The Fight for the Faith

Sons of the Church (part II)

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Sons of the Church  (part II)

in a time of crisis

By the Reverend Fr. Roger-Thomas Calmel, O.P.

(Continued)

* * * * *

Too many ecclesiastical dignitaries have abandoned themselves to the modernist mental perversion; they have reached the point at which they no longer find monstrous the habit of affirming contradictories in the same statement because they deem the intellect incapable of knowing truth.  They rather suppose that it [that is, truth] exists somewhere, though where one knows not, a sort of religious noumena  [Editor:  (in Kantian philosophy) a thing as it is in itself, as distinct from a thing as it is knowable by the senses through phenomenal attributes.]  beyond reach about which the mind fabricates ingenious, infinitely variable systems over the course the evolution of our species, but always impotent to reach what is.  One thing counts: that these [supposed] systems, ideologies, theologies, be placed at the service of humanity’s development.  They will be appreciated for their power to stimulate a grand ascension toward freedom and progress. 

One who consents to such a warped mentality refrains himself from condemning heretics or heresies and does not deem himself bound by any dogma.   He contemplates with detachment and benevolence the most opposed theses, applying himself to bring out in each one the elements that can prepare a better future and that connect more or less with a so-called evangelical spirit, the Gospel being interpreted as a leaven of an ideal future, but not to be received as a definitive rule faithfully guarded by a divinely-assisted Tradition.   When prelates whose minds have been thus denatured occupy the commanding posts in the Church, it is a cause of unutterable distress for all the faithful.

“Unless those days had been shortened, no flesh should be saved, but for the sake of the elect those days shall be shortened†(Matt. 24:22).

* * * * *

Some young priests from their very first days in the clergy, pushed by apparently noble motives to aspire keenly to reach the highest ranks in the Church, have offered the devil an easy prey.  The devil has taken them in charge in order to make them succeed, but he has made them pay a heavy price.  In olden times, during the Middle Ages or the early Church, whoever ambitioned the cardinalate, or higher, often had to become an accomplice, at least by his silence, in the sins and prevarications of Christian princes.  Today Christian princes don’t exist anymore; in any case, they have become irrelevant.  Power has passed to the secret societies, Masonic or Communist.  That’s where for the most part the horrible masters of modern times are to be found.  Today, then, a priest who cherishes the ambition to advance in the Church to its highest posts must deal with these princes.  He must become their accomplice.  Could he achieve his goal if he did not consent to become involved, perhaps only by degrees yet genuinely, in a radical perversion of the mind?  For if he refused to allow himself to be gradually won over by the spiritual darkness, he would remain incapable, despite all his efforts, of becoming a useful ally of the occult forces.  Do what he might, he would remain an adversary.  But he has to be an auxiliary; it is for no other reason that the modern Caesar has raised him to a position of command.

It happens that a man or woman, in the throes of passion, opens with a terrifying determination the sacred door of their liberty to the spirit of lust.  The devil becomes their master.  He is as it were invested with the power to precipitate them into the pit; he has opportunities to almost totally paralyze the will of his victims.  Now, the demon of pride is more fearsome than the one of carnal desires.  How powerful, then, will be his hold over the priest who, avid for power in spiritualibus [in spiritual things], has entrusted himself, even only indirectly, in order to be more sure of gaining his ambition, to these formidable occult organizations of our time over which the devil rules as master.  Into what mental contortions will the devil not induce the ambitious priest?  If he does not succeed in getting a grip on himself in time, his reason will be invincibly falsified by the prince of this world.

* * * * *

Were the Church’s plight a hundred times worse, a hundred times more cruel, it is still the Lord who is forever Master and King.  It is to Him that all power has been given; it is before Him that every knee must bow in heaven, on earth, and under the earth, including those in this kind of hell, for the moment painless, which is the modernist sect.  Its harmfulness cannot extend beyond the strict limits set by the Lord, and the Lord only grants it a certain power to obscure, to falsify, and to scandalize in thousands of ways, only for the good of the elect and to augment the gracious splendor of His Church.  We ought not to be fearful, but rather persevere with confidence in the Church of always, the everlasting Church, the Church of all time.

(Prologue to Apologia for the Everlasting Church)

Father Calmel’s Apologia first appeared in the journal Itinéraires, No. 151, March 1971, pp. 104-111.

Sons of the Church (Part I)

admin Apologetics, conciliar Church


Sons of the Church

in a time of crisis

By the Reverend Fr. Roger-Thomas Calmel, O.P.

(Prologue to Apologia for the Everlasting Church)

Prelates who occupy the most important posts in the Church, misled by the grand chimera of their own desire to find easy, infallible means to achieving once and for all the religious unity of mankind, are working to invent a church without borders in which all men, unconditionally dispensed from renouncing the world and Satan, will soon be united in the bonds of brotherly love.  Dogmas, rites, hierarchy, discipline, should one insist, would all be carried over from the first Church, but everything would be bereft of the safeguards willed by the Lord and specified by Tradition.  By that very fact, everything would be drained of Catholic vitality, namely grace and holiness.  The adepts of the most divers beliefs, and even those who refuse to have any, would enter as equals, but they would enter on equal footing into a dummy church.  Such is the present endeavor of the prestigious Master of lies and illusions.  Behold the masterwork, of Masonic inspiration, to which he commits his minions—faithless priests promoted as eminent theologians; oblivious or disloyal bishops, if not disguised apostates, rapidly elevated to the choicest honors and invested with the highest prelatures.  They spend their lives and lose their souls building a postconciliar Church under the star of Satan.

— Dogmas, affected by relativism because of the new pastoral praxis that refuses to condemn heresy, no longer propose any precise supernatural object.  Consequently, in order to accept them, even supposing that the notion still means anything in this case, neither intellectual assent nor purity of heart is required.

— The sacraments are placed within reach of those who do not believe; almost nothing keeps even unbelievers and the unworthy from approaching them, so far have the new ecclesiastical rites, by their instability and fluidity, become alienated from the sacramental sign efficacious in and of itself, divinely fixed by the Saviour once and for all “until He comes again.”

— As for the hierarchy, it is dissolving insensibly into the people of God, of which it is tending to become a democratic emanation, elected by universal suffrage for a provisional function.

Thanks to these unprecedented innovations, their instigators are congratulating themselves for having torn down the barriers that kept out of the Church those who even yesterday, in the recent ante-conciliar period, rejected the Church’s dogmas, spurned the sacraments, and defied the hierarchy.  Undoubtedly, as they were understood before the Council, dogmas, sacraments, government, a needful inward conversion, gave the Church the aspect of a fortified city—Jerusalem quae aedificatur ut civitas (Ps. 121:3)—with well-guarded doors and impregnable ramparts.  No-one was permitted across the sacred threshold who had not converted.

Henceforth, however, things have been changing before our eyes:  doctrines, liturgy, interior life have been subjected to a treatment of dissolution so violent, universal, and perfected that they no longer admit the distinction between Catholics and non-Catholics.  Since yes and no, the definite and the definitive, are held to have been surpassed, one wonders what would prevent the non-Christian religions themselves from being a part of the new universal Church, continually updated by ecumenical interpretations.

One wonders about it, at least if one accepts the point of view so many former Council Fathers, circumvented by Vatican II, allowed to be imposed upon them: to forge a heretofore unknown system and a new apparatus in order to win over the world without being exposed to failure, nor suffering, nor persecution, beginning with relativizing the supernatural.  But that means nothing, for:

  • On one hand Jesus Christ has said: The servant is not greater than his master; if they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept my word, they will keep yours also (John 15:20).
  • On the other hand the supernatural is not formless or modifiable; it is firm and precise; it presents a determined aspect; it has an achieved, definitive configuration; since the Incarnation of the Word, since Redemption by the Cross and the sending of the Holy Ghost, the only supernatural that exists is Christian and Catholic. It has no reality except in Christo Jesu, et Virgine Maria et Ecclesia Christi. That is why if one keeps in one’s soul the viewpoint of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the first twenty Councils, one sees quite well what routs the chimera of ecumenical unity: the duty to bend the knee before the Son of man, author and sovereign dispenser of salvation, but only in the one Church He established.

(To be continued)

Discussion on the steps of the church concerning Ecclesia Dei Masses

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Discussion on the steps of the church concerning Ecclesia Dei Masses.

[ Editor’s note:   For those who may not be familiar, “Ecclesia Dei†is a Conciliar Church structure created in 1988 by Pope John Paul II, in response to Archbishop Lefebvre’s episcopal consecrations.  It is an umbrella structure which includes pseudo “traditionalist†groups such as the Fraternity of Saint Peter, the Institute of Christ the King, and many others.  The Ecclesia Dei structure was clearly designed by Modernist Rome to keep a firm grip on these organizations who desire the Tridentine Mass but yet who refuse to speak and act openly against the Conciliar Church’s errors.  Modernist Rome, through Ecclesia Dei, keeps a tight grip on these groups by giving them certain perks:  allowing them to celebrate the 1962 Tridentine Mass, to enjoy friendly relations with Rome, etc. ;  but at the same time Rome destroys them slowly, by requiring them to conform to and not speak out against the Conciliar Church’s errors:  the documents of Vatican II, the New Mass, the New Catechism, the constant scandals of the popes, etc.  

Because of the perks granted to these groups by Conciliar Rome, many lesser-informed and otherwise good Catholics, desiring to avoid the evil New Mass and only attend the Tridentine Mass, have made the mistake of attending these Tridentine Masses offered by Ecclesia Dei member groups such as the Fraternity of Saint Peter, etc. — putting themselves in great danger of being pulled more and more into the Conciliar Church. ]

Father has a discussion outside the chapel with Philip, a 17 year-old member of the congregation.  During the conversation, Philip talks about the last weekend he spent with his friends in Paris.  Philip says that the group of friends he was with chose to go to an Ecclesia Dei Mass there 1…

Philip : Why are you making that face, Father ? After all, it is the right Mass !

— Father : Undoubtedly the Mass is good ; but that’s not the main thing.

Philip : Not the main thing ?  What more do you need, Father ?

— Father : Well, let me make a comparison.  Whiskey is a good thing, isn’t it?  (Philip aquiesces, smiling with an air of understanding). Right. But every time you drink whiskey, you are not necessarily carrying out a good action. (Philip understands).  So, it’s the same for Holy Mass.  That the Mass is good in itself is one thing ; but it is also necessary that assisting at this Mass be a good thing ; it is necessary that assisting at this Mass be a good action.

Philip : Okay, but whiskey and Mass are not quite the same thing, after all ! You seem to be saying that you can do wrong by assisting at a Traditional Mass !

— Father : Exactly, that’s just what I meant!   Just as you can make bad use of whiskey, so it is not necessarily good to assist at a True Mass.  It can even be bad.

Philip : Well, that beats all I ever heard !

— Father : Philip, I can understand your astonishment. Normally a Catholic should not have to think twice about assisting at a Catholic Mass ; but at the moment in the Church there are a lot of abnormal things.  For example, we say Mass in halls transformed as best we can into makeshift chapels. The local clergy is hostile to us. We are called “lepersâ€, “excommunicatedâ€, “schismatic    Many people don’t come here because they think that it is wrong to do so.  And yet it is the right Mass!  Where they are mistaken is in thinking that it is wrong to come here.

Philip : Yes, exactly, they are mistaken, since it is the right Mass !

— Father : No, Philip, be careful. Their problem is not the Mass ;  their problem is that they have been told that it is wrong to go to it.  It’s completely different.  Well, the problem with Ecclesia Dei groups is of the same kind : their Mass is good; okay, but is it good to go to it ?  That’s another kettle of fish ! Do you see the distinction ?

Philip : Okay, I see the distinction.  But I really don’t see why it’s wrong to go to the Fraternity of Saint Peter or the Institute of Christ the King !

— Father : You see – once you start asking yourself if it is right or wrong to assist at such and such a Mass, you are immediately talking about the priest who says this Mass.  Isn’t that interesting ?

Philip :  I don’t really see what you’re talking about…

— Father :  Okay. Someone says, like you have just done : “I am going to the right Mass with the Fraternity of Saint Peter, with the Institute of Christ the King, with the Society of Saint Pius X, and it is the same Mass in each caseâ€.   Yet, assisting at Mass in one or the other is not the same thing.  It all depends on the priest who says the Mass.

Philip: Why?

— Father:  Because Mass and whiskey are not the same thing!  Earlier on, you could have said to me: “But, I’m careful when I drink whiskey; there’s never any problem, since I drink it with moderation!â€Â Â  But Mass is not something which is consumed alone in a corner in a purely private fashion.

Philip:  What is it then?  Personally, I go to Mass to recollect myself, to pray and to go to Holy Communion.  Big deal if the priest belongs to the Fraternity of Saint Peter or the Society of Saint Pius X.  After all, that’s something you have to sort out among yourselves!

— Father:  Holy Mass is the Church’s highest act of public worship.  In other words, it is an act which is first and foremost a social act, in which we honor our God, and we receive its benefits under the authority of the Church, the society which God has instituted in order that He can be honored as He desires.

Philip:  That’s a bit harsh, Father…

— Father:  Let me start again.  In private, you can pray to God quite freely, when you like, how you like; in a certain way it’s your prayer.  But the Good Lord has wanted to be also and especially honored by bringing men together around the Cross, by the Mass; and that is the public and official prayer of the Church.  She thus renders to God, in the name of all men, all the honor and glory which are due to Him.  The Mass is therefore not a private devotion of either those who assist at it or of the priest who says it.  It is a common act of worship which supposes that the one who carries out the worship (the priest) has received from the Church the authority to do so.  He must depend on a bishop, who in turn depends on the Pope.  That is why I was speaking about the authority of the Church.

Philip:  But, Father, you are independent of this authority.

— Father:  Philip, we have now arrived at the heart of the problem.  You are saying the same thing as the Conciliars and their followers when they say that it is not permissible to assist at our Masses.  Once more, they don’t say this because the Mass we say is bad;  they say it because we are resisting the hierarchy, resisting Rome.  And we in turn say: you must not assist at Ecclesia Dei Masses because they submit to the Conciliar hierarchy.

Philip:  If I understand correctly, then, the nub of the problem is submission to the current hierarchy?

— Father: Exactly!  Normally in the Church, a priest is subject to his bishop, who is subject to the Pope; thus he receives a mission to celebrate the Mass and the other sacraments for a portion of the Church’s faithful.  However, for about forty-five years now, the fact is that, in order to keep the Faith, the faithful have asked those priests who also wanted to keep it, to take care of them, to the point of resisting the bishops and the Pope.  Their aim was not to resist for the sake of resisting, but to defend their Faith faced with the decisions of Rome which were contributing to the loss of Faith among the faithful.

Philip:  Which decisions?

— Father:  Well, for example, the promulgation of the New Mass of Paul VI in 1969.  But before that there was the Council, with several bad texts, notably on ecumenism and religious liberty.  Later, there were the changes in the other sacraments, then the new Canon Law in 1983.  There were all the scandals of ecumenism, such as Assisi in 1986.  And then there was the fierce struggle against Archbishop Lefebvre who, as he often said himself, was only doing what he had done throughout his life with the approbation of Rome.  In 1988, the Archbishop consecrated bishops because he had understood that Rome wanted to destroy Tradition.  The Faith of the faithful continued to be threatened.  Here is the main thing which must be understood: the hierarchy, the bishops and the Pope, are there to lead the priests and the faithful in the Faith.  If they do not do this, the faithful and the priests must resist and seek to keep the Faith, which is, at the end of the day, a higher form of submission.

Philip:  Alright…  But, how do the Ecclesia Dei Masses fit in with all that?  Will I lose my Faith there?

— Father:  You have to look at the problem from the other end…

Philip: (Interrupting) From the other end?

— Father:  Yes, the other end.  The question of knowing if I will lose the Faith is indeed capital.  But, we must also ask ourselves: what is the correct attitude of a man of Faith in relation to Ecclesia Dei Masses?  In the question you asked me, isn’t there something of the following attitude implied: if I’m careful, since it’s the right Mass, there will be no problem, just like me drinking the whiskey.  Am I wrong in saying this?

Philip:  No, Father, I agree!

