The Catholic |
| No 42 | AUGUST / SEPTEMBER 1973 |
ÉDITION MENSUELLE EN LANGUE ANGLAISE
DE LA CONTRE-RÉFORME CATHOLIQUE AU XXe SIÈCLE |
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(CONTINUED) "If parents have the right to kill their unborn children, have we not the right – in order to defend then from slaughter, and to defend the future of France – to kill our bishops who are turning into their executioners?" I wrote these words in our last issue, and I do not take them back. The lives of those hundreds of thousands of children who will soon be put to death with the full backing of the law – and with all expenses paid – are surely worth as much per head as those of the wicked old men who are making themselves the accomplices of an immoral government. But what am I saying! Worth just as much? For are the lives of these innocents not vastly more precious in the sight of God than those of our prevaricator bishops whose main concern is worldly honour and success? It is to such as these that there apply the words of their Master and ours: "He that shall scandalize one of these little ones that believe in Me, it were better for him that a millstone should be hanged about his neck, and that he should be drowned in the depth of the sea. Woe to the world because of scandals: for it must needs be that scandals come; but nevertheless woe to that man by whom the scandal cometh." (Mt 18.6-7) Better for them to die through a knife at our hands than to continue heading towards eternal damnation. But Our Lord goes on to say: "And if thy eye scandalize thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee. It is better for thee having one eye to enter into life, than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire." (Mt 18.9) It were better for the Church to remove such bishops from their sees, than to allow the rot to continue under the direction of these Herods and Pharisees. While most of my readers do not consider my language to be unfair or unduly violent, I have nevertheless been assured by at least one – a seminarian – that "they (the bishops) have – as they themselves point out – upheld clearly and firmly the Catholic Church’s position on abortion". What this shows is their cleverness at playing Yes-No. Well, let our young friend persuade them to put out a "clear and firm" declaration which states publicly that "abortion is intrinsically a criminal act, that it is always a mortal sin and that all who commit it, all who consciously make themselves its accomplices in any way – directly or indirectly – whether they be Head of State or Minister of Health – that all who condone it – be they Jesuits or Dominicans or Cardinals – are thereby immediately and automatically excommunicated – then, and then only, shall we agree with his assessment. In the meantime, we are still waiting for such a pronouncement, and so is the whole of Catholic France. But the bishops go on playing their game of non-interference, leaving the question to be decided democratically by the people while they wash their hands of the crime for which the ultimate responsibility rests to a very great extent on their own shoulders. For while you may think that you can avert the passing of the law by alerting public opinion, spreading leaflets, and so on, it is the bishops, and no one else, who - acting with and under the Pope – would be in a position to prevent it. For here in France a Catholic country in which the President and his Ministers are wont to attend Mass, Pompidou would soon change his tune if – about to enter his beloved church at Cajarc – he found himself, under the glare of the TV cameras, forcibly prevented from entering the Holy Place, because his hands are stained with innocent blood. But if he should disregard an excommunication and remain intent on becoming Abortionist-in-Chief of France, then he would, I assure you, be thrown out in the next elections and his party with him. But so long as Cardinal Marty is to be seen in the company of the murderers, busily engaged in a fraternal dialogue regarding the exacts limits to which he is prepared to go along with them – all your threats not to vote for them are of no avail. They know that if they have the support of the bishops, they also have that of the greater part of the electorate. If you need more evidence to convince you that the bishops will not raise a little finger against the government’s plans, I can let you have it: 12th July saw the publication of a new law which is to make "sex instruction" compulsory in schools. While the Minister of Health is legalising the physical massacre of innocents, the Minister of Education is similarly legalising the moral corruption of children. And our bishops have not turned a hair! An "Encyclopaedia of Sex Life" in five volumes – for age groups 7-9, 10-13, 14-16, 17-18, and for adults – is already in process of publication, and it will not be long before people are lapping it all up with delight. Infants will be taught how to rouse their sexual feelings from the earliest age, in order to prepare them for the enjoyment of heterosexual relations – freed, needless to say, of all moral constraint – when the time comes. Side by side with the encouragement – we could say constraint – to indulge in sexual experimentation, there must evidently go the necessary instruction how to avoid its undesired consequences – pregnancy or venereal infection. And if prophylaxis fails, they must know also how to set about killing the unwelcome organism, whether it be bacterium or child. This must therefore include briefing on how to obtain an abortion – about the right things to say in order to receive authorisation and to qualify for social security benefit. It is all part of the training which the rising generation must be given in order to make life meaningful for them! Can there be Catholic parents who do not shudder at the thought of such a diabolical plan for the corruption of their children? But not one of our bishops – and there are 120 of them – has raised a little finger against all this. They have greeted the new law about sex education with total silence. And you may be sure that our Catholic schools will not be among the last to