He will return with his immense heart, with his heart of fire, his poor man's soul
and his smile. He will return! And the Immaculate Heart of Mary will triumph!

OUR LADY OF FATIMA CAMP 2007

THE SECOND VATICAN COUNCIL

FOR THE PRIESTS, THE RELIGIOUS AND FAITHFUL

TWO RELIGIONS, ONE CHURCH

Shortly before the Council, the Abbé de Nantes blamed progressivism, which had intruded into the Church, for diverting the souls and hearts of Christians away from traditional religion in order to involve them in serving the People and Man. The opposition between the two religions is absolute.

« One is the religion of Jesus Christ, Son of God and Saviour of men; the other is the religion of Man and his liberty… No doubt one might think this contrast between attending to God and attending to the world a futile distinction and that the two concerns should be harmonised. Historically and doctrinally, however, it happens that God is a jealous God and will not tolerate seeing His Son considered only as a useful and effective tool in the struggle for a better world. He soon withdraws His grace from those who so make use of His Son and leaves their apostolate in the utmost sterility. » ¹

The same opposition broke out at the Council between reformers and traditionalists. « The Council resembles King Solomon’s court, our Father wrote at that time. Two women are disputing over one child before the supreme tribunal: “Bring me a sword... Divide the living child in two and give a half to each.” One trembles on hearing them shout at each other; one fears for the child. The final judgement is slow in coming. Will the Church remain whole and alive in the hands of the traditionalists, who have given her birth and reared her, or will She pass into the power of those reformers who want to emancipate her and marry her to the World? The whole question lies in recognising the true Mother from the stepmother…

« (…) how can millions of the faithful be dragged off in some vague direction, with no definite aim, with no prudent foresight and in danger of total ruin in apostasy or Communism: “Where are you going?” Ottaviani cries to Frings and to Lienart... The traditionalists fight the reformers above all because they know that the Church is not maltreated with impunity: the Church is not indefinitely malleable and reformable or capable of being cut down at the pleasure of the innovators. While the reformers are deciding on amputations and grafts, others are sounding this fragile human society, which carries within itself the whole future of the world, and they fear lest she die. You are the gravediggers of the Church, O foolish reformers! Ottaviani cries to them. »

« The two parties confront each other at the court of Rome beneath the gaze of Peter. They are disputing for the Church… It is a question now of pressing on firmly and calmly towards the judgement of God. » ²

A GENERAL SUBVERSION

While we are waiting for this Divine judgement that is bound to come, the more we move on in our critical examination of the texts of Vatican II in the school of our Father, the more we are forced to note that since the Council wanted to associate artificially the two religions within the unique and holy Church, one has practically replaced the other. « Stone by stone, the Reform destroyed the main altar, one piece with the Cross and turned towards the East, to rebuild an altar turned towards the congregation of men and one with the world under construction. » ³

For all is interconnected. « According to our ancient religion, the Church teaches us the Mystery of God in Christ the Saviour in order to attract us to it and take us there. The Church is herself the general sacrament of this salvation, she who gives us life and leads us to the Father. The growth and the development of this life is found in the liturgy, which became the sublime divine service of Christians. » ⁴ Priests are the mediators of this life. They are the infantry of the Church who are called to preach the Gospel and baptise those who believe, to sanctify the faithful and keep them for eternal life, already anticipating the celestial beatitude by liturgical action. For this, they are set apart and devoted to the worship of God in Christ Jesus, Sovereign Priest, for the salvation of souls.

Vatican II has reversed this traditional economy of salvation. From being opposed to the world and proud of the Church, it wanted to make priests the friends of the world and, by that very fact, dissatisfied with their ministry. Many of them used the Council in order to refuse to be simple “functionaries of the cult”, no longer imagining a Church “living for herself” but open to the world and at its service. More deeply, God was no longer transcendent but immanent in every man; the Gospel ceased to be a force of salvation for the beyond, to become a force of justice and peace for this world. The crisis of the clergy, latent even before the Council, found in the latter a powerful accelerator. « Questioning the cult, questioning the ecclesiastic institution, and questioning the revealed mysteries. The ferment of this triple dissent has been kneaded into the pastoral dough of Vatican II, our Father wrote. The crisis of the clergy is the outcome of the conciliar Reformation. » ⁵

THOSE FORGOTTEN BY THE COUNCIL

The Second Vatican Council treated priests like poor relations. Their priesthood was not the object of any « promotion » comparable to that of the Episcopate, considered as the supreme priestly Order, directly inherited from the Apostles and claiming to constitute by this very fact a sovereign College (with the Pope!), and that of the Laity, endowed with a triple charism, prophetic, priestly and royal, by virtue of its baptism, exercising in the world a veritable cult and an irreplaceable mission.