— Father:  Therefore, we must look at the other end, the one which I explained earlier.  The Mass is above all a public and hierarchical act.  The Mass of an Ecclesia Dei priest is the Mass of a priest who, at least officially, obeys the local bishop and the Pope; a priest who will therefore from time to time receive his bishop for ceremonies; a priest who does not preach that the New Mass is bad, dangerous for the Faith;  a priest who will therefore gather around himself faithful who are weaker in their Faith, less well informed on the serious dangers which threaten Catholic life in the Conciliar Church; a priest who, if he is logical with himself, thinks that the situation in the Church today is basically normal, in any case normal enough to render a public resistance illegitimate; a priest who, by obeying liberal and modernist authorities, will inevitably deviate; finally, a priest who betrays everything Archbishop Lefebvre did, who betrays souls and tricks them by making them believe, by his public submission to the hierarchy, that the Pope truly leads his sheep and lambs in the paths of the True Faith…

Philip:  You’re going a bit far there, Father!

— Father: The Archbishop spoke like that in his time!  An Ecclesia Dei priest, right now, does not have a just position in the Church.  He is not in order with the Good Lord.  He is not in the truth.  He is between two stools, torn between his desire to do good and his submission to to the Conciliar authorities.  His sermons necessarily feel the effects of this, as well as the bookstall and the periodicals which are on sale there.  There will also be diocesan documentation at the back of the church.  There is also the serious risk of allowing himself to become lukewarm over time by being in contact with faithful who are less well informed in the Faith, as well as the risk of letting himself be attracted either by a more lenient doctrine, or, as the case may be, by the sympathy of the people or other priests.

Philip:  So, you can never go to an Ecclesia Dei Mass?

— Father:  You can never offend God!  These Masses are not for us!  If, for exceptional reasons you have to be present at an Ecclesia Dei ceremony, then you should keep a discreet attitude, avoiding giving the impression that you adhere to their submission to the bishops and the Pope – for example, by abstaining from receiving Holy Communion. Because you also have to think about the example you give to others around you.

Philip:  What about if it’s the only Mass you can get to on a Sunday?

— Father:  If you have understood our conversation, then you will be able to conclude yourself that in this case, even on a Sunday, you are not obliged to go to such Masses.  You cannot be obliged to assist at a Mass of a priest who does not publicly profess that the Conciliar church puts the Faith of the faithful in danger.  It’s not possible to be obliged in these conditions.  The Good Lord will give you graces in another way, if only by rewarding your courageous fidelity and your attachment to the truth.

Philip:  To the truth?

— Father:  Yes, to the truth.  Let’s summarize a little.  At the beginning, I was saying: the Ecclesia Dei Mass is good, but that is not the question.  The question is: is it really good to assist at it?  By this Mass do I really, in all truth, attach myself to the Church and to Our Lord?  The answer is no, because the Ecclesia Dei priest is not in a true position, he does not resist the bad shepherds, whereas he should.  He fools himself, and fools the people.  With him, under his influence, under his priestly authority, how could you expect to find a real love of the truth, of Our Lord, of the Church, and even of the Pope?   The priest is in error in an essential matter!

Philip:  Undoubtedly, it all goes much farther than I thought!

— Father:  Yes, it must be said that it’s not obvious.  Today we have to form ourselves more than ever, in order to know what we are doing.  Danger is everywhere.  But it is also an extraordinary time, as Archbishop Lefebvre used to say, because it pushes us to love the Church and Our Lord Jesus Christ more truly, and to remain strong in the Faith!  And it is also the best service of charity that we can render to those who still find it hard to grasp all the difficulties of the current situation.  Let us be witnesses of the truth and of the Will of God!

[This text written by Fr Jacques Mérel (SSPX) was published in the Newsletter of Priory Saint-Jean-Eudes (France) in July/August 2008.  It was the official position of the Society since the time of Archbishop Lefebvre.  Would all the priories publish it again in the year 2015 to warn their faithful against the Ecclesia Dei Masses?]

Declaration of the Order of the Knights of Our Lady

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The Order and the Society of St Pius X

These past few years, the SSPX superiors have unsuccessfully tried to make our Order align itself to their new Roman policy outlined in the Doctrinal Declaration of 15th April 2012, and in the Declaration of the General Chapter of 14th July 2012.  The latter is contemplating a canonical “normalisation†under six conditions, without waiting for a doctrinal agreement or the conversion of Rome, which Archbishop Lefebvre regarded as a prerequisite:   “It is therefore a strict duty for all priests wishing to remain Catholic to separate themselves from this Conciliar Church, so long as she has not returned to the tradition of the Church Magisterium and of the Catholic Faith†(Spiritual Journey).

Our Rule declares that the Knight “serves the Faith up to its ultimate consequences and its most rigorous applicationsâ€, and that he “defends the Holy Church unto bloodâ€, while our Constitutions add: “awaiting, in holy hope, that blessed day when [the Order] will again be able to submit entirely to […] a Rome that has finally been set free from the pernicious influence of the Modernist heresiesâ€, like, in his 1974 Declaration, Archbishop Lefebvre insisted: “This we shall do until such time that the true light of Tradition dissipates the darkness obscuring the sky of Eternal Romeâ€.

Moreover, none of the conditions set by the 2012 Chapter specifically excludes the Oath & Profession of Faith of Cardinal Ratzinger, which the Superior General has himself already implicitly accepted in a footnote of his Doctrinal Declaration, and which, for the past fifteen years, the Vatican has requested as a non-negotiable condition for any canonical recognition. Now, the Knights of Our Lady, who have pledged the Tridentine Profession of Faith and the Anti-Modernist Oath before the Holy Altars, together with Archbishop Lefebvre2, regard it as morally impossible for them to accept this post-conciliar oath, and consequently to bind themselves to clerics who would consider pledging it.

Our fidelity to principles has irked some, and various blackmailing attempts and sanctions have been carried out to make us give in. On October 13th, then on November 29th, 2012, we were requested to change our Constitutions, which fully endorse Archbishop Lefebvre’s 1974 Declaration, since, we were told, there would no longer be a need to wait for the conversion of Rome.

Then, on July 15th, 2013, the Superior General’s representatives informed us at the French District House, that instead of having a Bishop Protector –a position which Bishop de Galarreta had accepted since 1996–, we should have an Ecclesiastical Superior, who could overrule the decisions made by the hierarchy of the Order. This was quite the opposite of what Archbishop Lefebvre had insisted upon, i.e. that the bishops he had consecrated had no direct jurisdiction, and that it was up to the laity to call on faithful priests in case of necessity.3.   We politely declined their proposal.

On September 2nd, 2013, the Prior of Manila proposed to our Visitor for the Philippines to disregard the Magistry of the Order, and report directly to the District of Asia: the latter bravely replied that he would not be the one to introduce division in the Order. After we refused to take him as our local “ecclesiastical superiorâ€, and hearing accusations from Menzingen, the Asian District Superior, asked us to no longer meet in their priories and chapels.4

Finally, on September 18th, 2014, French District Superior Fr. Christian Bouchacourt wrote to the Master: “Given the public positions which you have taken, as Master of the Order of the Knights of Our Lady, supporting those dissident priests of the Society, who have followed Bishop Williamson, the General House, with good reason, is asking me to inform you that no Knight will be allowed to participate in this pilgrimage in uniformâ€. He was referring to the Lourdes pilgrimage to which our Knights had officially been invited to serve for the past sixteen years. As for the so-called “public positions†taken “as Master of the Order of the Knights of Our Ladyâ€, neither the French District Superior, nor the Superior General in his subsequent correspondence, were able to substantiate them.

During another meeting at the French District House on January 13th, 2015, we proposed that a priest be in charge of contacts with our Order within the French District, but this was not heard, and the French District Superior informed us: “I will send you a Declaration –that will be my text– and you will signâ€. By this Declaration, we would have pledged to never criticise Menzingen’s new orientations in our meetings or correspondence, and to never attend, even in private, Masses said by priests he would not have approved. These two commitments were in fact as good as amending our Constitutions, which, with the approval of the SSPX Canonical Commission dated 22nd September 1995, make it a duty for us to wait for the conversion of Rome, and give us the liberty to call on all the “faithful members of the Clergyâ€.

Since we refused to yield to this abuse of power, Fr. Bouchacourt notified us, by a letter dated May 26th, 2015, that he was suspending “the support of the District of France to the Knights of the Order of Our Ladyâ€, and announced that he had “requested that some lay people would organise themselves to found a new structureâ€, which would allow those Knights who would disagree with their superiors “to follow the same idealâ€. On June 4th, he confirmed this double decision in a fax to the French priories and some religious communities.

Following St Pius X, the Knights of Our Lady know that the worst enemies of the Church are hidden in Her very bosom.5.  They will consequently remain faithful to their Constitutions, and Archbishop Lefebvre’s 1974 Declaration, as well as to the Tridentine Profession of Faith, and the Anti- Modernist Oath, without siding with anything else than Catholic Tradition, pursuing the good combat of the Faith opportune, importune, as they have fought it for the past seventy years, and, with Archbishop Lefebvre’s encouragements, since 1969. Furthermore, they wish to express their heartfelt gratitude to the many good priests who continue to support them, and to renew their determination to remain at their service.

The Knights of Our Lady meeting at Salérans for their 22nd General Chapter, and the 70th anniversary of the founding of their Order

Attendance at the New Mass

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Attendance at the New Mass

Is it permitted to take part in the New Mass?

Even if the New Mass is valid, it displeases God in so far as it is ecumenical and protestant.  Besides that, it represents a danger for the faith in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. It must therefore be rejected. Whoever understands the problem of the New Mass must no longer assist at it, because he puts voluntarily his faith in danger, and, at the same time, encourages others to do the same in appearing to give his assent to the reforms.

How can a valid Mass displease God?

Even a sacrilegious Mass celebrated by an apostate priest to mock Christ can be valid. It is however evident that it offends God, and it would not be permitted to take part in it. In the same way, the Mass of a Greek Schismatic (valid and celebrated according a venerable rite) displeases God insofar as it is celebrated in opposition to Rome and to the unique Church of Christ.

Can one attend the New Mass however when it is celebrated in a worthy and pious manner by a Catholic priest with a faith that is absolutely certain?

It is not the celebrant who is called into question, but the rite that he is using. It is unfortunately a fact that the new rite has given very many Catholics a false notion of the Mass, which is closer to that of the protestant last supper than that of the Holy Sacrifice. The new Mass is one of the principal sources of the current crises of the faith. It is therefore imperative that we distance ourselves from it.

Can one assist at the new Mass in certain circumstances?

We must apply to the new Mass the same rules we use for the attendance at a non-Catholic ceremony.  One can be present for family or professional reasons, but one behaves passively, and especially does not receive Holy Communion.

What can one do when it is not possible to assist every Sunday a traditional Mass?

Whoever does not have the possibility to assist at a traditional Mass is excused from the Sunday obligation. The precept of the Sunday obligation only obliges in the case of a true Catholic Mass. One must however, in this case strive to assist at a traditional Mass at least regular intervals. What’s more, even if one is thus dispensed from assistance at Mass (which is a commandment of the Church), one is not thus so for the commandment of God (“Thou shalt sanctify the Day of the Lord”).  One must replace, by one manner or another this Mass which one cannot have, with for example the reading of the text in one’s missal, and uniting the intention, during the time of the Mass to a Mass celebrated elsewhere, and in practicing a spiritual communion.

(Directly translated from “Catéchisme catholique de la crise dans l’Église†[“Catholic Catechism of the crisis in the Church†by Fr Matthias Gaudron SSPX; French translation, subdivisions and revisions made by the Dominican Fathers of Avrillé.]

What about the attendance at an Indult Mass or at a Mass celebrated by an Ecclesia Dei priest?

Answer coming soon…

Francis, Martians and the Patience of God (NEW VERSION WITH PICTURES)

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Francis, Martians and the Patience of God

by Alexandre-Marie

(Translation from the French)

Pope Françis receives smiling José Mujica – President of Uruguay: Marxist, atheist, promoter of homosexuality and abortion. Afterwards, Pope Francis will say to the press that he is pleased to have spoken with “a wise man”.

Unperturbed, he stated that he does not believe in a Catholic God because “there is no Catholic Godâ€; he did not hesitate to say that proselytism is a “perfect absurdityâ€; he declared that Mary standing at the foot of the cross felt “ deceived †by God and revolted against Him; he said that the Roman Pontiff has no right to judge “ gaysâ€; he advised the Moslems to seek spiritual sustenance in the Koran…

Decidedly, Francis seems to wish to become the most innovative and atypical pope in history. And we must admit that until now he has achieved this goal brilliantly. To be convinced of this, all we need to do is look at some of the statements he made in his brief pontificate that caused world-wide interest. Unperturbed, he stated that he does not believe in a Catholic God because “ there is no Catholic God †; he did not hesitate to say that proselytism is a “ perfect absurdity †; he declared that Mary standing at the foot of the cross believed herself to be “ deceived †by God and revolted against Him ; he said that the Roman Pontiff does not have the right to judge “ gays †; he advised the Moslems to seek spiritual sustenance in the Koran; he firmly stated that “ dialogue †is “ the only means †of attaining world peace, that the laicization of the State is beneficial towards guaranteeing “ religious pluralism â€, that what is important in the education of children is not teaching them religion, but “ feeding themâ€, that all men are the sons of God and are saved, “ including atheists â€, that the Petrine ministry is “a pernicious work†, that the Old Covenant “was never revoked †and that the Jews “ have no need to convert â€, that Faith and Certitude are incompatible, and that the president of Uruguay Jose Mujica, an atheist who endorses homosexuality and abortion, is “ a wise man†6 .

These are only a few of the pearls dropped by Francis in the exercise of his media, pseudo-magisterium teaching sui generis in which his incontinent logorrhea accompanies foolproof demagoguery.

Rabbi Sergio Bergman Argentine claims to have found in the Cardinal Bergoglio his “rabbi” because he always has “listened and advised about his vocation” and helped “find the Jewish roots of Catholicism” during his ministry in Argentina.

Always aiming to go beyond and to outdo himself in his search for originality, “my Rabbiâ€, as his friend, the Argentinian Rabbi Sergio Bergman calls him, Francis expressed a very novel idea in his sermon given in St Martha House that the Church ought not refuse to baptize Martians (!) if they desire it.  Apparently it stands to reason that the Holy Spirit is pushing the Church to move on, “to go beyond its limits â€, and that we ought not “ place obstacles or close doors †to people we still erroneously think of as “impureâ€.  To tell the truth, it is improbable that Francis is seriously thinking about giving baptism to extra-terrestrials, although with him, I must admit that nothing would surprise me anymore.   Rather, it is all about giving Communion to the divorced and remarried and about conferring the sacraments on the “gaysâ€, to use the astounding language of Bergolio.  In this homily he said that “Martians†really represent the divorced and the homosexuals seeking baptism from the Church that is intolerant and that arbitrarily shuts the door to them for being “impureâ€, thereby preventing the “Spirit†to go where He will.  It goes without saying that this extravagant outburst from the current occupant of St Martha House is a strategy intended to desensitize the minds in order to prepare for the Extraordinary General Assembly Synod of Bishops, convoked by Francis under the theme: “Pastoral challenges for families within the context of evangelizationâ€, which took place in the Vatican between October 5 and 14, 2014.

Several weeks ago there was the case of a telephone call made by Francis to an Argentinian woman who was married to a divorced man in a civil union.  She had written to Francis, expressing her incomprehension at the refusal of her parish priest to hear her Confession and to give her Communion.  According to the testimony of this adulteress – and this was spread throughout the world by the media – the Pope apparently told her that some priests are “more Catholic than the pope†and that, in order to resolve this problem, all she had to do was “go to Confession and Communion in another parishâ€.  This statement has never been contradicted by the Press Office of the Holy See and therefore lends credence to the story spread by the adulterous couple about the “private telephone call†they received from the Vatican.

This revolutionary program, which most probably will lead to new applications of the reception of the sacraments and of family pastoral care, was insidiously announced by Francis in his Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium and was promulgated last November.  This is what he said in paragraph 47:

The Church is called to be the house of the Father, with doors always wide open.  One concrete sign of such openness is that our church doors should always be open, so that if someone, moved by the Spirit, comes there looking for God, he or she will not find a closed door.  There are other doors that should not be closed either.  Everyone can share in some way in the life of the Church; everyone can be part of the community, nor should the doors of the sacraments be closed for simply any reason.  This is especially true of the sacrament which is itself “the doorâ€: baptism.  The Eucharist, although it is the fullness of sacramental life, is not a prize for the perfect but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak.  These convictions have pastoral consequences that we are called to consider with prudence and boldness.  Frequently, we act as arbiters of grace rather than its facilitators.  But the Church is not a tollhouse; it is the house of the Father, where there is a place for everyone, with all their problems.