place these foul encyclopaedias in the innocent hands of the children you have entrusted to them. If, therefore these same bishops deserve to be stabbed to death in lawful defence of the babies they are helping to murder, they deserve no less to be drowned with a millstone around their necks – on account of the scandalous corruption of pure and innocent souls to which they are making themselves a party – in accordance with the Words of Our Lord. "Our role is not a political one, but when the Gospel is at stake we cannot remain silent." The speaker was Cardinal Marty (at Ars, on August 4th) and he was referring – so the paper Le Monde informs us – "to the recent controversy between the Church and the Army, on the subject of nuclear weapons." It is according to your own words that you will one day be judged, you – a Bishop who has become the corrupter of his people, and a party to lies and murder. What about the Gospel, when the lives of innocent babes are about to be sacrificed at the altar of political interest? The very same day, Father Arrupe, Superior General of the Jesuits, was speaking at Rio de Janeiro: "The Church is not a political association… The Church has the duty to denounce injustice." Here is another one who ought to be putting his own house in order. While he is in Brazil, speaking against the injustices committed by others, in France members of his own order are busy supporting the proponents of abortion. Is there no injustice here? The private morals of our bishops are none of our business. Some wretched bishop who has sinned in the realm of private morals, may yet find forgiveness in Heaven, even if his offences should number seventy times seven. But can there be pardon for those bishops who continue to support the government of a supposedly Christian country in its efforts to enforce all that is conducive to immorality, even unto the legalisation of abortion? We, at any rate, cannot stand by idle while these cowards allow this threat to the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocents, to the mental and moral fibre of the country’s youth, and to the very future of the nation, of civilisation itself and of the Church! Perhaps, you may say, they do not realise what they are doing? Let me assure you that they know it only too well. The witness to it is once again Cardinal Marty who, apparently, takes his audience for such idiots that he explains it all to them: "Regardless of the distinction which we may make between the civil and the moral law, the fact remains that behaviour will tend eventually to follow the former, so that a (‘permissive’ seems implied – Translator) law becomes an encouragement – a temptation even – for Catholics (only for Catholics?) to confuse what is permitted in law with that which is morally permissible. It is therefore up to Catholics to form a clear and undeviating conscience such as befits their mission – which is to form the vanguard of those who have dedicated themselves to the service of life. "The question is a delicate one. For we are of course – rightly – anxious to encourage a ‘presence in the world’ in the sense intended by the Council. But we are beginning to realize that such a ‘presence’ necessitates also a certain aloofness from the world – ‘in the world, but not of the world’. "When attending a gathering of theologians recently I was struck to hear someone express the view – which we had not heard for some ten years or so (!) – that you must stand apart, be different, in order to render better service. The question presents a challenge to our function as bishops – how can we help to instil into people a respect for life?" But the question we ask is this: What did the bishops do when the hour struck for a solemn Non Possumus, Non Licet, by all Catholics, by all who claim to be followers of the Gospel? And the answer is that their Lordships stood politely aside while a murderous law was being promulgated, and contented themselves with pious exhortations about Catholics forming their own moral consciences. There is other evidence, even more convincing, that they know full well what is involved in this issue, and that they are acting with their eyes open. This is contained in the concluding passage of the famous Declaration, the earlier part of which we have already analysed (CRC, July 1973): "Whether they be believers or not… a large number of our fellow-countrymen share our convictions and our concern." What convictions, what concern, do they mean? Religious convictions? Concern for the little innocents threatened with execution? Not a bit of it! It is only our "sense of the human" they are supposed to share, our concern for the "human issues which are at stake". It is not God, or even the unborn child, they are worried about – only MAN himself. Well, as we all know, the new abortion law depends on an electoral mandate or a referendum, and our bishops do not see anything wrong with thus submitting the Divine Law, and the lives of innocent babies, to the whim of an electorate. But they go even further, lending active support to the party of murderers, by helping to paralyse the opposition: "Each of us will have his say. And we must never for a moment forget that the whole issue of abortion is bound up with personal suffering, or family and social problems of a particularly painful nature." The "suffering" they refer to is evidently that of the parents, not of the foetuses crying in the bucket on the way to the incinerator. It is here, in the context of a firm condemnation pronounced by the bishops, that God is mentioned for the first and only time. But it is against the likes of us – the obstinate defenders-of Divine Law and of the innocents’ right to life – that the condemnation with its solemn invocation of the Name of God, is directed: "No one must claim the right to judge the heart of his fellowman, for the secret of this belongs to God alone. No one, moreover, can escape his own share of the responsibility for such an inhuman burden which our society has placed on the conscience of certain individuals." The blow is directed against those who "judge" – even when the judgement which they pass is entirely in line with that passed