two years of “exchanges” held in camera, « the study of the Doctrinal Preamble will continue at the level of the General Council of the Society of Saint Pius X, where a thorough examination by the superior general and his two assistants will permit them to present a reply to the Roman propositions within a reasonable time limit. An image often cited by Bishop Fellay » compares « the Council to “a soup” in which “someone” [whom does this impersonal structure conceal?] put poison. » Thus, when he expresses an idea, he takes it from Fr. de Nantes. He might as well quote him: it is contained in 350 pages under the title To Prepare Vatican III.
« Obviously, the best solution would be to propose at the opening of Vatican III that a global anathema be cast on the Reform of Vatican II, on its principles, on its Acts and on all its Decrees specifying how it was to be enforced. » (CRC n° 51, December 1971, p. 12)
The effort must be made, however, to produce a new, more explicit dogmatic exposition from which more precise truths may be deduced and a series of anathemas formulated to authorise dismissal of ambiguities and exclusion, in an irreformable and definitive manner, of the error that endangers the Faith. All this can be contained in twelve propositions, the arguments of the future Constitutions of Vatican III
DOCTRINAL PREAMBLE TO THE RESTORATION OF THE FAITH
1. Mary, universal mediatrix. The main error, the crime of Vatican II was to shift the Virgin Mary to the last chapter of the Constitution Lumen Gentium on the Church; Vatican III will place the Virgin Mary at the beginning of everything, as is said about Her, the Immaculate Conception, in chapter 8 of the Book of Proverbs because She is Mediatrix of all Graces. The Council will define this truth as a dogma of our Faith. (To Prepare Vatican III)
2. Dei Verbum: Word of God, Word of the Lord! We listen to God and listen to His Word; but through the channel of the human word of the Church and by no other means, whoever we are. We neither listen to the Word of God through new revelation, nor through esoteric tradition, nor through an illumination of the Spirit. Anathema on anyone who claims to go to drink directly at the source, who argues that tap water, is not to his taste or that it is tainted. (to prepare Vatican III).
The sin of Vatican II consists entirely in this extolling of one’s own insights and inspirations as coming from somewhere else other than from the teaching of the past, and from something above the sovereign and infallible Authority with which she has always been endowed.
« And if someone continues to place his “Word of God” above the teaching of the Church, let him be anathema! » (CRC n° 51, December 1971, p. 12)
« The mere thought of belonging to the Church is enough to renew the jubilation of our souls, for the Church is Holy like her Bridegroom Jesus Christ from whom she has received such a likeness that there is nothing in this world so beautiful, so wise, so majestic as her face and her whole being. She is our Mother, and I add: she is the unique, incomparable Spouse; she alone is holy, wise, sublime, leaving false religions and philosophies far behind in their delusive darkness. In her is found, united and prosperous, all that is best in the world. The various goods that make up civilisation and culture, prosperity and science, technology and the very arts themselves all come to us from her who created them or at least saved them from the ephemeral societies in which they had first appeared. Wherever I turn, in her alone do I find assurance and hope. Her two thousand years of glory, her marvellous expansion to the ends of the earth respond to my doubts and calm my uneasiness. There is in her a divine force, but this is to say too little… In this Spouse there lives the Spirit of her Bridegroom, Jesus, « this man commended to us by God by the miracles and portents and signs that He worked among us » (Ac 2:22), a Man the like of whom has never appeared and will never appear on earth again, tender, wise and strong. In everything she does the Church radiates the life, health and splendour of Jesus Christ, and her children never cease returning to her arms, to drink from her breasts swollen with the milk of her doctrine and her charity. » (Letter to My Friends n° 134 of 19 March 1963).
3. Lumen gentium: It is the title of the Constitution on the Church. Its “reform” consisted in 1° inverting her hierarchy: the top of the pyramid was put on the bottom! Its base on the top! 2° in eliminating her frontiers, in order to merge her into the Movement for the Spiritual Animation of Universal Democracy (masdu).
The result is before our eyes. It was announced fifty years ago, on 13 July 1917, to Lucy, Francisco and Jacintha: « A large city half in ruin. »
This, however, is not a reason to leave her, on the contrary! Love of the Church was the secret of our Father’s whole life (below). He identified himself to her, as Bishop Le Couëdic recognised, although he who reproached him for this!
« What then is the Church? This society is a human organism or created instrument by means of which God calls all men to salvation and gives them, if they adhere to her through faith, justification and grace for eternal life. Thus, the Church is the means and the source of the true religion, the union of men with the One God. The Church is a Mother who engenders the sons of Adam, through a new birth, to restored grace. She is a family in which divine life is transmitted, beginning with Christ, from generation to generation.