In addition to irregular marriage cases, it does not take a prophet to foresee that the next Synod will likely deal with the question of the status of those demanding the lifting of the bans against those practising the vice against nature.

Several highly symbolic deeds give an indication that this is coming; for starters, the legendary: “Who am I to judge a ‘gay’? †uttered by Francis at the conclusion of the World Youth Day in Rio de Janeiro in an airplane conference on his way back to Rome.  This inconceivable question comes from the lips of the man who right from his election on March 13 of the previous year called himself the Bishop of Rome.

And this statement – we should not forget – came just several weeks after the well publicized funeral of Don Gallo, the famous Communist priest who was an ardent promoter of the “right†to abortion and was also an undisputed champion of the homosexual cause.  His funeral was celebrated with solemnity in Genoa in May 2013 by Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, the president of the Italian episcopal conference.

Cardinal Bagnasco, president of the Italian episcopal conference, distributing Holy Communion to the trans-sexual LGBT activist Vladimir Luxuria, at the funeral of the priest advocate of homosexuality, Don Gallo.

It must be made clear that in the homily, the Cardinal made the panegyric of the revolutionary priest and allowed two transsexuals to make a plea for the LGBT 7 ideology at the time of the “universal prayer†where they ardently thanked the apostate priest for helping “the trans-gender [sic] created beings to feel loved and wanted by Godâ€.  The Italian prelate then personally distributed Communion to them, thereby profaning the Holy Eucharist.  A scandal of the greatest proportion which, it goes without saying, went without any outcry on the part of the Vatican.

The grotesque spectacle of a lesbian duo desecrating the cathedral of Córdoba, with the portrait of the godmother of “their” child, the Argentine president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, represented by a uniformed aide; the farce was performed with the consent of the local bishop, Mgr. Carlos Ñáñez.

 

We could well add other similar examples, such as the two Argentinian lesbian “mothers†whose “daughter†was baptized with great publicity in the cathedral in Cordoba last April with the express authorization of the Ordinary of the location, Msgr. Carlos Nanez.  The godmother was none other that the president of Argentina, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, the raging harpy who in 2010 was behind the “laws†permitting “homosexual marriage †and “ adoption by homosexuals†in Argentina, thereby giving Argentina the sad privilege of becoming the first Latin-American nation to put into place the LGBT agenda of the UN globalists.  A socialist, feminist and “homosexual†icon, this impious woman has thereby become co-responsible, thanks to the sacrilege permitted by the Bishop of Cordoba (co-responsible), for the Christian education of the poor little girl living with her two lesbian “mothersâ€.

Cardinal Schönborn, primate of Austria, welcomed the success of his compatriot, the “drag queen” Conchita Wurst, the song festival of Eurovision and asks God to “bless his life,” because there are “diversity of colors in his multicolored garden. “

 

 

Another example: that of Cardinal Dolan, the Archbishop of New York, who publicly complimented a homosexual football player for making his “coming out â€Â  (“ Bravo! I am happy for him; may God bless him! â€) or that of Cardinal Schönborn, the Archbishop of Vienna, who warmly congratulated his compatriot, the bearded “ drag queen†Conchita Wurst, for his winning song at the festival on Eurovision (“I am delighted that he had such success! In God’s multicoloured garden there is a variety of colours: I pray that his life may be blessed! â€).

Founded and run by the Jesuits, the Pontifical University of Saint Francis Xavier in Bogota, Colombia, has organized annually since 2001 an “academic pink cycle”, to promote LGBT ideology, under the indulgent gaze of the Vatican.

Let us not forget the statements of Fr. Leonardo Steiner, the general secretary of the episcopal conference in Brazil, the most important Catholic nation in the world with the largest number of faithful.  Fr. Steiner stated that “it is necessary to dialogue about the rights to civil unions between persons of the same sex who decide to live together, and that they should be given legal protectionâ€.  He justifies his remarks by proposing that “the Church is not the same throughout the various epochs†and that the Church “ is searching for ways to respond to the needs of todayâ€. And what can be said of the words of Msgr. Nunzio Galantino, named last March the secretary general of the Italian episcopal conference by Francis himself.  Msgr. Galantino, in response to a journalist who asked him what he hoped from the Church of Italy, said that he hopes “to be able to talk without taboo on any subject, like for example, about married priests, about giving Communion to divorced and homosexualsâ€.  He also firmly stated that he does not identify himself “with the inexpressive faces of those who pray their Rosaries in front of abortion clinicsâ€.

Founded and run by the Jesuits, the Pontifical University of Saint Francis Xavier in Bogota, Colombia, organized annually since 2001 an “academic pink cycle”, to promote LGBT ideology, under the indulgent gaze of the Vatican.

Another example to illustrate the calamitous situations of our times: the pontifical university Saint Francois-Xavier of Bogota in Colombia, founded and run by the Jesuits, has organized every year since 2001 a “Pink academic cycleâ€, which openly promotes the “gay†lifestyle.  And as is to be expected, there has never been given the slightest sanction to this “pontifical†university, neither on the part of the episcopal conference in Colombia, nor on the part of the Vatican.

These examples could go on and on as cases of defection from the Faith and betrayal of morality have become commonplace among the clerics of the ecumenical “Church of Vatican IIâ€, where apostasy goes hand in hand with bad taste and the most basic lack of human decency.

Father Luigi Ciotti with his mentor and friend, the anarchist priest and defender of sodomites issues, the late Don Gallo.
Fran̤ois hand in hand with Luigi Ciotti Рpriest, leftist activist, and staunch supporter of the homosexual cause.
When we really think about it, what else can we expect from a society [conciliar church] whose head makes a public spectacle of himself, who surrounds himself with champions of the sodomite cause such as the Italian priests Luigi Ciotti (a close friend and fellow fighter for homosexual causes of the pervert Don Gallo), who was filmed holding hands with the Pope by Italian television and Michele de Paolis, whose hand he kissed after having concelebrated with him in St Martha House under the watchful eyes of journalists who were eager to capture the moment for history?

Speaking to the press, Francois bowed deeply to reverently kiss the hand of Michele De Paolis: priest and supporter of gay rights, after the pope concelebrated with him at home Santa Marta, in the Vatican.
Pope Francis was named “Person of the Year 2013” by The Advocate, the iconic US magazine promoting the LGBT ideology.
What can be said of the unwarranted – to say the least – award “the Person of the Year 2013†accorded to Francis in December by the American magazine The Advocate, the major LGBT publication in the USA?  This embarrassing and troubling distinction awarded to Francis was met with not even the slightest explanation on the part of the Vatican.  At best, all this will no doubt offend the souls of the faithful.

It goes without saying that this brief list of repeated scandals, chosen to illustrate the abysmal conciliar debacle, could go on indefinitely.  Instead, what will surely not go on indefinitely is Divine Patience.  We can say this without a shadow of a doubt because God has loved us so much that He warned us in advance about the outcome of this grotesque farce.  We, who are the powerless witnesses of this tragic hour wherein the mystery of iniquity is unfolding in all its arrogance, we are witnessing this abominable imposture, amazed by the unprecedented greeting, this profane and highly subversive “buona sera” pronounced in the loggia of St. Peter’s Square on March 13, 2013, which already then was the symbol presaging the endless calamities that would occur during this pontificate.

Not wanting to predict the future – as no one knows neither the day nor the hour when the Son of man will return to earth to judge each man according to his works – but when faced with so many scandals, can we not ask this question:  Are we living in the times of the reign of the beast and the false prophet as announced in the Apocalypse by St. John (Book of Revelation, Chapters 13 to 19)? What is yet to come before the manifestation of “anotherâ€, as Our Lord called him (John 5, 43), in order for “ the man of iniquity â€, the “ son of perdition â€, “ the adversary â€, as St. Paul called him (2 Thess. 2, 3), to appear?

“Rome will lose the Faith and will become the seat of the Antichristâ€, Our Lady foretold at La Salette (1846). By committing these scandals, is not Francis steadily paving the way for the coming of the Antichrist?

The Friary’s Position

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The Friary’s position

  • The position of the Friary has not changed since the foundation of our community, that is, we continue the combat for the Faith summarized perfectly by the Doctrinal Declaration of Archbishop Lefebvre of November 21, 1974.
  • More precisely, we hold the principle which has been the one of the Society from 1988 to 2012, and which was still clearly maintained in the General Chapter of 2006:

“The contacts that the Society continues occasionally with Roman authorities have for their only end to help these authorities to reappropriate the Tradition that the Church cannot repudiate without losing her identity, and not the search for an advantage for ourselves, or to come to an impossible and purely practical agreement. The day when Tradition will once again regain all its rights, “the problem of our reconciliation will have no further reason to exist and the Church will experience a new youth”. 8

  • We support therefore all the priests still in the SSPX who, not without difficulty, continue the good fight in this spirit. By the grace of God, there are a good number of them, especially in the French District of the Society.  The Appeal to the faithful of January 2014 was not a declaration of rupture with the SSPX, but a “public testimony of our firm and faithful attachment to the principles that always guided Archbishop Lefebvre in the combat for the Faithâ€.
  • If there are priests outside of the Society who, clearly and without ambiguity, continue the combat of Archbishop Lefebvre, there is no reason not to support them. To support them does not mean “taking sides†for one Society against another. We have no intention to do anything “against†the Society, and do not wish its collapse : nobody wants that.
  • A suggestion for those who want to remain faithful to the combat of Archbishop Lefebvre: to the word “resistanceâ€, we prefer the expression “combat for the faithâ€, not only because one does not define oneself by something negative; but because this expression exists since the beginning of Tradition, and includes all those who faithfully continue the combat of Archbishop Lefebvre, no matter what organization they belong to.

The G.R.E.C.

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The G.R.E.C.

(Groupe de Réflexion Entre Catholiques or: Group for Reflection Among Catholics).

A once hidden story, now revealed.

By a Dominican Father of Avrillé, France.

In December 2011, Father Michel Lelong, member of the Society of the White Fathers (la Société des Pères Blancs), published a work entitled Pour la nécessaire réconciliation (For the necessary reconciliation), prefaced by Dom Éric de Lesquen O.S.B., Abbot Emeritus of Randol (a foundation of the Monastery of Fontgombault).

This book, 159 pages long, relates the work of the Groupe de Réflexion Entre Catholiques (GREC), from 1998 to 2010, in other words, twelve years of “discreet, but not secret†meetings (p. 29). These meetings, which were sometimes monthly, gathered together representatives of the official hierarchy, superiors of the Ecclesia Dei Institutes, and members of the Society of Saint Pius X. Their goal? “To speak without anger about things which make us angrry 9†to favour the “necessary reconciliationâ€.   It will, of course, be necessary to clarify just what those in charge of the GREC meant by this expression.

The origin of the GREC: an Ambassador’s dream.

The GREC finds its roots in a note written by M. Gilbert Pérol, former French Ambassador to the Italian Government, in 1995, some months prior to his recall to God.  He had had the opportunity of meeting Archbishop Lefebvre in Rome and, when at home in Paris, he liked to go with his wife to Mass at Saint-Nicolas du Chardonnet10 each Sunday (p.90).

But, let us allow Madame Pérol to carry on the story:

Good diplomat that he was, [my husband] had drafted what is known as a “texte de bons offices†[text of mediation] wherein the points of view of one and the other party are presented, seeking what is common to both, and inviting each party to take a first step towards the other. The GREC – a means of perpetuating my husband’s life – was born from this text [p.90].

Following several encounters which are related in Father Lelong’s book (pp.21-25), a first working group was set up in 1998, which led to the organization of conference-debates which would deal with those points currently disputed in the Church.

The participants: a most varied palette.

From the earliest years of its existence, alongside Madame Pérol, Father de la Brosse O.P., Father Lorans (SSPX) and Father Lelong, the principal leaders of the GREC were:

  • Father Barthe, “who has lots of links with the Holy See and in the French Church, and has helped us a lot11â€;
  • Father Vincent Ribeton, Superior of the French District of the Fraternity of Saint Peter, “who made a valuable contribution by his presence at meetings, by his interventions, and by his writings†(p.40);
  • Father Hervé Hygonnet (FSSP);
  • Laymen, such as Paul Airiau, Jacques-Régis du Cray, Luc Perrin, Philippe Pichot-Bravard, Jean-Maurice Verdier.

Madamoiselle Marie-Alix Doutrebente was named secretary.

Let us add, in order to complete the list of those who were principally in charge, that, on the 18th September 2004, a “theological group†was created within the GREC, one member of which was Father Charles Morerod O.P., professor at the Angelicum in Rome (p.57).  This religious “will be one of the personalities chosen by Benedict XVI to participate in the doctrinal discussions between the Holy See and the Priestly Society of Saint Pius X†(p.48).  Father Morerod has the absolute confidence of today’s Rome, since he was consecrated bishop a short while afterwards. In any case, the link between the GREC and the discussions with Rome of 2010-2011 is clear.

Also participating in the meetings of the GREC were certain French bishops, priests and laypeople belonging to the Diocese of Paris and other French dioceses, members of the Society of Saint Pius X, of the Fraternity of Saint Peter, and of the Institute of Christ the King (p.27).

Both Father du Chalard (SSPX), whose “support was as discreet as it was attentive†(p.26), and Dom Éric de Lesquen (then Abbot of Randol), “who had played a part in Dom Gérard’s agreement with Rome of 8th July 198812â€, supported this initiative from its very beginnings.

The Nuncio, Monsignor Fortunato Baldelli warmly welcomed it.  It was the same story for his successor, Monsignor Luigi Ventura (pp.29-32).

The French Bishops’ Conference was informed of it.  Following a visit from Madame Pérol, Father Lorans and Father de la Brosse to Cardinal Ricard, a bishop was designated at their request to follow the work of the GREC and to inform the Bishops’ Conference of it: the bishop was Monsignor Breton, Bishop of Aire and Dax.  When Archbishop Vingt-Trois of Paris succeeded Cardinal Ricard as head of the Bishops’ Conference of France, the same group visited him, promising to keep him informed regularly (p.35).

Amongst the other Cardinals and bishops having supported the GREC, we can mention: Cardinal Barbarin of Lyon, Archbishop Duval of Rouen, Bishop Aubertin of Chartres, Bishop Fort of Orléans (who often came to the meetings), Bishop Delmas of Angers, Bishop Aubry of La Réunion, Bishop Rey of Toulon, Fathers Brouwet and Aillet both before and after their episcopal consecrations (p.41).

It was Father Lorans, for the Society of Saint Pius X, who kept Bishop Fellay informed (p.35).

On Rome’s side, the following were kept up to date: the Secretariate of State from 1998 onwards, then Cardinal Hoyos, President of the Ecclesia Dei Commission, Cardinal Ratzinger, then President of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and numerous Vatican personalities.  When Cardinal Ratzinger rose to the Sovereign Pontificate, the GREC was able to have direct contact with the Pope (pp. 44-48).

The goal of the GREC: a dangerous ambiguity

What was the goal of these meetings?

If it were only a case of having meetings to try to make the Conciliar Church authorities understand the necessity of returning to Tradition in order to save souls, every Catholic (in other words missionary) mind could only have rejoiced.

Unfortunately, from the beginning, the GREC set off down a path which could not have been more ambiguous.

In the book’s preface, in effect, Dom de Lesquen, wishing that the action undertaken (by the GREC) would “obtain precisely that the act qualified as schismatic by the Holy See in 1988 not turn into an out-and-out schism†(pp. 12-13), adds: “The GREC’s objective is the necessary reconciliation†(p.15).

What reconciliation are we talking about?

For a Catholic, the answer is clear: that the Holy See reconcile itself with the teachings of the Popes and Councils before Vatican II.  This reconciliation is necessary, because it is the only means of saving the Church and the world.

On 20th October 2008, far from imploring Pope Benedict XVI to accept to call the Second Vatican Council into question, those in charge of the GREC sent a very ambiguous letter to him, implying that it was the Society of Saint Pius X which was in an abnormal situation. Thanking the Pope for the Motu Proprio of 2007 on the Traditional Mass13, and requesting the lifting of the “excommunications†of 1988, they concluded their letter in the following manner:

We hope that this will be the opportunity for the Society of Saint Pius X to regularize its canonical situation and thus to be able to manifest its will to return to full communion with the Holy Father (p.52).