Our Father remarked on 11 November 1965: « Bishops love their priests but, here again during the Council, the “inimicus homo” has passed by in the shape of our periti and now an abyss of incomprehension, distrust and, it must be said, of injustice has been dug between them. Fr. Congar offered the Bishops the Conciliar cake, inviting them to take the nicest part; Father Chenu took hold of the rest and offered it to the laity who immediately seized on it. Only then was it noticed that the priests had not been served. The fact was deplored, but too late. » ⁶

Several preparatory schemata concerned priests, under the title De Clericis, « practical and pastoral in their intention, often going into details », Alberigo noted. Ah! There was fine material for a Council that meant to be “pastoral”! But no! Those schemata suffered from a serious deficiency in the eyes of our Reformers, for « they showed little effort to examine and describe the social and cultural developments that would make the proposed changes timely, or provide a theological, and in particular an ecclesiological, basis, for these proposals » ⁷

It was Cardinal Suenens who permitted the aggiornamento to take place and provided the desired ecclesiological basis by proposing that the chapters of Lumen Gentium be inverted. The revolution was accepted by the Coordinating Committee on 14 July (!) 1963 and by Paul VI on the following 1 September. « The need for a new schema on priests took shape in the decision to devote a schema to relations between the Church and the world of this time [Gaudium et Spes]. It was, however, also manifested in another decision, that of inverting the contents of Lumen Gentium and of having the chapter devoted to the People of God precede the chapter devoted to the hierarchy. » ⁸ The priests subject to laymen, and their zeal turned, not towards God but towards the world: those were quite poor conditions in which to tackle the reform of the presbyterate!

The text on the priests was then amended (seven times!) in order to integrate it into the new perspective of the « People of God gathered together by the Spirit ». Meanwhile, the periti went around repeating: « Priests are no longer able to find their place; they no longer know exactly what they are nor what they are made for ». They demolished the last guarantees and privileges that the Council of Trent had recognised to priests.

In order that their priests not become impatient, the Council Fathers wanted to send them a “Message” at the opening of the third session, but that was checked by the Holy Office, « which considered the propositions presented full of errors » ⁹. The revolution, nevertheless, progressed. At the end of the discussion of October 1964, « a complete schema was thoroughly rewritten, by a reorganised staff ». It in turn was subjected to strong criticism (not less than ten thousand proposed amendments!), and resulted, on 18 November 1965, in the promulgation of two compromise texts, in reality strongly steeped in the new spirit: Presbyterorum Ordinis, on the Magisterium and the Life of Priests (thus the abbreviation mlp), and Optatam Totius, on Priestly Training (pt).

A « NEW TYPE » OF PRIEST

« Well knowing that the desired renewal of the whole Church depends to a great extent on a priestly ministry animated by the spirit of Christ... » (pt, preamble), it was important to make the priests participants – and enthusiastic ones! – in this « renewal » for which they must be the indispensable drudges. Without them, nothing would succeed. Nevertheless, the nature of their functions had to be redefined.

« Before: the man who possessed and gave the sacred. Today: to live the Gospel side by side » This is how La Croix in its September 2007 special edition presents the “rupture” that the Council created ¹⁰. It was well put. Let us explain this radical opposition.

« After the upheaval of the Lutheran Reformation, the Church of the Council of Trent, known as the Church of the Counter-Reformation, shone brilliantly with holiness and sent her missionaries to conquer the whole world because she was the Church of the Eucharist. Against the Protestant negations, she extolled the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass as her centre and spiritual wellspring. She accordingly honoured the priest, who is the man of the Mass. Preaching and the forgiving of sins, all pastoral works and the apostolate led back to the foot of the altar for the salvation of souls and the praise of God. This was the whole of religion, without anything else being neglected. » ¹¹

A distinct social body, and not a “closed caste”, as her detractors spitefully accuse her of being, « this ecclesiastical world, wrote our Father who was happily immersed in it, had always conserved two remarkable qualities: a great liberty of thought and action, in the “fidelity” owed to the bishop, and a marvellous brotherhood like that of a family. » ¹²

The New Reformation, eager for change and desirous of getting back in touch with the former, Protestant one through ecumenism, decreed that this ancient type of priest was extremely narrow, that his ministry was unsuitable in a world undergoing massive changes, and strove to invent a new “kind of priest”.

The priest of Vatican II would be closer to the “pastor” that Luther invented than to the “priest according to the Heart of God” who was defined at the Council of Trent and illustrated by so many saints. Two conceptions of the priesthood formed two clergies: the ancient and the new. Here as well, what a revolution it was!

THE MISSION INSTEAD OF THE MASS

« The priest of the new times that the Council wished for is first a man of evangelisation », declares today Mgr Poulain, Bishop of Périgueux, who raps out: « Priority to evangelisation, even before celebration. » ¹³.