« She is therefore not a people of equals, an aggregation of individuals gathered together by some invisible Spirit: she is a historical and hierarchical society in which the heritage of the true religion is transmitted by precise sacramental actions. She is not a “Person in the literal sense”, as Maritain claimed in his last book on “The Person of the Church and her Personnel”, which is stupid. No one pointed out this contradiction of six hundred million people who are but one! That shows the level of stupidity to which conciliar raving has made Christian intelligence fall. She is a community of persons, anterior to them, but communicating herself to them through faith and Baptism.
« What is this Mystery? The Church is like a pyramid of which the faithful members form the base and the hierarchy the upper levels, and the summit of which is lost in the luminous Cloud where the Divinity sits enthroned. The Church is human and divine. How is this? Revelation alone makes it known to us in two connected and complementary truths.
« 1. The Church is a Body of which Christ is the Head. Dependent upon the Mystery of the Incarnation, in which the Word of God became flesh, the Mystery of the Church is that of a human society of which the Son of God is the human founder and remains the Sovereign Head always living and glorious. He, in fact, governs it Himself with the assistance of a hierarchy that He founded and equipped with His own divine Powers and His rights. It is through Himself, then through His Apostles and through their successors that Christ creates and organises His Church as a social, living, life-giving, holy and perfect Body. The hierarchy is the efficient cause, the created, human, historical and visible cause.
« 2. The Church is a Body, the Soul of which is the Holy Spirit. Nevertheless, the union of the human Church with her divine Head is not physical, as in the Incarnation, but moral. It supposes in the Church a holy will, a divine energy, a principle of fidelity that keeps her indefectibly united to her Head.
« This “uncreated Soul” of the Church is the Person of the Holy Spirit, who was sent to her on Pentecost by the Father and the Son. The divine Soul of this unique and particular Body, the Paraclete has a profound affinity for this Church, the Catholic Church alone.
« Even when He calls all men to the divine Life, it is in subordination to and in view of His one Church. This work of the Holy Spirit is the “formal cause” or the “immanent principle of organisation” of this social Body of which Christ is the Head: that is to say, His Energy descends and communicates itself hierarchically from the Head to the members according to the degrees of the powers established by Christ. Even where the Holy Spirit acts in complete liberty by the gift of “charisms”, it is neither in contradiction to nor separate from the hierarchical institution and its apostolic discipline.
« The Mystery of the Church is in this mutual penetration of a particular type, incomprehensible to reason and inaccessible not only to sensible but to spiritual experience, of the human and the divine. Analogous but inferior to the hypostatic union, this union leaves men with their created personalities and their weakened liberty, while guaranteeing to their society as such a set of purely supernatural perfections: indefectibility, infallibility, holiness… » (to prepare Vatican III, p. 82-84)
4. What liturgy for tomorrow? Before the Second Vatican Council, the liturgy was a priestly work, a work of Christ and the Church, more divine than human, a work of preaching, sacramental sacrifice and divine praise, which was celebrated for the spiritual good of the faithful, but not without their pious participation. It has become the spontaneous, ostensibly aesthetical, modern creation of man who renders a cult to himself. Unconcerned with pleasing God and meriting His graces, the postconciliar liturgy is wholly occupied with pleasing man as though it were an art and with meriting that he take interest and participate in it as though it were a sport. (ibid., p. 91).
Even though the feverish activity of the protagonists of the liturgical Movement from the beginning of the century, has ended up transforming the Church into a heap of ruins, it has however, accumulated a large amount of material at the disposition of the wise builders of the future Counter-Reformation.
The next Council certainly ought to bring the Church back to her necessary permanent liturgical institutions, which were criminally thrown out and forbidden: Latin, Gregorian chant, the ancient rite of the Mass, the divine office of canonical hours, traditional Eucharistic worship, etc. It, however, could also detect in the innovations, either prayers or rites rediscovered in antiquity, worthy of being adopted or modern creations in harmony with the traditional liturgy. (ibid., p. 101).
5. The priestly hierarchy. The years that follow the Council were marked by a vertiginous fall of the clergy as much in qualitative as in quantitative terms.
How can the trend be reversed?
The Priesthood is an eminent state! The priest is a notable person! The Second Vatican Council claimed to extend its limits, to enrich the notion. All would be priests and the priesthood of all would consist entirely in the mission of proclaiming the Gospel to the world. The result was not long in coming… no man any longer wants to become a priest. It is no longer anything to be a priest. It no longer means anything to priests themselves. If it is nothing more than to preach the Gospel with ones whole life, then anyone can strive after doing it anywhere, in anyway whatever! In their will to make the new definition of the Priesthood encompass everything, they made it lose its essential mystery.