Something which is ambiguous is defined thus: a phrase (or a word) having two different meanings14.  Here we are dealing with a perfectly ambiguous situation:

  • From the point of view of the official authorities, the letter to the Pope gives it to understand that the ultimate goal of the GREC’s work is to bring the Society of Saint Pius X back into the bosom of the present-day Church: we can understand the generally favourable response to this initiative on the part of these same authorities;
  • Seen from the Traditionalist point of view, a benevolent – but superficial – interpretation, gives another understanding: the letter to the Pope means that the goal of the GREC is to remake unity in the Church, to at last once more find union with the Holy See, to get out of this tragic and terribly painful situation – which it truly is – which consists in being in opposition with the Head of the Church.

Moral theology adds that “an ambiguity, which hides the truth, can only be used in case of necessity or for a reasonable cause15â€.

But, if there is a time when hiding the truth is illicit and dangerous, it is precisely when the Faith is at stake. How can one make use of ambiguity by making the authorities believe that one desires to return to full communion with them, whereas they persist in continuing along a path which leads to apostasy?

Had those unofficial representatives of Tradition who signed this letter with the other members of the GREC forgotten the warnings of Archbishop Lefebvre?

Rome has lost the Faith. Rome is in apostasy. […] We can no longer trust these people. They have left the Church, they are leaving the Church. It’s sure, sure, sure16.

When I am asked when there will be an agreement with Rome, my answer is simple: When Rome crowns Our Lord Jesus Christ once more! We cannot be in agreement with those who uncrown Our Lord.  The day when they once more recognize Our Lord as King of peoples and nations, they will not have joined up with us, but with the Catholic Church in which we remain17.

At that moment, the canonical question will be immediately resolved.

Of course, the GREC was aware of the limits of its actions:

The GREC never had a vocation to participate in any negotiations whatsoever. Its raison d’être is much more humble: it strives to create, through meetings and regular discussions, a climate of mutual benevolence, which is the indispensable prelude to any eventual rapprochement and reconciliation whose practical details and time-frame are unknown to us18.

The method used by the GREC.

Conference-debates and approach of the authorities.

To push the “necessary reconciliation†forward, the GREC worked in two directions:

  • organizing conference-debates on controversial points;
  • approaching the authorities.

All this happened in a climate of great discretion:

“We wanted to remain discreet. But we did not want to be secret†(p. 29).

It is understandable that it was better to exclude journalists and avoid internet debates for such a delicate affair.

It is nonetheless astonishing that no reference was made to these meetings during the four symposia on the Second Vatican Council held in Paris between 2002 and 2005, symposia which brought together priests of Tradition from all over the world. These symposia, which were themselves of a completely public nature, were conducted under the patronage of Bishop Fellay. While the workshops at these symposia were highlighting the harmfulness of the Council’s texts, “discreet†meetings relativizing the errors of Vatican II and seeking to open the path to a canonical recognition of the Society were taking place in the very same city, unbeknownst to the participants of the symposia.

Given what was at stake, it is also astonishing that, throughout twelve whole years of conferences and approaches made towards the Conciliar Church, the superiors of those religious communities working alongside the Society of Saint Pius X were excluded and were not informed of what was being done.

Father Lelong’s book itself failed to elicit any response in the official organs of the Society of Saint Pius X, not even to deny or qualify what the author said. Yet, three years have passed since it was published. We can therefore suppose that the persons mentioned in this book have nothing to add.

But now let us see how the work of the GREC was carried out.

The conference-debates.

For twelve years, numerous conference-debates were organized on major topics: “Ecumenism, risk of apostasy or future of the Church?â€; “Interreligious dialogue, peril or hope?â€; “Which path for the Church? Concrete proposals for getting out of a crisis†(p. 59); “Should we revise and/or interpret certain passages of the Second Vatican Council?†(p. 64), etc.

We will try to see, a little later on, why these conferences, interesting in themselves, ended up in total failure.

Nevertheless, for the moment let us take note of one disturbing comment, the responsibility for which we leave to its author.  Speaking about the conference-debate of 21st January 2008 between Father Morerod O.P. and Father Grégoire Célier (SSPX) on the theme: “Vatican II and the other Ecumenical Councils; to revise and/or interpret certain passages of the Second Vatican Councilâ€, Father Lelong notes:

Listening to their presentations, we could see that the doctrinal and spiritual convergences between these two theologians were much more numerous and profound than the divergences between their respective approaches (p. 64).

Would there have been the same convergence if it had been Archbishop Lefebvre face-to-face with Father Morerod, a priest who is totally one with Rome’s modernism?

An impressive series of diplomatic comings and goings.

Alongside these discussions took place an impressive series of diplomatic comings and goings: bishops, nuncios, Secretariate of State, Ecclesia Dei Commission, all were kept up-to-date on the GREC’s activities. Once Benedict XVI was elected, it was the Pope himself who was informed in person. According to Father Lelong, the accession of Cardinal Ratzinger to the Sovereign Pontificate “was welcomed by the leaders of the GREC with great joy and much hope, a hope which was not to be disappointed, but entirely fulfilled†(p. 48).

These men were in complete utopia. We refer our readers to Bishop Tissier de Mallerais’ brilliant study entitled L’Étrange théologie de Benoît XVI19 as well as to the premier bilan (i.e. initial assessment) of his pontificate, published (complete with photographs) by Le Sel de la terre, 84.  In any case, this admission of Father Lelong is revelatory of the spirit which reigned in the GREC, especially under Benedict XVI.

To enter a little farther into the details, this diplomatic action of the GREC was conducted mainly in two different directions: towards the Pope on one hand, and towards Bishop Fellay on the other.

1.  GREC’s interventions with the Holy See

Already back in 1998, Father Lelong had written to Cardinal Sodano, Secretary of State, to inform him of the GREC’s initiative, and to suggest that the Holy See lift the “excommunication†of the Society’s bishops on the occasion of the Jubilee of the Year 2000.  We must quote at least one extract from this letter in order to see the spirit in which these approaches took place. For Father Lelong, kingpin of the GREC, the goal was to get the Second Vatican Council accepted by the Traditionalists:

“I am profoundly attached to the teachings of the Second Vatican Council, and I am trying to make them understood by those of our brother Catholics who have followed Archbishop Lefebvre and his successors. Some friends and I have set up a working group in Paris which is trying to prepare the day when all traditionalists will be able to find their place once more in the Church, in obedience to the Holy Father and under the authority of our bishops. […] It is in this spirit, in total fidelity to the Sovereign Pontiff and to the teachings of the Second Vatican Council, that in the name of many French Catholics, I take the liberty of asking your Eminence, if, in a gesture of charity towards our brothers, the Holy Father could lift the excommunication which had been pronounced against the bishops who were irregularly consecrated by Archbishop Lefebvre (pp. 42-43).†[bold emphasis is added]

Was this letter the personal initiative of Father Lelong, or did it have the approval of the unofficial representatives of Tradition within the GREC? The book does not say.  In any case, Cardinal Sodano having asked for “signs of repentance†(p. 44) on the part of the authorities of the Society, the approach resulted in nothing.  As regards the question of the lifting of the “excommunicationsâ€, the situation remained unchanged under the pontificate of John Paul II.

However, starting from the pilgrimage of the Society of Saint Pius X to Rome for the Jubilee of the Year 2000, frequent contacts began to take place between Bishop Fellay and Cardinal Castrillon-Hoyos, then President of the Ecclesia Dei Commission. Father Lelong does not say a word about them.

We know that the priests of Campos (Brazil), invited by the General House of the Society to join these negotiations, did not resist the seduction of Rome. This was their deplorable rallying to Conciliar Rome, victory for Cardinal Castrillon and loss for the combat of the Faith.  Bishop Rifan now concelebrates the New Mass fervently20.

The pontificate of Benedict XVI, which manifestly brought great hope to the members of the GREC, especially after the Motu Proprio on the Traditional Mass, was the opportunity for a new approach, this time to the Pope himself.  On the 9th July, 2008, “the leaders of the GREC†(p. 49) addressed the following request to the Pope:

We are very grateful, Most Holy Father, for this decision [concerning the Motu Proprio] and we wish to respond to your call for reconciliation among all Catholics, respecting those legitimate diversities which exist within the Church. There are many of us who wish that the proposition handed by Cardinal Castrillon-Hoyos to the Society of Saint Pius X will meet with a favourable outcome, since the doctrinal questions relative to the Second Vatican Council are of interest to the whole Church.  We also wish that the excommunications be lifted and that the Society of Saint Pius X once more find its place in the Church where it has so much to bring [pp. 49-50].

Then there was the famous request of 20th October 2008, where the leaders of the GREC, wishing the Society of Saint Pius X to “regularize its canonical situation and manifest its full communion with the Holy Father†(see above), added:

We think that the lifting of the excommunications would set in motion an inevitable process of approach, in view of an agreement between the Holy See and the Society of Saint Pius X, or at least an agreement with a large part of the priests and faithful of aforementioned Society (p. 52)21.

The request appears to have obtained its effect, since the “excommunications†were lifted in the beginning of 2009.

2.  Interventions of the GREC with Bishop Fellay

The leaders of the GREC seem to have been concerned with bringing about the cessation of attacks against today’s Rome. To quote Father Lelong:

At that time, all too often aggressive and polemical points-of-view were being expressed both on the part of those Catholics attached to tradition22, as well as on that of those who claimed to follow the spirit of the Council.  These were not contributing to bring about that climate of peace and mutual confidence which is necessary in the search for a true reconciliation (p. 33).

The Society of Saint Pius X must understand that, even if it has much to bring to the Church of Rome, it also has much to receive from it.  Therefore, it must stop rejecting Vatican II in its entirety (p. 85).

In their letter to Benedict XVI of the 9th July 2008, which we have already quoted and which is so important, the leaders of the GREC (therefore, the unofficial representatives of Tradition as well?) desired to reassure the Pope on this point:

We ask the leaders of this Society to cease declarations and polemical articles which criticize the Holy See (p. 50).

On the 20th June 2008, Father Lelong and several members of the GREC had written to Bishop Fellay:

Are you not afraid that by refusing the repeated calls of the Holy Father and by permitting yourselves to criticize him unjustly and systematically, the Society will end up taking a path which will lead it inevitably to separate itself from Holy Church, as has – alas! – happened throughout history? (p. 39).

Occupied Rome does not really mind cozy academic discussions taking place between theologians about Vatican II.  It allows the Ecclesia Dei communities to engage in them in principle.  It gives an impression of openness.  But what this Conciliar Church cannot bear is that scandals be denounced: the ecumenical meetings at Assisi, the visits to synagogues and mosques, the false beatifications and canonisations, etc.  It is especially these scandals which, over the years, cause millions of souls all over the world to lose the Faith.  But, when the Faith is in danger, attacked by the wolves, it is a duty for the shepherds to shout out in order to protect the flock. Not to do so is a grave sin in relation to the confession of the Faith, because to attack current-day Rome, destroyer of the Faith, is necessary to maintain the great Truths of the Faith.  All the efforts of the Conciliar Church since the Consecrations by Archbishop Lefebvre in 1988 have been employed in breaking off groups of priests from Tradition by granting them the Traditional Mass without asking them to officially accept Vatican II23.  Conciliar Rome knew that by acting thus, it would no longer have anything to fear from these groups: they could do nothing else but remain silent concerning the Council and the scandals of the hierarchy, for fear of losing their canonical recognition and of being refused all apostolate in the dioceses.  That is what happened with all the Ecclesia Dei communities without exception from the moment that they signed, and it is their great sin before history, before the Universal Church and before all souls.

Today’s Rome desires the Society of Saint Pius X to go down this path. At this point we must understand the subversive techniques used especially in the last two centuries by the enemies of the Church.  Their major tactic for destroying resistance consists first and foremost in obtaining an end to any attack against them.  To obtain this, they use liberal Catholics, their best auxiliaries, seducing them by promising them peace, on condition that they cease fighting. At the same time, they provoke anathemas against those (the anti-liberals) who are not resigned to lay down their arms.  They cover them with all sorts of epithets, calling them men of bitter zeal, integrists24, etc.  In this way, the enemy seeks to isolate them in order to remove all influence they may have.  Then, at their leisure, they can work away at putting the main part of the flock to sleep and slowly win it over to the new ideas.

Thus, in the 1950’s, under Pope Pius XII, there were thousands of good priests who were both pious and doctrinally sound. T hen “Good Pope John†arrived, with his suggestion at the beginning of the Council of no longer anathemitizing, of no longer condemning errors, with the exception of “the prophets of doom†who, following in the footsteps of the anti-liberal Popes, continued to lambast modern errors.  The manoeuvre succeeded.  Just look at what the Church has become today all over the world25.

Archbishop Lefebvre rose up and unfurled the flag of battle.  This was the foundation of the Society of Saint Pius X and the works of Tradition, which spread like wildfire throughout the entire world.  Since the death of Archbishop Lefebvre we have witnessed the manoeuvres of modernist Rome (advised by Freemasonry) to destroy the only organized resistance to world Revolution. T his manoeuvre consisted in attacking the superior authorities of the Society in particular, among whom they had detected certain weaknesses (because the enemies of the Church are shrewd observers).  Father Lelong’s book does us the service of enlightening us on at least one part of this operation.

The results of the GREC.

In 2010, when the doctrinal discussions began in Rome between the Holy See and the Society of Saint Pius X, the GREC ceased its activities, or at least the conference-debates26.  Did letters and telephone calls continue in order to advance the “necessary reconciliationâ€?  It is quite possible.  When a group of people shares the same objective, relationships and friendships built up over the course of years do not just stop from one day to the next.  Besides, it is very dangerous to keep up regular contact with heretics (and the Modernist heresy is the most dangerous in this respect, since it does not clearly affirm its errors).  By dint of frequent meetings, we end up forming friendships, relativizing what opposes us, no longer speaking about it, and at last abandoning the fight.  How many priests of Tradition have fallen for having played this imprudent game, with a good intention at the beginning.  Such an apostolate requires men of the strength of Archbishop Lefebvre.  Having known the Rome of Pius XI and Pius XII, he did not allow himself to be impressed by the Rome of Paul VI or John Paul II.  And even a bishop of the stature of Archbishop Lefebvre almost fell into the trap by signing a protocol of agreement on the 5th May, 1988.  He recovered heroically during the night and saved us.

It is now time to take stock of this group’s activities between 1998 and 2010.

The failure of the conference-debates.

When reading Father Lelong’s book, it is striking to see how, after twelve years of discussions, there was no movement on the part of the “Concilarsâ€.  Bearing in mind all the tendencies which exist among those who claim to follow Vatican II, “each one stood firm in his positions27â€:

Dom de Lesquen is still persuaded that the episcopal consecrations of 1988 were “a schismatic act†potentially leading to “an out and out schism†(p. 13).

Father Lelong is so enthusiastic about the last Council that he devotes an entire chapter of his book to an unreserved defence of it (Chapter 4, pp. 71-87).

Even the most glaring prejudices towards the Traditionalists remained intact. Thus, recalling an interview from March 2003 with Cardinal Castrillon-Hoyos, Father Lelong writes:

He observed that, in our country [France], the misunderstandings and tensions between the French bishops and the Society of Saint Pius X often had to do with political motivations, rather than truly theological reasons.  This observation seemed perfectly correct to me since, in the 1970’s, I had often heard French bishops reproaching Catholics attached to the Latin Mass with being “extreme right-wing†(pp. 44-45).

To still be at this point after twelve years of meetings, discussions and conference-debates has something quite despairing about it.

Father Lelong will reply that the goal of the GREC was not to sort out the doctrinal question, which can only be done by authority.  Certainly, but without having the pretention to resolve current problems with all the technicality of theologians, it is difficult to understand how priests and bishops speaking about doctrine for twelve years, did not advance a single step.  And how can we explain the fact that the top-level discussions which took place in the period 2010 – 2011 between the Roman theologians and those of the Society of Saint Pius X (despite being carried out in a remarkable manner by the latter), ended up in the same failure?

Whence the impossibility of discussing the crisis in the Church?

The first cause, with today’s clergy, is, in a general manner, a subjectivist and evolutionary concept of the truth, which comes from a warped theological formation.

When one no longer seeks the truth, all that is left is “dialogueâ€, in order to find a way of living together without waging war on one another and in order to arrive at a certain unity which respects our differences. Moreover, the word dialogue comes back time and time again in the book:

When we are all together in friendship, writes Father Lelong, I often think of Gilbert Pérol who, while actively taking part in Islamic-Christian dialogue, had the idea for having this dialogue between Catholics (p. 27).