In fact, the first chapter of Presbyterorum ordinis deals with the presbyterate « in the mission of the Church », a Church whose essential reality seems to be the common priesthood of all the faithful, even before her priestly hierarchy. It is a monstrous inversion:

« The Lord, “whom the Father has consecrated and sent into the world” (Jn 10.36) has made His whole Mystical Body share in the anointing of the Spirit with which He Himself is anointed. In Him all Christians are made a holy and royal priesthood; they offer spiritual sacrifices to God through Jesus Christ, and they proclaim the perfections of Him who has called them out of darkness into His marvellous light. Therefore, there is no member who does not have a part in the mission of the whole Body, but each one ought to hallow Jesus in his heart, and in the spirit of prophecy bear witness to Jesus. » (n^o 2)

It is the offering by each of the faithful of his whole life and the riches of the world. In concrete terms: the layman who goes skiing on Sunday or shuts himself up in his photo laboratory, or passes his time sunbathing, practices the “spiritual cult”, “the offering of his life”, of his work, of his research, of his beauty, etc., and of all of creation to God. He is supposed to have accomplished an act of worship to which the Council recognises the primacy.

It would have been more Catholic, and more pastoral, to have spoken of the duty of state, with its humble and hidden virtues…

In the midst of this people of priests, what will be left for (real) priests to do? They will be the “teachers” or the “managers”, who will dispose all men, believers or unbelievers, to attain the spiritual priesthood. This is called « evangelisation of the pagans », with reference to a clearly contrary passage of St. Paul (Rm 15.16), in order to affirm that this mission is a liturgy.

« The priest’s whole classic ministry is thus totally overlooked, our Father comments. He evangelises the eternal pagans in order to make them capable of fulfilling their priestly mission of lay cult and evangelisation. It is the world turned upside down! Even if some rhetorical tricks were to reintroduce the Mass and Sacraments into the presbyteral ministry, life would show that it was for effect. They were really driven out of it when this ministry was subordinated to a secular priesthood. This is desacerdotalisation, and at the Council itself! » ¹⁴

PRIMACY OF EARTHLY LIFE.

No sooner were they subordinated to laymen, than priests were invited and even forced by the Council to change their life entirely in order to mix with the world. The priest must not be a man “separated”, cut off from his fellow men: « Priests live with other men as brothers… They cannot be ministers of Christ unless they be witnesses and dispensers of a life other than earthly life. They, however, cannot be of service to men if they remain strangers to the life and conditions of men. » (n^o 3)

In his encyclical Ecclesiam suam, Paul VI had already declared: « The Church does not exist in isolation from the world. She lives in the world, and her members are consequently influenced by the world. They imbibe its culture, are subject to its laws and adopt its customs. »

Yet Jesus had asked His Father:

« I am not asking You to remove them from the world, but to protect them from the Evil One. They do not belong to the world any more than I belong to the world. » (Jn 17.15-16)

Mixing arsenic into the tea, after this revolutionary definition of the « pastorate », the Council made its own the classical doctrine of the threefold priestly power: priests are « ministers of God’s word » (n^o 4), « ministers of the Sacraments and of the Eucharist » (n^o 5), « heads of the people of God ». It, however, insinuates its spirit of reform into this very enumeration. (n^o 6)

Thus, the chronological priority of preaching is changed into an ontological primacy of the Word over Worship. It is odd to see that, for the Council, the priest must pass his time evangelising the pagans as though it was a recognised fact that they, remaining pagans, would never become Christians. What is essential is to remain “in dialogue”. It is the corruption of the power of teaching. We no longer teach in the Name of God, we dialogue with men as equals. Furthermore, since dialogue can be even better carried out by life rather than by words, the practical consequence is obvious: the priest will give his Christian witness by living a human life among men, rather than by preaching from a pulpit.

« In order that it might more effectively move men’s minds, the word of God ought not to be explained in a general and abstract way, but rather by applying the lasting truth of the Gospel to the particular circumstances of life. » (n^o 4)

Likewise, the liturgical and sacramental activity of priests will be directed and subordinated to the worship that the layman gives to God by his life, in his work: « So priests must instruct their people to offer to God the Father the Divine Victim in the Sacrifice of the Mass, and to join to it the offering of their own lives. »

Finally, priests are indeed called « heads of the people of God, exercising the office of Christ, the Shepherd and Head, and according to their share of His authority », but as “unifiers”: « They gather the family of God together as a brotherhood enlivened by one spirit » Their responsibility of “presiding” will put them at the service of everyone, believers and non-believers. They will thus ensure that they displease no one, no longer manage anything but help the others to fulfil their functions as “lay priests”.