by Vatican II of unhappy memory. For the Council, you will remember, did claim for itself the right to condemn abortion as always "an abominable crime" (Gaudium et Spes, 51) as part of the tactics of gaining support for the "pill"! But when we say the same today, we are setting ourselves up as judges in place of God! For are we not all to some extent murderers, by the very fact of forming part of this evil society, which drives unfortunate women to abortion? And all who have dared to speak out against the proposals – doctors included – are, in the eyes of God – or at least of His representatives in France – so many Pharisees. What more effective blow could the French bishops have struck to silence them, than to brand them thus? Can we doubt that this was just what they intended? Listen to this: "From now on (once again, they speak as though the matter were already settled)… Catholics are invited to undertake or intensify whatever initiative lies within their power, aimed at rousing consciences, at educating people and increasing their sense of solidarity… (which means in practice – take whatever futile steps the individual can take to mitigate the inevitable consequences of the new legislation). They will see the need for working together with all others who share their concern (concern to limit the ravages that will result from a law whose passing must on no account be opposed!)… It is not enough to replace one law with another (another sign that for them it is already as good as passed)… we must instead, in the name of the Gospel, help man to restore his confidence in himself and his fellowmen, and aid him to recover hope amidst trials and conflicts." The Statement ends on this note of determination to whitewash the sin and restore "confidence and hope" to those who by their own guilt have brought about the evil, and to set at rest the minds of the abortionists and their patients amidst those "trials" and "conflicts" which are a mere euphemism to cover up the undesired results of the sin of lust. There is little left for us to say on this matter. For a long time now we have been only too conscious of the fact that at Vatican II the bishops signed a truce with the World. Ever since, we have seen a succession of disgraceful acts, each worse than the last: hypocrisy has given way to frank lying, cowardice to actual complicity in crime, until they have sunk to accepting murder itself, because the World wills it. While we have, on the one hand, the Abortion Law to permit the physical killing of innocents, there is, on the other, the new law on sex instruction which will not permit but enforce the moral corruption of children’s souls. Carried away by all this Dialogue, Fraternity, Religious Liberty, and so on, the bishops have reached a stage at which they are concerned only that the pact with the World shall on no account be breached, even where the demands it makes are directly opposed to the teaching of their religion. We know that it will not be difficult to seduce the faithful into following them along such paths. Therefore, if we wish to defend our Faith, the Law of God, and the child’s right to Life, it is clear that in order to do so we must be prepared to fight also against these prevaricator bishops in an effort to make them do their duty. The affair of Hans Kung has been shelved, as might have been expected. We were, at any rate, pleased to see that the Abbé Richard, writing on 5th August, has expressed astonishment at the fact that "the highest authorities in the Church should not have seen fit to rebuke him publicly for such an outrage". Louis Salleron also has written concerning the false parallel which Congar had drawn between the heretic Hans Kung on the one hand, and traditional Catholics like ourselves on the other. We are grateful to Salleron for breaking the "conspiracy of silence" on this matter. Fr Congar wrote to me personally on reading what I had written in the CRC (July 1973): "Reverend Father, My mentioning your name side by side with that of Hans Kung, in my brief article in Le Monde, in was not intended to suggest any false parallel. I am fully aware of the differences in your respective positions and there is no question of my confounding these. My reason for writing what I did was that I had understood from certain reports that appeared at the time, that – according to the views expressed in Rome – the document of the Congregation of the Faith concerned yourself also. But there is no particular reason why it should concern me – except in so far as it concerns every Catholic. It has no personal relevance to me. Or perhaps you would be kind enough to let me know precisely what you find in my writings that should prompt you to include me among those who – in your view – have denied any of the points of doctrine which are reiterated in the said document (Mysterium Ecclesiae). Those who know me well personally do not consider me to be affected by feelings of self-complacency… I was referring to a particular approach to things which involved a certain disposition of the "heart". It is up to yourself to examine your failings. And up to me to pray God to enlighten the minds of all and to grant peace to His beloved Church. It is with such feelings that I remain His letter is certainly full of charity and humility, is it not? But I am still looking for an opportunity to explain why there is an essential contradiction between his Ecumania, based on "the heart", and the Credo of the Catholic Church. I should moreover like to ask him to justify his repeated defamations of my person as well as of my beliefs. For this reason I have extended to him a fraternal invitation to meet me, publicly and in person, on 13th December at the Mutualité… Well, we hear that the invitation has been refused. Fr Congar writes that he is not interested in a public meeting of this kind, but would welcome me to a private discussion. It would indeed be difficult for him to accept my challenge when he wrote only recently, in La Croix, about the "263 Churches" – i.e. the various members of the World Council of Churches – when the Document of the Congregation for the Faith reminds us that there is but one Church! |