…

Since Vatican II, there was a lot of talk in the Church of dialogue with Protestants, Jews, Muslims, the Dalai-Lama, and also with atheists.  Those with whom there was no dialogue were the faithful attached to the Mass of Saint Pius V, labeled as integrists (p. 60)28.

…

The very aim of the discussions seem, therefore, to have been achieved: French Catholics, of diverse and even opposed sensibilities, have freely accepted to engage in a dialogue which in no way prejudices a total reconciliation – domain which is reserved for the competent superiors – but opens the possibility, when the day arrives, for the authorities involved in dialogue to come face to face with partners capable of understanding and mutual respect, and no longer confined in radically opposed camps29.

In his brilliant work Iota Unum, Romano Amerio has a whole chapter devoted to dialogue (Chapter 11)30:

This term is totally unknown and unused in pre-Vatican II doctrine (p. 347). […] Dialogue, it is said today, does not have either the refutation of error, or the conversion of the interlocutor as its goal31.

Pope Benedict XVI, in his last Christmas discourse to the Curia before his lamentable resignation, clearly enunciates what the concept of dialogue is for the Conciliar Church:

  • Dialogue does not aim at conversion, but at understanding. In this respect it differs from evangelization, from mission;
  • Accordingly, both parties to the dialogue remain consciously within their identity, which the dialogue does not place in question either for themselves or for the other32.

The GREC situates itself resolutely in this perspective. Thus, Father Lelong, speaking of the foundation of this think tank, writes:

It remained to specify the best way of implementing this beautiful project, by associating with it Catholics belonging to very diverse schools of thought, but who share our concern to contribute towards the unity of the Church, respecting legitimate diversities (p. 25).

Up to what point is diversity legitimate? Father Lelong gives his solution:

After the Motu Proprio of the Holy Father in July 2007, we can hope that the old and the new rites will from now on not only live alongside one another, but mutually enrich one another, as Benedict XVI desires (p. 82).

The Society of Saint Pius X must understand that, if it has a lot to bring to the Church of Rome, it also has a lot to receive from the latter. Therefore, it must stop rejecting Vatican II in its entirety and accept its main orientations, interpreting them as the Holy Father proposes today (p. 85).

Father Barthe thinks that this cohabitation of opposites could bring back the authorities of the Church to Tradition:

In the same way that, from the liturgical perspective, the Motu Proprio said that the Traditional Mass was never abolished, we are going to arrive at a situation where it will be said that the doctrine from before the Council concerning the disputed points was never abolished.  We can follow the “extraordinary doctrineâ€.  And just as the extraordinary liturgy draws the ordinary liturgy to itself, so we can hope that the “extraordinary doctrine†will draw the “ordinary doctrine†to itself also†(p. 121).

This all makes one want to cry out: sufficit(enough is enough)!

Precisely what part did the pressure from Rome and the GREC play respectively in the evolution of Bishop Fellay’s thought?  It is difficult to say.  Both certainly had an influence on it.  In any case, the spirit of the GREC is to be found in the Doctrinal Declaration sent by Bishop Fellay to Cardinal Levada on 15th April, 2012 to commit all faithful Catholics (who were unaware of it) to a practical agreement with Conciliar Rome:

The entire tradition of Catholic Faith must be the criterion and guide in understanding the teaching of the Second Vatican Council, which, in turn, enlightens – in other words deepens and subsequently makes explicit –  certain aspects of the life and doctrine of the Church implicitly present within itself or not yet conceptually formulated [No. 4].

We declare that we recognise the validity of the sacrifice of the Mass and the Sacraments celebrated with the intention to do what the Church does according to the rites indicated in the typical editions of the Roman Missal and the Sacramentary Rituals legitimately promulgated by Popes Paul VI and John-Paul II [No. 7].   [italic emphasis is ours]

This Doctrinal Declaration has never been retracted by Bishop Fellay.  It has simply been “withdrawnâ€.

Bishop Fellay should know that compromise with error will never restore unity.

For the Church, the first principle of unity is the Faith:

Wherefore, in His divine wisdom, He ordained in His Church Unity of Faith; a virtue which is the first of those bonds which unite man to God, and whence we receive the name of the faithful […] The Church, founded on these principles and mindful of her office, has done nothing with greater zeal and endeavour than she has displayed in guarding the integrity of the faith.33.

A “dialogue†where one part of the interlocutors is not seeking the truth, but, on the contrary, a union outside of the constant and infallible Teaching of the Church, can only end in failure.  And it will be the Church and the Faith which will be the losers.

In such conditions, it is understandable that after twelve years of (sometimes monthly) discussions, the Conciliar interlocutors and the unofficial representatives of the Society stuck firmly to their positions.

A dangerous diplomacy, and a weakening of Tradition.

If the GREC had limited itself to discussions which had resulted in nothing, the most that could have been said was that it had all been a waste of time, and that the time for the restoration of the Church had simply not arrived.

But, was there anything more dangerous than setting all the authorities of the Church in motion by allowing it to be thought that the Society of Saint Pius X desired a canonical regularization and a return to full communion with the Holy See at a time when the Conciliar Church was continuing its descent into apostasy?

It was even totally opposed to the resolutions that this same Society had taken at its 2006 General Chapter:

The contacts made from time to time with the authorities in Rome have no other purpose than to help them embrace once again that Tradition which the Church cannot repudiate without losing Her identity.  The purpose is not just to benefit the Society, nor to arrive at some merely practical impossible ‘agreement’. 34  When Tradition comes back into its own, “reconciliation will no longer be a problem, and the Church will spring back to life”.35

This firm resolution normally-speaking should have stopped the diplomatic initiatives of the GREC in their tracks from 2006 onward. This did not happen.

So, while, the world over, Tradition continued to live and develop in peace, in the belief that it was protected by the decisions of the highest authorities of the Society, an informal group composed of both Traditionalist and Conciliar figures was discreetly continuing to prepare the way for a practical agreement with “the Rome of Neo-Modernist and Neo-Protestant tendencies36â€.

The result was that Tradition was on the brink of disaster in June 2012;  the lifting of the “excommunications†in 2009 having, in effect, initiated “an inevitable process of approach in view of an agreement between the Holy See and the Society of Saint Pius Xâ€, as the leaders of the GREC had predicted in their letter to the Pope37.  Bishop Tissier de Mallerais commented:

Let us trust in the Blessed Virgin who got us out of a tight corner, it is true.  This year, she got us out of this tight corner, she did not want any of this talk of an agreement; in other words, that we would go to Rome to submit ourselves to the Conciliar authorities.  Certainly, they are the authority in the Church, the Pope is Pope, Successor of Peter, but he is also the representative of this system which controls the Church, which paralyzes the Church, which we name the Conciliar Church by manner of speaking.  It is not another Church, it is another form of Church, it is a new religion which has penetrated within the Catholic Church, and which is supported by the Pope and the entire Hierarchy, apart from some exceedingly rare exceptions.

Dear Faithful, how could you want us to submit ourselves to such a Hierarchy?  It would have been impossible to collaborate, it would have been a bogus collaboration, a lie.  We would never have collaborated and we would have been constantly persecuted, threatened by the bishops and by Rome.  How could one survive in such conditions?  With the obligation of signing a misleading text, ah no!

Nevertheless, Tradition emerged in a weakened state from the whole episode.

It is difficult to say precisely what role the GREC played in the evolution of Tradition since 1998.  In any case, it would be impossible not to make the link between the reiterated appeals made by this group to put an end to attacks against Rome, and the fact (observable by all) of the loss of the spirit of combat in Tradition, at least generally-speaking.  The emblematic example of this is the DICI newsletter, official organ of the General House of the Society.  Headed up by Father Lorans, one of the main leaders of the GREC, DICI endeavours to always show the least bad side of the Pope, and remains silent concerning those scandals which cause the loss of Faith.  Continual complaints made to Bishop Fellay by figures of authority within the Society, by priests and by members of the faithful, have never achieved any result.  Such pertinacity proves beyond doubt that there has been a change of direction.

Yet, in the conference cited above, Bishop Tissier had raised the alarm:

Archbishop Lefebvre passed on everything he had received.  The entire heritage of Father Le Flo’ch38, of the [French] Seminary [of Rome], all his experience, he passed it all on through the Society, and it continues to work, but only so long as we continue with the same spirit of combat.  There can be no question of putting away our arms in the midst of battle; we are not going to look for an armistice while the war still rages on, with Assisi III or IV, with the beatification of a false Blessed, Pope John Paul II – a false thing, a false beatification, and the demand ceaselessly made to us by Benedict XVI to accept the Council and the reforms, and the magisterium from after the Council39.

The voice of Bishop Tissier, echoing that of Archbishop Lefebvre, seems, however, to be have been lost in the desert. Let us not imagine that this will not have its consequences.

The early generations built up Tradition with the sword.  The new generations have received everything without having to fight: chapels, schools, seminaries, religious houses etc.  They have fallen asleep in bourgeois-like comfort.  As an editorialist recently wrote:

The vast majority of the faithful in our chapels do not form themselves, they do not read.  Only from time to time do they concern themselves with the future of their family and of their children.  Assistance at Mass (to which they arrive ever later) is for them the maximum they can commit towards their eternal salvation.  Some of them add to this the daily recitation of the Rosary, the most fervent among them saying the full fifteen decades.  Some free up their consciences by signing a petition or by risking themselves in some protest or another, but that is all.  Do not talk to them about any in-depth work or study of Freemasonry, for example, and its role in the current state of a society which is in the process of being de-Christianized, a fact which they deplore!  Speak to them about the root causes of the decomposition of the Church which has become Conciliar, or of the crisis which seriously affects Tradition today, and they care not.

To this we should add the growing levels of immodesty in many chapels, the stagnation of the number of faithful attending spiritual retreats, the resulting insufficiency in the number of vocations, etc.

There are, of course, edifying exceptions, but these are no longer numerous enough to inspire the whole with new fervour.

As we write this article, we do not know if a practical agreement between the Society of Saint Pius X and Modernist Rome will take place within a shorter or longer time-frame.  But the very fact of no longer denouncing the scandals coming from Rome, or of only doing so timidly, under pressure from concerned priests and faithful, avoiding attacking the Pope by name, makes Tradition resemble more and more those communities which have already gone over to Rome and which have abandoned the combat of the Faith.  The day when we will be fully imbued with their spirit, a practical agreement with today’s Rome will no longer be a problem for anyone.  The new direction of the General House of the Society will have destroyed the work of Archbishop Lefebvre.  The enemy will have conquered.

Will Providence raise up a small remnant to continue the fight and to save what can be saved?

Father Michel Lelong, Pour la nécessaire réconciliation, Le Groupe de Réflexion Entre Catholiques (GREC), Paris, NEL, 2009 (159 pages). Price: €19.

FATIMA

admin Apologetics, conciliar Church , ,


FATIMA

Or the means chosen by God to redress the present situation

by a Dominican father

This is a sermon given in the Dominican monastery la Haye-aux-Bonshommes in Avrillé (France).

The Fatima Message

Starting on May 13, the Most Holy Virgin appeared to three young shepherds on the 13th of every month in the presence of a growing number of pilgrims and the inquisitive. The children alone saw Our Lady.

It is not sufficient to say that the message was a call for prayer and penance, as the Vatican claims. Such a lack of precision allows the particular demands given by Our Lady for our times to be placed under the bushel. We must therefore state the exact nature and the aim of the prayer request. Therefore, it is more correct to say that the instructions given by Our Lady between May 13 and October 13 may be summed up in these words: the daily Rosary and sacrifices for the conversion of sinners. That is the Fatima message in general.

To this general message were later added two particular requests that were in keeping with the promise made as early as July 13:

– in 1925, the request was made for the Five First Saturdays devotion in reparation for sins ;

– and in 1929, the request was made for the Consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary by the Pope in union with all the bishops in the world.

It would be an error to limit the Fatima message to these two particular requests and to forget the general request: the daily Rosary and sacrifices for the conversion of sinners.

The Miracle of the Sun: the Facts

Let us go back to the 13th day of October 1917, the day that we are commemorating today.

As early as July 13, the Virgin Mary announced a huge miracle that would take place on October 13 so that the entire world may believe in the reality of the apparitions and in the serious nature of Heaven’s warning.

The story is well known: a crowd of nearly 100,000 people gathered in the area; they were mostly Catholics, but also non-believers, militant atheists, and even the freemasonic government minister for national education. A torrential rain pouring from midnight on soaked everyone to the bones and rendered the Cova da Iria31 into a muddy field: in order to give blessings, God wills that we first do penance. At midday, Lucy asked the people to fold their umbrellas. The entire crowd complied and magnificently displayed their faith and obedience. A few moments later, the sun broke through the clouds and Our Lady appeared above a small holm-oak. She asked for the conversion of sinners and, as in every apparition, she insisted on the daily recitation of the Rosary.

Then, suddenly, Lucy cried out: « Look at the sun! » In front of the stupefied crowd of people, the sun gyrated in on itself as if it were a fire wheel, turning various colors of the rainbow. This lasted nearly eight minutes but seemed like hours. This cannot be attributed to a collective hallucination, because the phenomenon was seen within a forty-kilometer radius by various individuals.

While the sun was spinning around, the three young shepherds, Lucy, Jacinta and Francisco alone saw a vision that symbolized the three sets of the mysteries of the Rosary:

– representing the Joyful Mysteries: St. Joseph appeared with the Child Jesus and Our Lady: St. Joseph and the Child Jesus were blessing the world;

– representing the Sorrowful Mysteries: Our Lord appeared with Our Lady of Sorrows;

– representing the Glorious Mysteries: the Virgin Mary in Heaven was seen holding the scapular of Mount Carmel.

The sun then turned blood red in color and seemed to fall from the sky and hurl itself towards the earth. Everyone believed that the end of the world had come. Then everything stopped – the sun returned to its normal place in the sky.

The people got up and noted another phenomenon: their soaked clothes were completely dry.

The non-believers had to acknowledge the reality of the facts. The following day, newspapers, including those most hostile towards the Church, all reported on the event.

What lessons may we draw today from this miracle?

The Miracle of the Sun: Lessons to be Drawn

The largest miracle in the entire history of the Church

Firstly let us observe the spectacular nature of this miracle. We must turn to the Old Testament to find similar prodigies that were performed in front of an immense crowd of people: such as the manifestation of God to Moses and to the Hebrew people on Mount Sinai (Ex 19); or when Joshua stopped the sun and the moon from advancing so that nightfall would not prevent the Jews from exterminating the enemies of Yahweh (Jos 10). The miracle of October 13, 1917 is assuredly the largest miracle in the entire history of the Church. Let us ask why.

The history of the Church is the history of the struggle between two cities: the city of God and the city of Satan:

These two Cities are made by two loves: the heavenly City by love of God even to the contempt of self; the earthly City by love of oneself even to the contempt of God (St. Augustin, The City of God).

This magnificent synthesis of St. Augustine is nothing other than what is written in the Book of Genesis:

I will put enmities between thee [the snake] and the Woman [the Virgin Mary], and between thy seed and her seed [Our Lord; the Church]: she shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel [the persecutions of the Church] (Gen 3, 15).

We are now living in the times when « the devil is fighting the decisive battle, meaning the final battle », says Our Lady40. This is the day when the general assault of all anti-Christian forces is launched against the Church.

It is urgent that we realize the terrible reality that we are in. We do not wish to frighten people, but this is an urgent call to the reality of our situation, comments Sr. Lucy 41.

And it is in order to draw our attention to this final phase of the history of the Church that Heaven produced the largest miracle of the past 2,000 years.

Paradoxically, the current Church authorities are totally silent on this event.

And so, in the year 2000, when Cardinal Ratzinger released to the public a questionable version of the third secret of Fatima, he made no allusion whatsoever to this miracle.

Why this silence?

The current Church authorities have not yet fulfilled the Virgin Mary’s request, and so it is understandable that they are embarassed by this miracle, which clearly proves the heavenly origin of this request. At the same time – could it be their guilty conscience? – these authorities feel obliged to talk from time to time about Fatima and to perform the consecrations of the world or of mankind. Pope Francis made one such consecration on October 13, 201342. However, by not consecrating Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary as Our Lady requested, the popes are unable to provide the world with the promised remedy, and the situation continues to get worse.