CULTURAL REVOLUTION

Following its own logic, the Council finished its work by transforming priestly spirituality and by throwing the training of priests into disorder.

SPIRITUALITY OF ACTION.

Chapter Three deals with « the life of priests », beginning with their vocation to perfection. The commentators admit it: « The resistance of a certain tradition was such that time, much time, was needed » in order to impose the new spirituality for priests that the Council wanted, according to which its source and its nourishment would no longer be found in prayer and worship, but in action, and what action! All these meeting that make him neglect the church and the faithful.

« Priests who perform their duties sincerely and indefatigably in the Spirit of Christ arrive at holiness by this very fact. » (n^o 13)

« A plague on the ancient precautions and the unanimous teaching of the masters of spiritual life! Holiness today finds its momentum in ministry itself because in it the priest is “the living instrument of Christ”. » In the past, we used to say that the priest acted “in persona Christi”, in the person of Christ, when he pronounced at the altar the words of the consecration, or in the confessional, saying the words of absolution. The generous Council declares that the priest will be another Christ, will act “in persona Christi” in all that he does, in all that he invents…

« There he is, by a wave of a magic wand, totally divine! Everything, celibacy, poverty, obedience is then inflated by the Council. Its requirements of perfection for priests become limitless, so much is it convinced that the new ministry offered to the priests is exalting and exhilarating to the point of making even the greatest self-renunciations easy! As, at the same time, the bishops are very convinced of their own excellence, in all this they make the priests pure, simple – and delighted! – emanations of their good pleasure, all “legalism” and all “formalism” obviously banished forever! » ¹⁵ It would have been preferable to specify the exact mode of this efficacious presence of Christ in the action of His priest, the “other Christ” (cf. insert below).

CHAOS IN THE SEMINARIES.

Illogically, in the Council they discussed the training of priests before defining what they were.

« The major part of the training of future priests will thus be “initiation to ministry”. « Refer to the text: a human formation, an education in liberty, an apprenticeship in responsibility; knowledge of man, of the world and of God; active methods and group work, science of dialogue, evangelical discernment of the intentions of God through events and men, etc. All this is the dissipation, the incoherencies and absurdities of modern “pedagogy” and of the new “pastoral” approach that must enter into the seminaries in the name of the Council. Everything will take place to the detriment of holy and ancient realities: devotion, sacred science, discipline, ascetic and mystical formation. » ¹⁶

AFTER THE RUIN, THE “RENEWAL”

The consequences are there, tragic ones: forty years after the Council, seminaries are empty. The new conciliar “mystique”, according to which everyone would be a priest and the priesthood of everyone would consist in announcing the Gospel to the world, has not been a success: there is no longer anyone who wants to be priest, candidates stay away and numerous seminarians drop out along the way. Before the massive scale of the failure, will the reformers recognise their responsibility? For their responsibility is certain.

The Abbé de Nantes concluded with the whole truth: « It is the Council that is fundamentally guilty of the decadence of the clergy. The priesthood was great, strong, and prosperous as long as it was defined by its intimate relationship to God through worship and the apostolate connected to it. I add, moreover: priests were happy with that. The priesthood deteriorated, was weakened and diminished from the day it wanted to be missionary first, wholly turned towards men in order to occupy them with the things of this world and no longer with Heaven. This is the crime against the Priestly Order. » ¹⁷

How can the Catholic priesthood be restored tomorrow?

« One possible means that would cost little would be the reactionary way of a pure and simple return to the theology of the Council of Trent, which had the merit of saving the essentials in view of the Protestant errors […]. »

« A different way, a better one, would be to come to terms, in the very spirit of the Tridentine Tradition, with all genuine theological progress, and to conserve as well the soundest part of the effort agreed to at Vatican II, unfortunately ruined by the general orientations and the demagogical excesses of this disastrous Council. »

Already, in January 1965, our Father wrote: « A good, happy and abundant clergy is the result of building the Sacerdotal Order, in its mystical aspect, on the Faith; in its moral aspect, on the authority of sacred ministry and in its social aspect on the dignity and material independence of priests. Such are the wise lessons in human order and supernatural holiness that we have inherited from the centuries; we have only to follow them. » ¹⁸

PROMOTION OF THE LAITY

Before Vatican II built altar against altar by imposing in the Church its new religion, we spoke about the “faithful”.