Vatican III will come back to the teaching of the tradition, which is partially laid down in the eternal definitions of the Council of Trent. The priest is the chosen one of God, ordained for the priestly service of Christ. A mediator in His Name, he remits sins and celebrates the holy Mysteries. The Shepherd and Head of his people, he assures their eternal salvation and often their temporal good. The Catholic priesthood is the greatest thing in the world because it gives Christ to His Church (p. 126)!
6. The faithful. The priest is the captain who ferries souls from the shores of this world to the other shore of eternal Life. Those whom he ferries are the faithful, legitimately saved through the Cross of Christ, saved in principle through Baptism, but who have a long road to travel to live in a holy manner in the presence of God and to be saved for good. It is a great labour, for they must pass from the world where they still live, where they have their station and to which they still have ties – for they are not “religious” – to God, through the assistance of the Sacraments, the teaching and directives that they receive from another person, the priest, delegated for this function in virtue of the Order he received (p. 127-128).
The necessary criticism will be brought to bear on the false principle of Catholic Action, then on the Promotion of the Laity, on the so-called “Copernican revolution” that was to make the laity pass, within the Church, from nothing to something, and then to everything, to the detriment of the priestly and hierarchical Order. Thus, the inverted poles must be reversed, re-established: God first, God served first!Instead of this centrifugal force that puts all the degrees of the hierarchy at the service of their inferiors, and ultimately the priest at the service of the laity and the laity at the service of the world, Vatican III will re-establish the reverse magnetisation according to St. Paul: All are yours, but you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s. (p. 142).
Then the unity of a holy, Catholic and hierarchic – for it is the true meaning of the distorted word of apostolic – Church will be restored. Priests will rediscover the heart of their faithful, and the faithful the heart of their pastors. It will be good for them to be reconciled, life together will be delightful, action will be concerted, and there will exist the influence of the same joy.
In this manner, the parish, the diocese, the papacy, will be re-established in all their dignity and their efficacy, stripped of all their incidental structures, of all the parasitic lay techno-bureaucracies. In this new-found ecclesiastical framework, renovated and freed, under these authorities with a human and paternal face, the entire society with its many natural communities will be revivified by grace and Catholic truth. It will be Christendom once again.
7. Catholic missions. The brutal fact is that for centuries, Christians spontaneously admitted that there was only personal and collective eternal and even temporal salvation in Faith in Jesus Christ and in membership in the Church. This belief was based on the Gospel, which is categorical. This was the decisive reason for missionary vocations. This conviction, this feeling, this zeal went hand in hand with an admirable dogmatic imprecision concerning the interpretation and the very rigour of this principle. Exceptions to the rule were entertained, such as the baptism of desire and the baptism of blood. It was clear that God wanted to save all men and that even the pagans would be judged by Him according to their degree of knowledge of the Law.
The rigorist interpretation of this axiom “Outside the Church no salvation” has always been condemned by the Church Magisterium The Third Vatican Council will have to clarify it by distinguishing the great zones of the evangelisation of humanity:
a) It will be applied explicitly in countries of Christendom. To know Christ Himself obliges us to make an informed choice between His light and darkness, salvation or damnation. For the person who has encountered Him, there is only salvation in the Faith. Unbelief is his condemnation. Likewise, to know the Church leads to the decisive choice, and no one who knows and rejects her can be saved. This, expressed negatively, must be proclaimed even more in a positive and optimistic way: all men of good will, all the hearts that the Holy Spirit is already leading towards the light are interiorly impatient to encounter the Church and they are altogether ready to recognise her as the salvation that they are seeking and to enter into her. To proclaim the Gospel, to preach the Church should not frighten anyone, for all those who have some vague desire for salvation, will find in the Church the sacrament that they are expecting and it will increase their chances tenfold (pp. 167-168).
b) The axiom will be applied in a mysterious way in pagan lands. The principle according to which there is no salvation except in Christ and through Him, thus in the Church and through her, admits no exception. It is absolute. Nevertheless, in order to understand it well and interpret it correctly, one must put it in relation to the whole of revealed truth. When it is a question of the human masses who have never heard about Jesus Christ and who have known nothing about the Church, the salvation that God actually proposes to them will be for them an invisible bond with Christ and the visible Church. (p. 168).
Consequently, missionary preaching is invisibly awaited everywhere in the world, because everywhere pagans are already on this path of salvation that is necessarily and solely Christian and Catholic. (ibid.).
From this dogmatic part of the new Charter of the Missions will clearly emerge the reason, the urgency and the beauty of the missionary effort. Without stretching the meaning of an axiom that is sufficient unto itself, the renewed conviction that there is no salvation other than in Jesus Christ and through His Church is enough to bring forth new vocations and perhaps this will be the prelude to the conversion of the entire world.