The Fatima apparitions are the key to understanding the entire history of our era

We will now move to the second important consideration: the Fatima apparitions are the key to understanding all the events of the 20th century and all that we are living through today, whether in the religious or political sphere. To be truly convinced of this, one only needs to read the authoritative work by French Br. Michel of the Holy Trinity, The Whole Truth about Fatima43.

The troubles, the upheavals and the unprecedented decadence of our times are the direct consequences of the fact that churchmen have not yet wished to fulfill the request of Our Lady of Fatima:

I will come to ask for the Consecration of Russia to my Immaculate Heart and for the Five First Saturdays in reparation for the sins, said Our Lady on July 13, 1917. If my requests are granted, Russia will be converted and there will be peace. If my requests are not granted, Russia will spread her errors throughout the world, raising up wars and persecutions against the Church.

The October 1917 Revolution that took place immediately after the request of Our Lady of Fatima was not a simple coup d’état bringing about a regime change. The aim of the Revolution was especially « to spread throughout the world the institutions and the mores of atheism44 », and the immorality that was to follow in its wake45.

This Revolution occurred precisely during the huge conflagration of 1914 – 1918, which was the first Great War aiming to prepare for a one-world government. It is this that constitutes the errors of Russia: the creation of an atheistic society without Our Lord Jesus Christ. It is the supreme assault against the Social Kingship of Our Lord. And we must admit that these errors have now spread throughout the entire world. No nation has been spared.

The only effective obstacle to this plan was the Church. In order to protect the Church and the world from this plot, the Virgin Mary requested Pope Pius XI in 1921, by the intermediary of Sr. Lucy, to consecrate Russia to her Immaculate Heart. The Pope did not believe the matter was worth pursuing. Ten years later Our Lord complained to Sr. Lucy:

Tell My ministers: because they are following the example of the king of France in delaying the fulfillment of My request, they will share in his tragedy46.

It was indeed during those years that an organisation was put in place by Moscow in order to infiltrate seminaries and novitiates with agents who had false vocations. These agents later reached influencial positions and gradually worked to effect a new orientation in the Church. This has been proven by a good number of documents. (We have provided references in an article about Fatima47 in our review le Sel de la Terre.) The Pope having ignored the protection that Heaven was offering, the Church became the plaything of her enemies.

At the time of the Second Vatican Council, Moscow doubled the budget they allocated to the Pax organization, which was one of the principal agents of Communist infiltration into the Church48. Among other things, this group contributed to the attacks directed at the Curia during the Council49.

We should therefore not be surprised that the two major documents passed by the Council, and not without opposition, were:

– the document on Religious Liberty50, which sanctions the secularization of States, that is to say their becoming atheistic States, preventing the Social Reign of Our Lord and forbidding the constitution of officially Catholic nations;

– and the document Nostra Aetate51 which, along with the decree on Ecumenism52, leads to what we see today: churchmen who abandon missionary activities in order to work towards uniting all religions for the service of the atheistic and anti-Christian world government. Last October 1st, in an interview with the chief editor of the newpaper Repubblica in Italy, an interview which made huge waves, Pope Francis declared: « Proselytism [that is, missionary activity] is a pompous absurdity ». But this Ecumenism, which refuses the conversion of non-Catholics, leads to Religious Indifferentism, and Religious Indifferentism leads to Apostasy and to Atheism. That is what we see today in the entire world.

Yes, the errors of Russia have penetrated inside the Church.

The means chosen by God to redress the current situation

So, what must we do? And can we do anything, we who are so few?

We need to understand that God alone can now redress the situation. There is no longer any solution on the purely human level. But that does not mean that there is nothing for us to do: God always wants the co-operation of His creatures, but the co-operation must be in accordance with His plan.

The Two Battles

Some years ago an eminent traditional Catholic thinker summed up the situation very well when he said that there are two battles that must be fought at the same time:

1) We must fight in order to preserve our last holdings. It is obvious that we must above all maintain our chapels, our monasteries, our schools, our publications, our associations53, and, generally speaking, we must hold on to our hope of salvation and to the orthodoxy of our Doctrine. This is the lower battle. It is a defensive battle, a battle where we hold our own against the enemy.

2) But on a level higher than these countless battles of self-preservation, a battle of the greatest importance has begun and whose objective is the transfer of power54. « I will reign in spite of My enemies », said the Sacred Heart to St. Margaret-Mary in 168955; a promise that was renewed in the 19th and 20th centuries to a large number of mystics, in particular to Madame Royer in France. […] We may rest assured that today Our Lord is working mysteriously, as He always does, towards the destruction of the Beast and towards the restoration of His own Reign. This mysterious battle which is led by Christ the King constitutes the higher battle, and that is the principal objective56.

The Lower Battle

Concerning the lower battle, the battle fought by men, Fr. Calmel O.P. had these enlightening words to say:

May each priest, each layman, each little group of priests and laymen, who have authority and influence over a small remnant of the Church and of Christendom go to the utmost of their possibilities and power. […] May the leaders of the small groups and their members know each other and communicate with each other. May each of these small groups thus protected, defended, led and guided in their prayer and chants by a true authority, become as much as possible a bastion of holiness: this is what will garantee the continuity of the true Church and what will efficaciously prepare for a revival, when the day chosen by God comes57.

Let us note what Fr. Calmel says: our bastions must be bastions of holiness.

What is worrisome at the moment is not so much the advancement of the forces of evil, but rather the softening of the good. Actually, there’s probably a link between the two tendencies. Those who knew the heroic beginnings of Tradition with Archbishop Lefebvre note that today the traditionalists have become quite lukewarm in comparison to those heroic days: the slovenly manner of dressing, sinful and imprudent use of the Internet, weakening of the convictions among the young, the faithful who no longer read in order to maintain their Faith and to oppose errors, fewer people going on spiritual retreats, a proportional decrease in vocations, etc.

If our principal focus in this lower battle is not on our sanctification, we will not preserve our bastions. We will be swept away in the general apostasy. Let us be watchful, let us wake up!

The Higher Battle

Above this battle of self-preservation lies the higher battle whose goal it is to completely defeat the forces of evil. This is where God’s battle lies. And where do we stand in this battle?

There is but one simple action that each one must take. Our Lady confided that action to Sr. Lucy of Fatima:

Many times, while I was spending precious hours in her company, Our Lady insisted that we fulfill our daily duties according to our state in life and that we offer this effort for the reparation of our sins and for the conversion of sinners. This is the fundamental condition which will enable us to push back the forces of evil that threaten to submerge the world today and which will bring about the conversion of Russia and a period of peace to the world. But she also explained the importance of the Rosary because it is the one principal means given to us by Our Lady for the sanctification of our daily duties58.

This is how we can truly and efficaciously participate in the final battle which will definitively crush the enemies of the Church. This is within everyone’s reach and that is very encouraging!

Conclusion

Let us conclude with the words of Abp. Lefebvre which he gave in a sermon in his last Pontifical Mass on November 1, 1990 in Écône on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the SSPX. This is his testament:

My dear Friends, you can easily see the importance of your role. […] You are a small remnant, but you carry the torch boldly. […] Ah! What a beautiful task, what a noble crusade lies ahead of you! The good God has placed you in a period of the history of mankind that is exciting for young people such as yourselves! It was just like this at the time of the Machabees when they left the corrupt Jewish society, and they too were very few. Judas Machabee with only eight hundred soldiers faced an army of twenty thousand – and he defeated them. And so, be confident, my dear Friends, God is with you. He will not abandon you, just as He has not abandoned us over the course of the last twenty years. Nor will He abandon you in the future because it is Himself that God wants. God does not want to disappear; He is God, He wants to remain God, not only in Heaven, but also here on earth. That is why He wants soldiers in His army.

Is there a conciliar church?

admin conciliar Church, The Fight for the Faith , ,


Is there a conciliar church?

A study by Bishop Tissier de Mallerais

Presentation of the document

This study was first published in French in the tri-monthly review of the Dominicans of Avrillé, Le Sel de la Terre n°85 (summer 2013).

It reflects Archbishop Lefebvre’s true way of thinking concerning the mystery of a Pope presiding over the destruction of the Church: the Pope remains the Pope, but he is at the head of two churches; the Catholic Church, of which he was elected the head, and another society, the “conciliar churchâ€, which has its dogmas, its liturgy, its new institutions, etc. The conciliar church is not the Catholic Church, but a counterfeit “churchâ€. We must separate ourselves from it if we want to keep the Catholic Faith.

Ever since the authorities of the Society of Saint Pius X have been getting closer to conciliar Rome in the hopes of obtaining a canonical recognition, their language has changed. A new thesis contrived by a theology professor at Écône named Fr. Gleize, maintains that there is no conciliar church in the sense of an organized society; the current crisis is rather an “illness†affecting the men of the Church, and the Church presently at Rome is the Catholic Church. This is what Bishop Fellay says, for example in his ordination sermon at the seminary of La Reja (Buenos Aires, Argentina) on December 20th, 2014:

The problem of jurisdiction shows the importance of being recognized canonically. […] The official church is the visible Church; it is the Catholic Church, period.

To affirm that the official church is the Catholic Church, – something which Archbishop Lefebvre never did – leads one to look for an official recognition, because one cannot remain outside of the Catholic Church. With his new manner of speaking, this is exactly what Bishop Fellay is trying to persuade the priests and faithful to do, and that puts Tradition in grave danger.

This article by Bishop Tissier de Mallerais is therefore of crucial importance if we want to preserve ourselves from the confusion caused by the new language coming from Menzingen.

It is of interest to note that Bishop Fellay reproached the Dominicans of Avrillé for having published this study of Bishop Tissier de Mallerais. Likewise, Fr. Rostand (at that time district superior of the U.S.) had the Letter to Friends and Benefactors of the Dominicans of Avrillé of September 2013 removed from the press tables of all SSPX chapels, precisely because it contained an article treating this same subject. You will find it here in an appendix.

The article of Bishop Tissier de Mallerais

The publication of this text does not engage the responsibility of Bishop Tissier de Mallerais with regard to the presentation above, and to any other texts on this site.

Does there exist a conciliar church, a constituted society which is distinct from the Catholic Church, differing from it, if not in its members, then at least by its goals? And if this is the case, what is its relation with the Catholic Church? These are the questions conforting every catholic conscience since the 25th of June 1976, the day deputy Secretary of State of Paul VI, Bishop Giovanni Benelli 59 used this expression in a letter written on behalf of the Pope to Archbishop Lefebvre;

“[If the seminarians of Econe] are of good will and seriously prepared for a priestly ministry in true fidelity to the conciliar Church, we will take it upon ourselves to find the best solution for them.”

Many studies have appeared in the Sel de la Terre 60 on the subject since then. Let us formulate a new status quæstionis to respond to this.

An attempt to define the conciliar church

Let us try first of all to define the two churches in question, by their four causes according to Aristotle. A society is a moral being, of the [philosophical] category of relation. Relations create the link between its members. We can distinguish:

— The material cause: These are the persons united to each other within the society. We will say that in the case of the Catholic Church, as in the conciliar church, these are the baptised.

— The efficient cause is the head of the society: for the Catholic Church, Our Lord Jesus Christ, it’s founder, and the Popes who are his vicars; and for the conciliar church, the Popes of the Council, therefore the same Popes; in such a way that the same hierarchy seems to govern the two Churches.

— The final cause, which is the cause of causes, the common good sought by its members: in the case of the Catholic Church, the good sought is eternal salvation; in the case of the conciliar church, it is more or less principally the unity of the human race: “The Churchâ€, says the Council, “is in Christ as the sacrament or, if you will, the sign and the means to attain the intimate union with God and the unity of the human race 61.”

— The formal cause is the union of minds and wills of it’s members in seeking the common good. In the Catholic Church, by the profession of the same Catholic faith, the practices of the same Divine worship and the submission to the same pastors and therefore to the laws they make, that is Canon law. In the conciliar church, it is by acceptation of the teaching of the Council and the magisterium which comes from it, and by the practice of the new liturgy and obedience to the new Canon law.

From these rough notions we can deduce the approximate definitions of the two churches:

* The Catholic Church is the society of the baptised who want to save their souls in professing the Catholic faith, in practising the same Catholic worship and in following the same pastors, successors of the Apostles.

* The conciliar church is the society of the baptised who follow the directives of the current Popes and bishops, in espousing more or less consciously the intention to bring about the unity of the human race, and in practise accepting the decisions of the Council, following the new liturgy and submitting to the new Code of Canon law.

If this be so, we have two churches who have the same heads and most of the same members, but who have different forms and ends diametrically incongruous: on the one hand eternal salvation seconded by the social reign of Christ, King of Nations, on the other hand the unity of the human race by liberal ecumenism, that is to say broadened to all religions, the heir of the conciliar decisions of Unitatis Redintegratio, Nostra Ætate, and Dignitatis Humanae, and which is the spirit of Assisi and the antithesis of the social reign of Christ the King. This is only a quick summary but what will follow show clearly the reality of this opposition.

Is it possible to have one hierarchy for two churches?

That the Catholic hierarchy governs at the same time the Catholic Church and a society which has the appearance of a counterfeit church seems to go against the assistance promised by Christ to Peter and his successors, guaranteeing the unerring magisterium and the indefectibility of the Church (Mt. 16, 17-19; 28,20).

If the Pope directs another church, he is an apostate and he is no longer pope and the sedevacantist hypothesis is verified. – We simply need to respond that “Prima sedes a nemine judicatur” and that by consequence, no authority can pronounce obstinacy, declaring the pertinacity of a sovereign Pontiff in error or deviance; and that on the other hand in case of doubt, the Church supplies at least the executive power of the apparent Pope (can. 209 of the Code of Canon law 1917 62). As for the magisterium it is only assisted if it has the intention to transmit the deposit of the faith and not profane novelties 63. And as for the indefectibility of the Church it does not hinder the fact that it can come to be that the Church, following a great apostasy as that announced by St. Paul (2 Thess, 2,3), is reduced to a modest number of true Catholics. In consequence, none of the difficulties raised against the existence of a society truly called the conciliar church and directed by the Pope and the Catholic hierarchy are decisive.

It is however preferable to avoid these extreme responses. One could thus try to deny the existence of the conciliar church as an organised society and which is directed by the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, or to extenuate 64 the membership of it’s adherents to this conciliar church.

Is the conciliar church just a mind set?

One could say first of all that the conciliar church is nothing but a liberal and modernist “spirit”65 which penetrated the Church at the time of the Council, as Archbishop Lefebvre responded to Cardinal Seper who asked him:

“Your Excellency, in a preliminary note 66 to a letter addressed to the Holy Father, you wrote; ” Make no mistake of it, it is not about a quarrel between Archbishop Lefebvre and Pope Paul VI, it is about a radical incompatibility between the Catholic Church and the conciliar Church, the Mass of Paul VI representing the program of the conciliar Church.” This idea is rendered more explicit in a homily made on the 29th of June last during the Mass of ordination at Econe; “This new Mass is a symbol, an expression, an image of a new faith, a modernist faith… Now it is evident that this rite, if I can say, supposes another conception of the Catholic faith, another religion.” Must one conclude from these affirmations that, according to you, the Pope in promulgating and imposing the new Ordo Missae, and the body of Bishops who received it, have instaured, and visibly gathered around themselves a new conciliar “Church”, radically incompatible with the Catholic Church 67?”

Minimising the weight of his comments, the Archbishop responded:

“I remark first of all that the expression “conciliar Church” is not from me but from H.E. Bishop Benelli, who in an official letter asked that our priests and seminarians submit to the “conciliar Church”. I consider that a spirit of modernist and protestant tendency shows itself in the conception of the new Mass and in all the liturgical reform”.

We judge that the strategic backing off by the prelate of Econe is perfectly justified by the circumstances: the Holy office was entering into a process which could lead to his condemnation. In addition to this, the explanations which would have been needed for the support of his idea of the existence of a parallel and organised society called the conciliar church would have required too many documents and facts to cite and organise in a dialectic manner within the limits of a short response to a such a questioning. We cannot argue from his evasive response that Archbishop Lefebvre had really reduced the conciliar church to a “spirit”.

Is the conciliar church just an infirmity?

But, one will say, did not Archbishop Lefebvre invoke many times a simple debility which affects the body of the Church, a kind of “spiritual AIDS”, as he said, which weakens the capacity of resistance of the Church to contaminations? We respond that they are not mutually exclusive. The effects of the conciliar church on the Catholic Church are an effect firstly of poisoning, a paralysis and therefore a weakening of the Catholic Church in the face of it’s enemies. This is what Archbishop Lefebvre explained to the same Cardinal Seper in a letter preceding his interrogation.