« From the year 95, for St. Clement, the layman is the simple faithful, distinct from the priests and the deacons. Very early, the Church manifested her sense of the hierarchical priesthood as a sacred Order that made the Lord present and active for the benefit of a people entirely constituted by its relation to, its faithful union with, the priest: plebs adunata sacerdoti (St. Cyprian). Everyone receives divine grace, everyone is in a state of receptivity, docility, fidelity. It is the fundamental attitude of the creature redeemed by the Blood of Christ. This is nothing humiliating. It is the Christian condition. » ¹⁹

The Church lived for centuries on this principle of the dispensation of grace: the priest gives and the faithful receive. « The priesthood, our Father wrote, is the active principle of this supernatural work. It gives the seed, and the faithful people are the material or passive principle, for they receive the seed like soil, like a maternal womb. This has always been thus taught and lived in the Church: Christ is the Bridegroom whose place the bishop holds, and the Church is His Spouse, receiving from him life and fruitfulness. » The faithful, however, do not remain inactive: « The seed of life that the member of the faithful receives, he nourishes with his own substance and gives back a hundredfold, if he undertakes this essential “Catholic action” which consists in the conversion of oneself through the practice of worship and the Sacraments, the pursuit of moral perfection and charity, the service of the Church. » ²⁰

The first revolution in this traditional view of the action of the faithful was carried out by Protestantism in the sixteenth century, with its repercussions in the political sphere, then once again, within the Catholic Church, in the 1920s, when Pope Pius XI called all laymen, without consecration or religious commitment, to an organic participation in the hierarchical apostolate: that is to say, in the pastoral ministry of the bishops! What was meagrely recognised to the priest, who was, however, honoured by the Sacrament of Holy Orders, was granted to every layman by the sole fact of his baptism and his confirmation. The Church thus rallied round to the modern revolution: to depend no longer on another, but directly on God, and finally on oneself, the great temptation! This « apostolate of the milieu by the milieu », all in dialogue and witness of life, appeals for action, coloured with friendship, joy, liberty, the romanticism of human development, proved to be a failure.

The young Fr. Joseph Comblin, a disciple of Cardinal Suenens, recognised it in 1961, shortly before the Council in his book Failure of Catholic Action? The faithful had not marched, the masses had not been conquered, and the clergy came out of it divided. Far from denouncing the false principles of Catholic Action, however, Comblin argued from this observation in order to demand that we go further on in the subversion of the ancient order and the creation of an entirely new lay apostolate. Vatican II would partially achieve this.

From its confused discussions emerged yet another compromise text, the Decree Apostolicam Actuositatem on the Apostolate of the Laity (AL), published on 18 November 1965.

EVERYONE IS PROPHET, PRIEST AND KING

Straightaway, the Council considered all the laity as prophets, priests and kings: « The laity, made participants in the priestly, prophetic, and royal office of Christ, take their part in the mission of the whole People of God in the Church and in the world. » (n^o 2) Equal to the priest who has received the Sacrament of Holy Orders, or to the religious who is established in a state of perfection, all are sent immediately and without exception on “mission”, even before any mention is made of the necessity for them of their own conversion and sanctification as well as that of those who are subject to them.

« The laity derive the right and duty to the apostolate from their union with Christ the head; incorporated into Christ’s Mystical Body through Baptism and strengthened by the power of the Holy Spirit through Confirmation, they are assigned to the apostolate by the Lord Himself. » (n^o 3)

The mission is thus an inalienable right, conferred on every baptised person by Christ. This “baptismal mandate” is richer than the power of Order recognised to priests!

« For the exercise of this apostolate, the Holy Spirit who sanctifies the people of God through ministry and the Sacraments gives the faithful special gifts also (cf. 1 Co 12.7), allotting them to everyone according as He wills (cf. 1 Co 12.11) in order that every man “each administering grace to others just as they have received it, may also be “good stewards of the manifold grace of God” (1 Pt 4.10), to build up the whole Body in charity (cf. Ep 4.16). »

This gives the missionary action of the laity its character of liberty and its own charisms! This is more than the power of jurisdiction of priests, which depends strictly on the bishop!

They are all active, all responsible subjects, all under the influence of the Spirit. « Here we are cast into full illuminism, into direct democracy, our Father wrote. The Church has become… a people of gods in which everyone has received the mission to attend to all the others! »

From then on, the key word of this promotion of the laity will no longer be « participation », but « cooperation » of the laity in the mission of the Church. Sent directly and guided immediately by God, they will claim to work with and no longer under their priests.

DIFFERENT MISSION… DIFFERENT WORSHIP

What will be their field of apostolate? « Christ’s redemptive work, while essentially concerned with the salvation of men, includes also the renewal of the whole temporal order. Hence the mission of the Church is not only to bring the message and grace of Christ to men [this apostolate was the aim of the Catholic Action of Pius XI and Pius XII], but also to penetrate and perfect the temporal order [here is the new secular mission attributed to the laity by Vatican II]… In both orders the layman, being simultaneously a member of the people of God and a citizen, should be continuously led by the same Christian conscience. » (n^o 5)

The humble duties that Number 3 still listed are left behind: it is no longer a question of being faithful to the law of God in the world, in submission to the Church, but of being faithful to the law of the world in order to make it successful. It is on the building site of the world that Christians will have to prove their effectiveness.