The Second Vatican Council demolished the Missions. The Third Vatican Council, applying its traditional wisdom, will restore them and, if it should please God, they will be larger and more conquering than ever!
8. Christian freedom. In our modern world, the whole tradition of atheistic humanism and the Revolution – “Satanic in its essence” – is the refusal of the sovereignty of God made man, by man who wants to make himself a god.
The Revolution demands freedom in opposition to God, but even in this, as we are obliged to acknowledge, it abolishes it totally and changes the world into a concentration camp.
The Church knows man’s freedom, she shows its foundation and its source in God, in Jesus Christ; and history proves that the austere definition of this exact freedom opens up to a broad and generous tolerance. On the contrary, all subversion made in the name of Freedom infallibly produces the ruin of this familiar human order. Licentiousness then appears and its accomplice, intolerance.
The Third Vatican Council will establish as a premise that every member of the one true Church is regenerated innerly by grace and is freed from the yoke of carnal passions, from the temptations of the world and from the Power of the Devil. Once he has become “son of God” by adoption, he tends towards truth, good and beauty with all his soul, by an inner and sovereign attraction. He is free. As long as he follows this attraction, good divine and human laws will not weigh heavy on him. Bad laws no longer hold sway over him. Preferring to obey God rather than men, he will suffer martyrdom rather than yielding to a criminal obedience. In this way, he affirms his total freedom!
The pagan has no freedom, either inner or social – unless he has insights and invisible inner graces – since he is enslaved to the Prince of this World by his passions as well as by the principles and the laws of his idolatry. The Jew, having the Mosaic Law, does not have inner freedom – except in the case of extraordinary gifts – that renders him capable of responding to the liberating call of this divine Law. He is torn apart, according to St. Paul and he remains the slave of the Law, his harsh pedagogue.
The Christian receives the inner freedom that makes him lovingly embrace the Gospel law.
The Third Vatican Council will first proclaim the liberty of God. This sovereign, unlimited liberty annihilates every liberty, every right, every human authority that claims to set itself up against it. As for the liberties, rights and authorities that claim to set themselves up outside of it as neutral, as secular, God in His liberty can tolerate them with patience, but they do not exist any more than the others. The only real, legitimate and sacred liberties, rights and authorities that exist are those that God establishes and that participate in His own goodness.
Thus, the very liberty of God is the source of the freedom that the Church of Jesus Christ, God made man, enjoys. Her authority is sovereign in relation to all creatures but it is dependant on Him who gave her all powers. Relative to God, it is absolute in relation to all men. God gave her authority for saving souls, a unique and direct authority over their spiritual life, a supreme but indirect authority over temporal life.
The corollary of this is: God holds in abomination every agreement, every dialogue and every cooperation between the Church and false religions or dissident communities. Such was « the abomination of desolation standing where it should not », at Assisi on the tomb of St. Francis! It is the principle that will govern Catholic Ecumenism (9th Constitution), against the Protestant project of ecumenism that the Council Fathers of Vatican II rashly adopted. At this price, tomorrow Christianity will be the human race for which the Church alone possesses the energies and the supernatural ways of salvation (10th and 11th Constitutions), and for which religious life, with its three vows of poverty, obedience and chastity constitutes the hidden treasure that is the perfection of love, object of the twelfth Constitution.
I have said enough for us to resolve to make the coming year, without waiting for 11 October 2012, the anniversary of the Council’s opening and the inauguration of the “Year of Faith”, a year of courageous controversy against the Council. Benedict XVI, who quotes John Paul II, considers its texts « as important and normative texts of the Magisterium, within the Church’s Tradition » (Apostolic Letter for the indiction of the Year of Faith, Monday, 17 October 2011).
Admire the formula: « within the Church’s Tradition ». He did not dare to say « in conformity with the Church’s Tradition ». He is attempting, however, by means of this expedient – « within » – to insert this abomination without « rupture » into the « continuity », at least chronological, if not dogmatic « of the Church’s Tradition ».
As for us, we will not rest until the Second Vatican Council, the cause of the ruin of the Church, is eradicated. We will exclaim as Mattathias did in the time of Antiochus Epiphanes: « Woe is me! Was I born to see the ruin of my people and the ruin of the Holy City, and to sit idle while it is given into the hands of enemies, and the Sanctuary into the hands of strangers? » (1 M 2:7)
At the moment of his death, he said these words to his five sons that we place on the lips of our Father after having fought all his life: « Therefore, my sons, be zealous for the Law and give your lives for the Covenant of our fathers. » Amen!