“In this world, there are forces opposed to Our Lord, and to his reign. Satan and all the auxiliaries of Satan, conscious or unconscious, refuse this reign, this way of salvation and fight for the destruction of the Church. Thus the Church is engaged by her Divine Founder in a gigantic combat. All means were and are employed by Satan to triumph. One of the last, extremely efficacious stratagems is to destroy the combative spirit of the Church by persuading her that there are no more enemies, and that we must put down our arms and enter into a dialogue of peace and cordiality. This fallacious truce will permit the enemy to penetrate everywhere and corrupt the forces of the Church. This truce is liberal ecumenism, a diabolical instrument of auto-destruction of the Church. This liberal ecumenism will result in the neutralisation of the arms which are the liturgy with the Sacrifice of the Mass, the Sacraments, the breviary, the liturgical feasts, the neutralisation and ceasing of the seminaries…”

It is obvious that the sickness or the “AIDS” of the Church in face of her enemies is not just a simple sickly diminution of the fight for the faith, but the result of the stratagems plotted by influential members of the Church, relayed by a part of the hierarchy, and supported by the Popes themselves. These Popes, victims of their liberalism, are nevertheless conscious and consenting actors of this liberal ecumenism, an ecumenism received with favour by the great majority of Catholics who are seduced by the eases offered by this new kind of religion. All of this is precisely what we have defined as being the conciliar church.

But if one holds to calling it a pure sickness of the Church, the image of a cancer would be more realistic: is not the conciliar sickness the act of a parasite and the colonisation of the healthy tissue of the Church by a virus which provokes the proliferation of anarchy? We would have to therefore inquire about the existence and nature of the viral agent.

Is membership in the conciliar church doubtful?

On the other hand, if one accepts the image of a society, a counterfeit church,  yet while wishing to avoid affirming its [actual] existence, [then] one could reduce the membership of most of its adherents to a simple material [as opposed to formal] membership, from the fact that most of the members follow the movement by conformity, without knowing or sharing the goals of the conciliar church, which would be almost void of real members and reduced to the state of a phantom in that which concerns the members, and to a skeleton when it comes to the hierarchy. The truly skeleton-like state of the conciliar church, would confirm the hypothesis. We would have to further minimise the belonging to it, when we consider that the link which unites its members has nothing to do with the solidity of the theological virtue of the Catholic faith, which is entirely supernatural in its object, its motive and its end: it makes us “believe God, believe in a God, and believe in God 68.” For if many conciliarists approve the attempt of conciliation between the religion of God made man and the religion of man quite simply, on the common base of the dignity of the human person, they do not perceive the ambiguity of this principle of conciliation stated in the Council by Gaudium et spes: “Believers and non-believers are generally in agreement on this point; everything on earth must be ordained to man as its centre and its summit.”69 The Catholic Church makes a precision along with Saint Ignatius Loyola: “All things on earth are created because of man, to help him in his salvation”, which is a completely different end! In comparison with the communion of saints, a fruit of the Catholic faith and of theological charity, what communion can be founded by the conciliarists with the mixture of principles so diametrically opposed? We call it, along with Saint Anne-Catherine Emmerich, the communion of the profane or the communion of the anti-saints 70.

Furthermore, to the ambiguity of its form, the Conciliar Church adds ambiguity to its end: ” The unity of the human race” by it’s essence earthly and natural, “in Christ”, using our Lord as an instrument at the service of a plotonic idea; tomorrow, by the wave of a magic wand, without effort, without the conversion of the world, “the Church will be the human race” ! The Church no longer needs to be missionary, it is enough to present itself to the world, to be media-friendly. The incessant publicity voyages of John-Paul II illustrated the reality of which Julio Meinvielle already described in 1970 as “the church of publicity”:

“This church of publicity glorified in the press, with bishops, priests and theologians publicised, can be won over to the enemy and change from the Catholic Church to the gnostic church, (as opposed to) the other, the Church of silence, with a Pope faithful to Jesus-Christ in its teaching and with some priests, bishops and faithful who are attached to it, scattered like the pusillus grex over all the earth 71. “

Until now, this pusillus grex has been missing itsâ€Pope faithful to Jesus-Christâ€! The post-conciliar Popes, elected Popes of the Catholic Church, have been above all Popes of the church of publicity!

From all that has been said, it is clear that the conciliar church is not only a sickness, nor a theory, but that it is an association of high ranking catholic Churchmen inspired by liberal and modernist thinkers, who want, according to the goals of the one worlders, to bring to fruition a new type of church, with many Catholic priests and faithful won over by this ideal. It is not a pure association of victims. Formally considered the conciliar church is a sect which occupies the Catholic Church. It has its organised instigators and actors, as had the modernism condemned by St. Pius X, whom we must cite:

Is the Modernist Sect dead?

“The partisans of error are to be sought not only among the Church’s open enemies; but, what is to be most dreaded and deplored, in her very bosom, and are more mischievous the less they keep in the open. We allude, Venerable Brethren, to many who belong to the Catholic laity, and, what is much more sad, to the ranks of the priesthood itself, who, animated by a false zeal for the Church, lacking the safeguards of serious philosophy and theology, nay more, thoroughly imbued with the poisonous doctrines taught by the enemies of the Church, and lost to all sense of modesty, put themselves forward as reformers of the Church; and forming more boldly into line of attack, assail all that is most sacred in the work of Christ, not even sparing the Person of the Divine Redeemer, whom, with sacrilegious audacity, they degrade to the condition of a simple and ordinary man. […] Hence the danger is present almost in the very veins and heart of the Church, whose injury is the more certain from the very fact that their knowledge of her is more intimate. Moreover, they lay axe not to the branches and shoots, but to the very root, that is, to the faith and its deepest fibres. And once having struck at this root of immortality, they proceed to diffuse poison through the whole tree. […] What efforts do they not make to win new recruits! They seize upon professorships in the seminaries and universities, and gradually make of them thrones of pestilence72. “

50 years will go by; in spite of Pascendi of Saint Pius X in 1907 and Humani generis of Pius XII in 1950, the modernist sect will conquer influential positions in the Church and, on the occasion of Vatican II, will impose on the Church and present to the world the new type of church which we have described by its form and end. This sect will, by the magisterium and the reforms of the Popes who follow the Council, implement this new system of the Church. The roles of Paul VI, the liberal and contradictory Pope, and that of John Paul II, the philosophical and ecumenical Pope, are undeniable in the establishment of what is the conciliar church, with its hierarchy which, with rare exceptions, is exactly that of the Catholic Church.

The conciliar church: the work of a Masonic plan

Let’s take a backward step to look at 130 years before the council; such retrospection will help us understand that the establishment of the conciliar church is the fruit of a plan plotted by free-masonry, which did not even dare to believe in the accomplishment of its designs. Let’s cite extracts from the internal correspondence of the Carbonari, Italian freemasons of the 19th century, published by the Popes Gregory XVI and Pie IX:

“What we ask, what we must look for and wait for as the Jews wait for the Messiah, is a Pope according to our needs […] you want to establish that the clergy walk under your banners while believing to walk under apostolic banners. […] You will have preached a revolution in Tiara and Cope, walking with cross and banner, a revolution which will only need to be spurred on a little bit to put fire to the four corners of the world.”

Here is another extract from a letter of Nubius to Volpe (code names to keep the secret which is a rule in Freemasonry) of the 3rd of April 1824;

“We have put a heavy burden on your shoulders dear Volpe. We must work for the immoral education of the Church and come to it, by little means in a gradual manner, to the triumph of the revolutionary idea by a Pope. In this project which has always seemed a superhuman calculation, we walk still groping.”

The triumph of the revolutionary idea by a Pope, this is truly the supreme criminal attack, as Archbishop Lefebvre says citing these documents in his book They Have Uncrowned Him 73 and commenting on them as follows:

“A superhuman calculation, says Nubius; he means to say a diabolical calculation! For it is to calculate the subversion of the Church by her very head, what Mgr Delassus calls the supreme criminal attack, because one cannot imagine anything more subversive for the Church , than a Pope won over to liberal ideas, than a Pope using the power of the keys of St. Peter to serve the counter Church! Now, is that not what we are living through at the moment, since Vatican II, since the new code of Canon law? With this false ecumenism and this false religious liberty promulgated at Vatican II, and applied by the Popes with a cold perseverance despite the ruins it has caused.“

The occupied Church, incontestable status of the Church of the last fifty years

Archbishop Lefebvre said:

“Which Church are we talking about? Are we talking about the Catholic Church, or another church, a Counter church74, a counterfeit of the Church? Now, I think sincerely, that we are talking about a counterfeit version of the Church, and not the Catholic Church. It does not teach any longer the Catholic faith. It teaches something else, it leads the Church to something else other than the Catholic Church. It is not longer the Catholic Church. They are sitting in the chairs of their predecessors, […] but they are not continuing in the line of their predecessors. They no longer have the same faith, nor the same doctrine, nor the same morality as their predecessors. So it is no longer possible. And principally, their great error is ecumenism. They teach an ecumenism which is contrary to the Catholic faith. […] The Church is occupied by this counter- church which we know well and that the Popes 75 knew perfectly, and that the Popes have condemned throughout the centuries; for what will be soon four centuries, the Church did not stop condemning this counter-church which was born especially with protestantism, and which was developed with protestantism, and which is at the origin of all modern errors, which has destroyed all philosophy, and which has led us to all the errors we have known, that the Popes have condemned; liberalism, socialism, communism, modernism, sillonism 76. We are dying from them. The Popes did everything to condemn that, and now behold those who are in the chairs of those who condemned these errors are in agreement with this liberalism and ecumenism. Now we cannot accept that. And the more things become clear, the more we perceive that this program […] all these errors, were elaborated in the masonic lodges77. “

In what we call the conciliar church, It is not necessary that the Pope (the Pope of the Catholic Church) be the head; he may only be the executor of directives coming from, if not a hidden power, at least a controlling core or pressure groups of collaborators or theologians under masonic influence. Let’s remember Annibal Bugnini and his mysterious influence over Pope Paul VI in the liturgical reform. This Annibal seems to have been a freemason. It is notorious that the masonic lodges worked among the members of the Curia of the Holy-See during the pontificates of Paul VI and John-Paul II.

The conciliar Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI participated actively in the Council, the first as a conciliar father and the second as a council expert, and pushed it in the direction of the new theology, that of a universal redemption and of a evolving faith. And they have as Popes applied these errors. But if they applied this conciliar program, there is nothing to prove that it was them who conceived it, and that consequently they have only applied, consciously or not, an agenda which comes from elsewhere. The directors of the Alta Vendita, who were preparing for the advent of a Pope according to their designs, had made very clear that they did not wish that this Pope be a member of their sect 78. Whatever may be the way the masonic sect influences the conciliar Church, its influence is undeniable.

Formal membership and material membership

The influence of the masonic spirit, or at least the penetration of the liberal spirit, being naturalist, ecumenical and globalist spirit among the members of the conciliar church is not obviously the same in all of them. Among the clergy and the religious, most of the bishops, the religious superiors, and the professors of the seminaries and universities, and the aged priests, most adhere formally, that is to say consciously and willingly, to the ends outlined, whilst a minority of young priests or religious and seminarians do not want to hear of the Council or at least don’t pay any attention to it, and desire a return to the theology of St. Thomas, the traditional Mass, classical discipline and Christian virtues. These latter, at heart, do not belong to the conciliar church. Between these two extremes, are the majority of Catholics, conciliar by habit, a spirit of conformism or ease who, as said above, belong only “materially†to the conciliar church. The haziness of the lines between these categories does not help the clear demarcation between the two churches.

Should we deduce two materially distinct churches: one Catholic and one conciliar?

From what has been said, it is good to draw two conclusions concerning the relationship between the two churches.

Firstly, the conciliar church is not materially separate from the Catholic Church. It does not exist independently from the Catholic Church. There is a distinction certainly between them, a formal one, without an absolute material distinction. The hierarchy of the conciliar church coincides almost exactly with the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, the members of the conciliar church are all members at least materially of the Catholic Church. Just as one can say (with a pinch of salt) that liberalism is a catholic heresy, in the sense that it was born in the bosom of the Catholic Church and only exists and develops by “feeding off†the Catholic Church, so one can say that the conciliar church is born of the corruption of the Catholic Church and it cannot exist but by living of this corruption, as a parasite lives depending on an organism, sucking of the substance of its host to construct its own substance. There is a sort of transfer of substance, I would dare to say, from one to the other, in a metaphoric sense obviously and not in a philosophical sense. To become conciliar, there is no need to separate oneself from the Catholic Church, it is sufficient to allow oneself to become corrupted by the conciliar poison and to let one’s substance become absorbed by the conciliar parasite. It is sufficient to practice the Mass of the new religion and to adhere, formally or materially to the liberal ecumenism which gives it its form.

On the other hand, the conciliar church does not necessarily coincide with the Catholic Church, neither in its leaders nor its members. The leaders of one are not always leaders of the other. The members of the first can, by heresy, cease to be members of the second, but not necessarily. The Catholic Church is the only true Church, the only Church founded by our Lord Jesus Christ. But this does not hinder the conciliar church from being a social reality; not only a section, but a counterfeit church, led by a sect of directors, a sect whose ideology or system is the form of this conciliar church, and which manoeuvres it towards its ends, with its relays and its executors, formed of a large part of the hierarchy and faithful Catholics more or less conscious and consenting, to a diametrical overturning which it is trying to bring about. In this sense, Fr. Calmel O.P. was able to speak of the “church of Pirates”; this metaphor says it all.

“The conciliar church is a schismatic church!”

In 1971, 5 years before the “conciliar church” of Bishop Benelli, the same Fr. Calmel O.P.denounced in the French review Itineraires, the “new church that Vatican II has tried to show,the new post-vaticanesque church” and explained:

“The false church which is showing itself amongst us since the curious Vatican II is diverging tangibly year after year, from the Church founded by Jesus Christ. The false post-conciliar church is splitting away more and more from the holy Church which has saved souls for twenty centuries (not to mention the support and enlightenment lent to civil society). The pseudo-church in construction splits away more and more from the true Church, the only Church of Jesus Christ, by the most strange innovations in the hierarchical constitution as well as in its teachings and morals 79.”

The expressions “false church”, “pseudo church” are very strong. And the verb “split away” indicates a formal mutation of a part of the Church, which detaches itself from the Catholic sphere to stray formally outside it. Father Calmel was truly a prophet. It was only five years later, after having received the famous letter of Bishop Benelli and having been struck by Paul VI with a a divinis suspension, that Archbishop Lefebvre affirmed even more forcefully the existence of this “counter church”, qualifying it as “schismatic”:

“How could it be more clear?! From now on it is the conciliar church one must obey and be faithful to , and not to the Catholic Church. This is precisely our problem. We are suspended a divinis by the conciliar church, of which we do not want to be a part. This conciliar church is a schismatic church, because it breaks with the Catholic Church of all time. It has it’s new dogmas 80, it’s new priesthood 81, it’s new institutions82, it’s new liturgy83, already condemned by the Church in many official and definitive documents. This is why the founders of the conciliar church insist on obedience to the church of today, making abstraction of the Church of yesterday, as if it didn’t exist anymore. […] The church which affirms such errors is at one and the same time heretical and schismatic. This conciliar church is therefore not Catholic. In the measure in which the Pope, the bishops, priests or faithful adhere to this new church, they separate themselves from the Catholic Church. The church of today is the true Church only in the measure in which it continues and is one with the Church of yesterday and of always. The norm for the Catholic faith is Tradition84. “

Faced with the conciliar church, what becomes of the Catholic Church?