Moreover, the Council insists, to the point of the falling into the heresy that the Abbé de Nantes stigmatised in his Letters on the Mystery of the Church and the Antichrist: « The supernaturalising of the natural that makes the layman an apostle and a sort of priest, leads to the naturalising of the supernatural: the apostolate deteriorates into politics and religion turns into temporal humanism. »

« Their development and progress, not only aid in the attainment of man’s ultimate goal but also possess their own intrinsic value. This value has been established in them by God. » We would like to know what it is. Our Father summed it up as « Constructing and blessing the tower of Babel ».

The world thus built – and not converted, as was desired in the past – it is then necessary to « orient it towards God through Christ ». That is as good as saying: to consecrate it by transforming its political structures. « Never, our Father wrote, has a religion been made of politics and, in the process, religion been reduced to the level of politics to this extent, and what politics! » ²¹ For it is no longer a question of rebuilding a “sacral Christendom”, nor of submitting the profane world to the laws of God under the proclaimed authority of Christ the King! « It is a question of consecrating to God this profane world, fully and solely human, by a “spiritual offering” in which the priesthood of the laity is exercised. »

The liturgy of the Church would then become « the mime, the mythical and slightly folkloric representation of the great and only true sacrifice of praise: the work of transformation of the earth by the work of men. It is the “Mass on the world” of Teilhard. »

« We are no longer surprised that the Council was the signal for a frenzied laicisation of the Church: secularisation of the clergy, decline of worship and works, and even a crisis of Catholic Action. One word summarises everything: Apostasy. The transposition of religion into political humanism, the transfiguration of earthly work into evangelical salvation and Eucharistic worship mark the ultimate contamination of the Church by the Promethean pride of modern man. It did not even require a propaganda success, moreover, because man has no need of the Church in order to feed his old dream of making himself God…

« The negative consequences of this immanent apostasy are disastrous: religion emptied of its proper substance, priests stripped of their dignity and their sacred power, while a royal liberty, a priestly dignity and a prophetic light for carrying out their political action as a sublime offering to God are recognised to laymen. » ²²

FOR THE GOOD OF THE CHURCH

How can we cure such a cancer and revive the holy works of the faithful people? Our Father outlined the programme of this exhilarating restoration:

« 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.

« Hence, it can not be a question of sending the laity to work for the success of the world, but of going throughout the world preaching the Gospel, the work of a priest, and by means of the conversion of the world and not by its consecration, bringing it back to Christ, and returning men to the Church, outside of which there is no salvation. Having become members of the Mystical Body, it will be up to them to live and progress in It from day to day in an “active passivity” that well defines their state of “faithful”. From this initial state, some will rise through vocation to the service of Christ in the priestly ministry, others will enter into the state of religious life, separated from the world and consecrated to God by vows. There are the two great vocations and royal paths open to the faithful who want a more fruitful “Catholic action” and a more guaranteed “promotion” in the holiness and charity of Christ.

« As for the immense throng of the others, who will never be religious or priests, instead of maliciously giving them the deplorable idea that their course is blocked by a clergy who stand in the way of their desire for action in the service of God, that their spiritual progress is inhibited by the very existence of religious, it is necessary to show them that they have free rein and invite them to run in the ways of perfection and of service to the Church by participating, but in their way, in the priestly activity of the clergy and in the Christian consecration of religious.

« To participate, is first to take advantage of the riches that the superior, or the more perfect, can communicate to the inferior, or the less perfect. It is also, secondly, for each according to his own state and personal energy to take part in the perfect life and action of those from whom he receives, even living and serving with them… This is the exalting life and Christian perfection offered to the faithful, as much as they dare to desire it… » ²³

The new holiness proposed to the faithful by Vatican II is only its caricature.

HOLINESS TURNED AWAY FROM GOD

The Council was not niggardly: it called all the members of the People of God to holiness. It is in chapters five and six of Lumen Gentium. Obsessed, however, by its project of opening to the world, it destroyed the admirable age-old edifice that allowed everyone – some at a rapid pace, the others at a slow pace – to advance on the path of perfection.

« It wanted to make the unfortunate Christians, and above all the religious, pursue two objectives at the same time: to please God and to please the world! To be faithful to the letter of the Gospel, to the spirit of the founders, and to the demands of our time! To keep the monastic rule and to adapt to the modern mentality and way of life! Holiness consisted in turning one’s back on the world in order to go to God? Postconciliar perfection will be tantamount to being at the same time turned towards God and towards the world. It used to be absolutely necessary to renounce oneself, to humble oneself, in order for God to reign in us? Now the religious must develop his personality and fulfil his potential humanly. It was necessary to beware of the ruses of Satan? From now on one must avoid cutting himself off from men and separating himself from the world! Here is the religious divided, here is man torn asunder as he was before his baptism. » ²⁴

Nowhere else can the antagonism between two religions – the one traditional, and the other conciliar – be better seen. The results are there: there is no longer holiness and monasteries are empty.