Archbishop Lefebvre seemed to admit the mutation of the Catholic Church into the conciliar church. What becomes of the Catholic Church? Archbishop Lefebvre responds that it is in the measure that, according to the degree which the authorities and the baptised adhere to this new kind of church, that constitutes a new church, characterised by its worldly, humanist, naturalist, socialist ecumenical and one-world goals, in such a way that this new church conceives itself as being more vast and universal than the Catholic Church. We must add the distinction between an exclusive adhesion of these sectarian leaders with these profaning goals, and the seeking of a compromise between these goals and the Catholic goals on the other hand, a compromise which was well expressed by the conciliar text Lumen Gentium (section 1); “The Church is, in Christ, a sort of sacrament, that is to say at one and the same time the sign and the means of an intimate union with God and the unity of the human race.” This ambivalence complicates in a singular manner the problem of the distinction between these two churches. The text of Archbishop Lefebvre has to be understood with precision; it is in the measure which the conciliars adhere exclusively to these profaning goals outlined, that they leave the Catholic Church. And of this measure we are not the judges. Despite its polemical style, with precisions, the text of Archbishop Lefebvre is irreproachable. It is with this very precision that the last sentence has to be understood: “The Church of today is only the true Church in the measure that it continues exclusively, and makes itself one exclusively with the Church of yesterday and of all time.” A church which covets at one and the same time a humanist and one-world goal along with a goal of supernatural eternal salvation of souls, is no longer catholic, it is the concrete everyday expression of the conciliar church in its attenuated viral state.

And beside this vulgar conciliar church, what remains of the Catholic Church? We respond that, even reduced to the modest number the sane faithful comprising its “healthy partâ€, and perhaps one only faithful bishop, as may be the case according to Father Emmanuel, of the Church at the end of time, the Catholic Church remains the catholic Church.

How the conciliar church was canonised

Six years will pass by and the promulgation by John Paul II of a new code of canon law will justify the view of the Archbishop on the conciliar Church. In his apostolic constitution, the Pope declares clearly to be imposing on the Church a “new ecclesiology”:

“[This] code […] put into act the spirit of the Council whose documents present the Church as “a universal sacrament of salvation”, as the people of God, and where its hierarchical constitution appears founded on the college of bishops united to their head. […] In a certain sense one can even see in this code a great effort to translate into canonical language the very doctrine of conciliar ecclesiology. […] The result will be that what constitutes the essential newness of Vatican II, in continuity with the legislative tradition of the Church especially in what concerns ecclesiology, and equally constitutes the newness of the new code. Among the elements which characterize the real and authentic 85 image of the Church, we must mention above all the following: The doctrine according to which the Church presents itself as the people of God. (Lumen Gentium 2) and the hierarchical authority as a service (Lumen Gentium 3); the doctrine which shows the Church to be a communion and which as a consequence show which sort of relations must exist between the particular Churches and the universal Church and between collegiality and primacy; the doctrine according to which all members of the people of God, each one according to his manner, participates in the triple function of Christ: the priestly, prophetic and royal functions. Alongside this doctrine goes that concerning the duties and rights of the faithful and in particular of lay people; and finally the engagement of the Church in ecumenism86. “

This outline of the conciliar church shows the ruin which it operates in the personal exercise of authority received from God, the lowering of the hierarchy to the profit of the lower ranks; the willful omission of the necessity to belong to the Catholic Church to be saved; the reduction of the priesthood and the priestly identity mixed in with the common priesthood of all baptised; the aspiration to a universal society more vast than that of the Catholic Church. All this is what we have indicated to be the form of the conciliar church. Rather than a society we should call it a dissociety, that is to say the ruin resulting from the dissolution of this divine and human society which is the Catholic Church, or better; if we can say, the new congregation whose governing principle is the disintegration of the Catholic Church. Does this not evoke the words of the revolution; “Solve, coagula” 87 according to a new principle? And this dissociety which is the conciliar church exists; the Pope, the quasi-totality of the Catholic hierarchy, the conscious or unconscious mass of baptised Catholics who are its members, either formally or materially.

However this dissociety headed for auto-destruction holds together by the strength of it’s agents. In the coagula, the promoters of this society uphold a pact: all must adhere to the Council and its conciliar reforms, in such a manner as those who do not accept it are “outside of communion” or “outside of full communion” with the conciliar church. This conciliar Church holds together by fear and violence; the Catholic Church holds together by faith and charity.

The methods by which the conciliar church continues to live

Destined for auto-destruction, the conciliar church does nonetheless continue to live on vigorously. What is the cause of this tenacity? It is that their hierarchy uses all the powers of the Catholic hierarchy which it occupies, detains and deviates.

Since the installation of the Mass of Paul VI, she continues to persecute the priests faithful to the true Mass, the true catechism, the true sacramental discipline, and the religious faithful to their rule and their vows. Numerous are the priests who died of sorrow for having been obliged by obedience – or so they thought – to take on the new rites and usages. Numerous also are those who died ostracised, canonically and psychologically relegated, but happy to give inflexible witness to the catholic rite, the entire faith, and to Christ the King. The threats, the fear, the censures and other punishments did not shake them. But alas, how many are those who ceded to these methods of violence: the threat of being labeled “disobedient”, the possibility of being destitute, all put on them by their superiors. It is here that we see first-hand the malice of liberalism and of its heads: Is it not right to say that there is no one more sectarian than a liberal? Not having principles to establish order, they rule with a regime of submission by terror.

The malice of the conciliar hierarchy is taken to its highest degree by the usage they make of lies and equivocation. Thus the Motu Propio of Pope Benedict’s XVI declaring the traditional Mass to have never been suppressed and that one is free to celebrate it, requires conditions contrary to this freedom, and goes so far as to qualify the authentic Mass and its modernist counterfeit opponent as “the extraordinary and ordinary form of the same Roman rite.”

The lies continue with the so-called “lifting” of the excommunications, supposedly incurred by the four bishops consecrated by Archbishop Lefebvre in 1988, as if they had been really incurred.

But by a surprising contrast the conciliar hierarchy has never been able to make the fifth commandment of God “Thou shalt not kill” be respected, which is hardly ever preached by the bishops: the countries recently Catholic are the countries where abortion is most in use; and the encyclical Humanae Vitae of Pope Paul VI was hardly relayed by the bishops, so much so that the contraceptive pill is in widespread use among most girls and women in the Catholic Church. The filthy morals of the modern world are simply the overflow of the vices which the conciliar hierarchy has been powerless to eradicate. This conciliar church draws into its pseudo-communion a mass of Christians living in reality in sin and practical paganism.

To not belong to the conciliar church is a grace and a providential witness

Blessed are those who are not in this “communion of the profanes”, who are providentially excluded from it or threatened to be excluded from it! O happy relegation and dereliction! The vocation of the priestly Society of St. Pius X, since it’s erection by the Catholic Church in 1970 and the decree of praise with which it was honoured in 1971, has never been to receive the benedictions and recognitions of this conciliar church! It was without a doubt necessary that this priestly society, along with all the families of Tradition, be like the lighted torch not to be put under the conciliar bushel, but on the candlestick of the pillory, in order to enlighten all those who are in the house of God. It was certainly providential that according to the ways of providence, this healthy part of the Church having become like the divine Master, a stumbling block and a stone rejected by the builders of the conciliar ecclesiastical dissociety, be transformed into cornerstone and keystone88 of the indestructible Catholic cathedral. Our inflexible witness to the true Church of Jesus Christ, to the priesthood and the royalty of Christ, Priest and King, requires on the part of the conciliar church the exclusion and the ostracism pronounced against us and what we represent. But in the same way that Saint Joseph in his exile in Egypt carried the Infant Jesus and His divine Mother, so too does the traditional family in her exile carry the Church in her, without being exclusive in the glorious role, but having the marrow and heart of it, in integrity and incorruption. It carries in her by consequence the roman pontiff, who being the successor of Peter will liberate her someday from a long captivity89 and will come out of her great illusions, to proclaim as once the first Pope did at Caesar Philippi to his Divine Master; ” You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God!”

Thenceforth, if we are complicated we will regret being deprived of the conciliar communion and its apparent ecclesiastical communion and will be unhappy and worried, always on the quest for a solution. If on the other hand we have the faith and simplicity of a child we will look simply for what witness we can give to the Catholic faith. And we will find that it is first the witness of our existence, of our permanence, of our stability, as well as the profession of our Catholic faith whole and entire and our refusal of the conciliar errors and reforms. A witness is absolute. If I give witness to the Catholic Mass, to Christ the King, I must abstain from conciliar Masses and doctrines. It is like the grain of incense to the Idols; it is one grain or no grains at all. Therefore it is “not at all” 90. And after this witness there is also persecution, which is normal on the part of the enemies of this faith, who want to reduce to nothing our diametrical opposition to the new religion, and this will go on for as long as it pleases God that they persevere in their perverse plans. Is it not God himself who put this enmity between the race of the devil and the children of Mary? Inimicitias ponam 91!

And so, as soon as we perceive in the collectedness of our contemplation this particular vocation which is ours, adapted by God to the current crisis, we acquire a perfect uprightness and great peace; uprightness incapable of cooperating with the enemy, and peace without bitterness. We run to it, we bond to it and we cry as with Saint Therese of the Child Jesus, “In the Church my Mother I find my vocation!” And we ask this great saint: “ Obtain for me the grace of having in the Church and for the Church the soul of a martyr or at least that of a confessor of the faith!”

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DOCUMENT : The forbidden letter

Read this letter, not forgetting that this kind of discourse is now forbidden by Bishop Fellay. The conclusion is obvious: something changed in the Society.

One cannot deny it !

Letter from the Dominicans of Avrillé

No. 14, September 2013

The Conciliar Church

Dear Family, Friends, and Benefactors,

This summer we had the grace of three priestly ordinations. Deo Gratias! Three more priests for the Church. Yes, but for a Church that is in such a state that they must truly be “fighters for the faith†as Pope Honorius III called the first friars of the Order. Here are some reflections on the subject. Please pray that our new priests be faithful to their calling.

In a letter dated June 25, 1976, addressed to Archbishop Lefebvre on behalf of Pope Paul VI, Mgr. Giovanni Benelli (substitute for the secretary of State) was the first to use the expression: “The Conciliar Churchâ€:

“[If the seminarians of Ecône] are of good will and seriously prepared for a priestly ministry in true fidelity to the conciliar Church, we will then take care of finding the best solution for them.â€

Archbishop Lefebvre had noted this expression. Sanctioned by a suspens a divinis for having ordained candidates on June 29 of the same year 1976, he wrote on July 29:

“What can be more clear! In the future, one must obey and be faithful to the conciliar Church and no longer to the Catholic Church. This is precisely our problem; we are suspens a divinis by the conciliar Church and for the conciliar Church, of which we do not want to be a part

This conciliar Church is schismatic because she breaks away from the Catholic Church of all time with new dogmas, a new priesthood, new institutions, and a new form of worship already condemned by the Church in many official and definitive documents.â€

Several defenders of Catholic Tradition commented on this expression. Among others let us quote Jean Madiran (from the special issue of Itinéraires April 1977: La condamnation sauvage de Mgr Lefebvre, p. 113-115):

“That there be at the present time two Churches with the one and the same Paul VI at the head of both, we can do nothing about it, we are not inventing anything, we remark that such is the case.â€

Gustavo Corçao in the periodical Itinéraires November 1974 and then Father Bruckberger in L’Aurore March 18, 1976 publicly pointed out:

“The religious crisis no longer consists, as in the 16th century, in having simultaneously two or three Popes for one Church. The crisis today is to have one Pope for two Churches, the Catholic Church and the post-conciliar Church.â€

Among the different studies that have come out on this topic let us note:

* An article on “Compared Ecclesiology†published in Le Sel de la Terre 1, summer 1992. The author follows up on some of Archbishop Lefebvre’s reflections concerning the four marks of the Church and the new ecclesiology (the new doctrine on the Church) which was exposed by Pope John Paul II at the time of the promulgation of the new Code of Canon Law. The author shows that the Conciliar Church is a reality distinct from the Catholic Church, having four characteristic marks: she is ecumenical, humanist, believing, and conciliar (instead of being One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic).

* The editorial of Le Sel de la Terre 59 (winter 2006-2007), “One hierarchy for two Churchesâ€, in explaining the four causes of a society, defined the new conciliar Church in this way:

“It is the society of those who are baptized and who submit themselves to the directives of the present Pope and Bishops in their desire to promote conciliar ecumenism, and who thus admit the teachings of Vatican II, the new liturgy, and the new Canon Law.â€

Afterwards, the editorial answered the objection: “It is not possible that the same hierarchy direct two Churchesâ€, because if one is in charge of a Church other than the Catholic Church, one apostatizes. If the Pope is in charge of another Church, he is no longer Pope; one falls into sedevacantism.

“The objection’s error is to imagine the conciliar Church as a society that formally imposes schism or heresy as the Orthodox or Protestants do. For example, if I adhere to the Anglican Church, I am formally a schismatic, and even a heretic, and therefore I am no longer a member of the Catholic Church.

Yet I can be conciliar – that is to say ecumenical – and still keep the Catholic Faith. Without a doubt I put my faith, and that of others, in danger, but I do not immediately abjure it.

Hence the members of the hierarchy, provided that they do not push their errors to the point of denying the Catholic Faith, remain members of the Catholic hierarchy even though they are conciliar.â€

* Father Alain Lorans SSPX also makes some reflections on this topic in a conference given at the 8th Si Si No No theological congress and entitled “One Pope for Two Churches†(see Nouvelles de Chrétienté n° 115, January-February 2009). The author insists on the discontinuity between the two Churches, and shows that Pope Benedict XVI tries in vain to solve the dichotomy by his hermeneutic of continuity.

* The most recent and thorough study on this matter is that of His Excellency Bishop Tissier de Mallerais. It was published in Le Sel de la Terre 85 (summer 2013) and is entitled “Is there a Conciliar Church?â€

It is certain that the Conciliar Church is not to be put on the same level as the Catholic Church. The latter is the one true Church, the only Church founded by Our Lord Jesus Christ. This truth, however, does not stop the Conciliar Church from being a reality: a party, a system, a society that analogically resembles the Church, temporarily occupying it, and turning it away from its end. The dream that the Haute Vente (black lodge of Italian Freemasonry) puts forth has become a reality. Popes Gregory XVI and Pius IX published the Masonic documents on this subject. Here is an excerpt of these documents dating back to 1820:

“That for which we must ask, seek, and await as the Jews wait for the Messiah, is a Pope according to our needs. You want to establish (…) that the clergy marches under your banner while thinking that he marches under that of the Apostles. (…) You will have preached a revolution in tiara and in cope, walking with the cross and the banner, an almost effortless revolution setting the four ends of the world on fire.â€

Here is another excerpt of a letter from “Nubius†to “Volpe†(coded names in order to keep the secret which is the rule in Freemasonry), dated April 3, 1824:

“Our shoulders have been loaded with a heavy burden, dear Volpe. We must accomplish the education of immorality in the Church, and attain, by little means, well-dosed, although somewhat poorly defined, the triumph of the Revolution by the way of the Pope. We are still walking hesitatingly in this plan, which always seemed to me to be one of a superhuman calculation.â€

The triumph of the Revolution by the Pope is truly the supreme attack, as Archbishop Lefebvre says quoting the above passages in his book They Have Uncrowned Him. Here is the commentary that he gives:

““Superhuman calculation” says Nubius, which means diabolical calculation! To calculate the subversion of the Church by the Pope himself is what Mgr. Delassus calls the supreme attack because one cannot imagine anything more subversive for the Church than a Pope won over by liberal ideas, a Pope using the power of the keys of St. Peter at the service of the Counter-Church! Are we not living this now since Vatican II, since the new Code of Canon Law? With false ecumenism and false religious liberty promulgated at Vatican II and taught by the Popes with frigid perseverance despite all the ruins provoked for more than twenty years!â€

The Archbishop said also:

“The Church is occupied by this Counter-Church that we well know and that the Popes know perfectly, and that the Popes have condemned for centuries. It will soon be four centuries that the Church has not ceased to condemn this Counter-Church which began by, and developed along with Protestantism, and which is at the origin of all the modern errors, destroying every philosophy, and inducing us into all the errors that we know and which the Popes have condemned: liberalism, socialism, communism, modernism, sillonism. We are dying from all this. The Popes did everything in order to condemn these errors, and behold the men who are now on the seats of those who condemned these errors and who are now in agreement with liberalism and ecumenism. We cannot accept this program. And the more things clear up, the more we see that this program, (…) that all these errors have been elaborated in Masonic lodges (June 21, 1978, see Le Sel de la Terre 50, p. 244).â€

Alas, nothing has changed since these reflections of Archbishop Lefebvre. The ruins have accumulated for almost fifty years now. We have only to pray that Our Lord destroy the edifice of the Conciliar Church with the breath of His mouth and that, in the meantime, He keep us strong and generous in the fight for the Faith, and assiduous in the study of this mystery of iniquity.