Our Father uses an admirable image to describe the ideal curve of every holy life as well as of the entire history of Creation according to the Thomist adage:

« Exitus, Reditus. Everything proceeds from the Father within the Holy Trinity, and from It everything proceeds within creation according to the hierarchy of beings, only to come back to It in the end according to the supernatural order and the perfection of Love. This vast design takes the form of a string of pearls: the gracious curve of a descent and an ascent to the very source of the movement. » ²⁵

According to the “new theology” of the 1950s, « everything comes from God as well, but everything, in the final analysis, leads to man; everything is spread out for good on the earth and turns into human values… Thus, the first part of Lumen Gentium ends with the Church being put at the service of the world, something that the constitution Gaudium et Spes will turn into a pastoral project. The string is broken; all the supernatural substance of Christianity is spilled out and lost in the sand of the great modern Babylon in construction. It can no longer be a question of holiness. »

Thus, even the best chapters of Lumen Gentium are infiltrated with reformist and naturalist elements that undeniably corrupt them. The arsenic is in the tea! « When it was necessary to choose between two masters, the Council refused to choose. In doing so it changed masters and irresistibly led the multitudes to betray the first one, the only True One, in order to serve the other, the new one, Man » ²⁶

This unresolved duality and this sacrilegious hijacking clearly appear in the Decree Perfectæ caritatis on religious life.

« RENEWAL OF RELIGIOUS LIFE »

The preparatory schema on “the States of Perfection” offered at the beginning of the Council « an element of absolute continuity » with tradition ²⁷, to the great satisfaction of the majority of the superiors general, as well as the eight hundred bishops originating from religious institutes. When it was inserted in the form of a chapter in the Constitution on the Church, however, it was necessary to harmonise it with the general, revolutionary orientation of the Church as “People of God”.

Nevertheless, the novelty hardly appears in Lumen Gentium, other than the fact that the Council no longer recognised for religious a more perfect state of life, above the secular state (n^o 43), that their subjection to the bishops is cleverly decided (n^o 45), and that their consecration to God is presented so as « not to detract from a genuine development of the human persons » or to make them « strangers to their fellowmen or useless citizens of this earthly city »; on the contrary they must « spiritually cooperate with them. In this way the building up of the earthly city may have its foundation in the Lord » (n^o 46). In reality, a dichotomy is established.

The decree Perfectæ Caritatis, promulgated on 28 October 1965, bears the mark of a substantial change, of a real “somersault” made between the third and the fourth sessions. In the meantime, closely argued discussions took place in the aula: not less than 14,000 modi were proposed! « This decree, our Father wrote, brings to the irreparable breaking point this “tension” characteristic of Vatican II between ordination to God, the very essence of religious life, and the forced and fanatical adaptation to the modern world, which is its contradiction! » ²⁸

Here is the theorem: « The fitting renewal of the religious life includes both the constant return to the sources of all Christian life and to the original spirit of the institutes and, on the other hand, their adaptation to the changed conditions of our time. This renewal must be accomplished under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and the guidance of the Church. »

If it were only a question of « changed conditions of our time »! Strange worldly concerns, however, are mingled with religious fidelity: « Institutes should promote among their members an adequate knowledge of the social conditions of their times and of the needs of the Church, in such a way that, judging current events wisely in the light of faith and burning with apostolic zeal, they may be able to assist men more effectively. » (n^o 2)

The unfortunate religious are asked to “go back to the sources” of the Gospel and rediscover the early springing forth of their Order in the thought of their founder, in the earliest rules. They are thus going to return to the past, to the moment when the first inspiration sprang up. On the other hand, they would be obliged to adapt themselves to the modern world.

The general direction is secularising, worldly. Cardinal Döpfner, Archbishop of Munich, stated it plainly on 10 November 1964: « The renewal must be spiritual, but it must also be a renewal of mentality: the evangelical counsels must of course manifest a leaving of the world, but also the possibility of considering it in a positive light and of gathering fruitful impetus from it. » ²⁹

As for the « training of subjects », it exudes the cult of personality: « religious must be given suitable instruction, depending on their intellectual capacity and personal talent, in the currents and attitudes of sentiment and thought prevalent in social life today. » (n^o 48) « This right to instruction has driven out humility, our Father commented; knowledge of the world and its ways (of life) has introduced everywhere the secular spirit, and all the retraining sessions demanded by each person, depending on his curiosity and his character, are the cause of the rebellion and boundless impertinence of updated young people confronting their Elders. It is conciliar anarchy. »

Holiness is given to everyone, that is to say, to no one. Those who left everything in order to attain holiness in their lives in the surest way possible saw their state of life dismantled. Then, when holiness is no longer possible, the taste for heavenly things is lost.

NO LONGER AN ATTRACTION FOR HEAVEN!

Chapter seven of Lumen Gentium, which deals with the « eschatological nature of the pilgrim Church and its union with the Church in Heaven », ends by convincing us that Vatican II has turned souls away from their true good, which is eternal salvation. Of course, what it says about the recapitulation of all things and of the human race in Christ at the Parousia is admirable. The Communion of Saints is presented in a beautiful and touching manner. Nevertheless, « among so many beauties, our Father wrote, we would end up not remarking what is missing, what has been omitted, in such a way that the entire perspective of the future is distorted and the partial truth changes into total error. »

« The Church, to which we are all called in Christ Jesus, and in which we acquire [everyone?] sanctity through the grace of God, will attain its full perfection only in the glory of Heaven… At that time the human race as well as the entire world, which is intimately related to man and attains to its end through him, will be perfectly re-established in Christ » (n^o 48)

Well! We are all assuredly saved by right by Christ on the Cross, but this salvation must still be acquired in fact by each one of us.

Likewise, if a brief mention is made of Purgatory, « Hell, and all that leads to it and drags us down to it, all those who are rushing there, this frightening darkness that gives to the light of Heaven all its significance and its worth, are only mentioned in passing “avoiding any verbosity”, exult the commentators. This is enough to break all the momentum of the Church Militant towards Heaven, and that of each of the faithful towards sanctity. » »

Fearing that they might entice us too much towards Heaven, the Council makes a point of warning us against an improper and excessive devotion to the saints (n^o 51).

« Finally, our Father observed, not one word about death and resurrection, of the crucifying discontinuity from this life to the other, from temporal goods to eternal ones. Heaven seems to be the extension of the earth and its earthly activities. If it is granted as though infallibly to all men, there is no longer any reason to be preoccupied with one’s salvation or to strive towards perfection in this life, or to seek God. Everything is absorbed in the construction of the world and the cult of man… There will be time after death to see to other things! »

The taste for heavenly things, the cult of the saints and devotion to the Blessed Virgin gained nothing by this: on the contrary, « The implacable truth that the rhetoric of the innovators cannot long conceal is the absolute contradiction of these two universes that the Council assimilated for us. Its new religion lures to other gods and to artificial paradises that disgust their faithful and infinitely estrange them from God, His Immaculate Mother, the saints and angels who form his heavenly Court. This is why the praise that Vatican II makes of these heavenly treasures does not succeed in being frank or convincing for anyone. » ³⁰

Tomorrow, by the grace of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, the Church will restore the true hope: neither a world to build nor a cult of Man. She, however, will remind men that they are made for God alone, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. « Withdrawn from the world and diverted by their pastors from the mad pride of building altars to themselves, Christians will rediscover the general disposition of the Church of all time from the morning of Easter until the great days of Lourdes and Fatima: Heaven is here, very close to us, a passage is open and the Church leads us by the hand. It is enough to put on the wedding garment of charity. Eternal life has begun. Amen, Noël, Hosanna, Alleluia! »

Brother Thomas of Our Lady of Perpetual Help

1. Letter to My Friends n° 78, November1960.

2. Letter to My Friends n^o 195, 25 January 1965.

3. CRC n° 55, p. 3.

4. cf. Il est ressuscité nos 62-64.

5. CRC n° 54, p. 7.

6. Letter to My Friends n° 216)

7. Histoire du concile Vatican II, t. I, p. 206

8. Unam Sanctam n° 68, p. 129

9. Alberigo, III, p. 432

10. La Croix, Vatican II, Forty Years Later, p. 46-47

11. CRC n° 54, p. 8

12. CRC n° 53, p. 15

13. La Croix, ibid., p. 48

14. CRC n° 54, p. 9

15. CRC n° 54, p. 10

16. CRC n° 54, p. 10

17. CRC n° 54, p. 10

18. Letter to My Friends n^o 216, p. 6.

19. CRC no 54, p. 13

20. CRC n° 55, p. 3

21. CRC n° 55, p. 7

22. CRC n° 55, p. 7

23. CRC n° 55, p. 8

24. CRC n° 60, p. 14

25. CRC n° 61, p. 3

26. CRC n° 61, p. 3

27. Alberigo, III, p. 105

28. CRC n° 61, p. 5

29. Alberigo, IV, p. 448

30. CRC n° 61, p. 11