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PENTECOST

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PENTECOST

A meditation of Fr Mortier O.P.

There is an admirable harmony in the work of the salvation of the world.

The Hebrew people had their Pascal time, in remembrance of their deliverance from the Egyptian oppression, by the blood of the lamb, prophetic figure of the Christian Easter which is the deliverance from the oppression of the world under the yoke of Satan, by the blood of the true Lamb, Our Lord Jesus Christ. Fifty days after the Hebrews left Egypt, they received on Mount Sinai the Law which would govern them, and make of them, in the midst of the Gentiles, the People of God. It was also the first Pentecost, prophetic figure of the second, the Christian Pentecost. But the Christian Pentecost doesn’t call to mind the thunder and lightning of Sinai. She only brings to mind that 50 days after the Resurrection of Our Savior, the Holy Ghost descended, under the form of tongues of fire, upon the Apostles united in the Cenacle. This is no longer the terrifying promulgation of the Law which enchained the Hebrew people in its observance by the fear of chastisements; rather, it is the gift of light and of force which must spread the Charity of God throughout the entire world, and by this Charity, the practice of the Evangelical Law.

With the Holy Ghost, it is substantial Charity which takes possession of the world to bring it back to God. And once descended upon the earth, this Charity will not leave it again. It will permeate all peoples, it will insinuate itself in all souls, Divine conqueror, and little by little, under His gentle and strong impulsion, it was found that the world was Catholic. Work of Charity, this wonderful transformation which cast at the feet of Jesus so many Peoples and taught them to say to God: Our Father! Cry of filial love, cry of the Holy Ghost in souls.

It is this taking possession of the world by Charity that we celebrate on this day of Pentecost. And so our hearts rejoice: Profusis gaudiis totus in orbe terrarum mundus exultat, as sings the Preface. (Wherefore does the whole world rejoice with exceeding great joy.)

Let us elevate our souls to these heights to celebrate with devotion, with gratitude the descent of Charity upon the earth.

It took place at Jerusalem, in the Cenacle, where the Disciples of Jesus were reunited around His Holy Mother. Even the hour is mentioned, because it was a solemn moment, decisive for the salvation of souls: the hour of Terce according to the ancient manner of dividing the day, which corresponds to around 9:00 in the morning.

In Her Liturgy, the Church, who lives by the Holy Ghost, daily commemorates this hour of eternal Charity which has become her treasure, by the hymn that the priests recite at Terce. It is the perpetual invocation to the perpetual descent of Divine Charity.

There came up a violent wind around the Cenacle and in the entire City, and at the same time tongues of fire appeared above the Apostles.

It is the impetuosity of Charity, which manifests itself by this gust of wind. It signifies that those who receive the Holy Ghost, who live in His presence, who allow themselves to be conducted by Him, must give themselves without reserve. Charity is without measure. If it calculates, it is no longer Charity. It goes its way and none can stop it, just like no one can stop a storm. Divine Charity would throw the Apostles into an irresistible whirlwind throughout the world, as it ought always throw into a whirlwind all those who love God, either by the apostolate of preaching, or by that of penance and of prayer.

It was tongues of fire which descended upon the Apostles. “I am come to cast fire on the earth,” said Our Lord, “and what will I, but that it be kindled?” (Luke 12, v. 49).

It is done. The fire is descended, it has been cast, the gust will flame the fire throughout the entire world. Who can escape from its Divine sparks? Today as well we burn with this fire when we love God; when, to prove it to Him we resist evil; when we feel within us the immense and insatiable desire to love Him more; when we would make Him known, make Him loved by those around us, by those far from us and everywhere. Then, it is the fire of Divine Charity which embraces us. To keep it for oneself is not possible. Whosoever would keep it to himself has but a little bit. This fire wishes to be communicated, to be spread. Whoever possesses it in himself feels the imperious need of giving it to others.

(Fr Mortier O.P., La Liturgie dominicaine [ The Dominican Liturgy], Paris, DDB, 1922, t. 5, p. 240-241.)

Upcoming Dominican retreats in the United States

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Dominican retreats in the United States

on the 15 Mysteries of the Rosary

Preached by two Dominican fathers of Avrille, in the Northeast U.S.

(Exact location will be posted soon)

 

* Men and young men :

Sunday October 25 (evening) to Saturday October 31 (morning)

* Ladies and young ladies :

Sunday 1st November (evening) to Saturday 7th November (morning)

MORE INFORMATION WILL BE AVAILABLE LATER

The Ascension

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The Ascension

A meditation with Saint Thomas Aquinas O.P.

Christ’s Ascension is the cause of our salvation

“It is expedient to you that I go; for if I do not go, the Paraclete will not come unto you.

But if I go, I will send Him unto you” (John 16, 7).

Christ’s Ascension is the cause of our salvation in two ways. First of all, on our part ; secondly, on His.

1. On our part, in so far as by the Ascension our souls are uplifted to Him ;

for His Ascension fosters, first, faith ; secondly, hope ; thirdly, charity.  Fourthly, our reverence for Him is thereby increased, since we no longer consider Him an earthly man, but the God of Heaven.

Thus the Apostle says : «  If we have known the Christ according to the flesh », that is a mortal, whereby we reputed Him as a mere man, « but now we know Him so no longer » (2 Co 5, 16).

2. On His part, in regard to those things which, in ascending He did for our salvation:

– First, He prepared the way for our ascent into Heaven, according to His own words : « I go to prepare a place for you » (John 14, 2), and the words of Micheas the prophet (2, 13) : « He shall go up that shall open the way before them ».

For since He is our Head, the members must follow whithersoever the Head has gone. Hence, He said : « That where I am, you also may be » (Jn 14, 13). In sign thereof, He took to Heaven the souls of the saints delivered from limbo, according to Psalm 67, 19 and Eph 4, 8 : « Ascending on high, He led captivity, captive », because He took with Him to Heaven, those who had been held captive by the devil, to Heaven, a place foreign to human nature ; captives indeed of a happy taking, since they were won by His victory.

– Secondly, because as the high-priest under the Old Testament entered the holy place to stand before God for the people, so also Christ entered Heaven « to make intercession for us », as is said in Hebr 7, 25. Because the very appearance of Himself in the human nature which He took with Him to Heaven is a pleading for us ; so that for the very reason that God so exalted human nature in Christ, He may take pity on them for whom the Son of God took human nature.

– Thirdly, that being established in His heavenly throne as God and Lord, He might send down gifts upon men, according to Eph 4, 10 : « He ascended above all the heavens, that he might fill all things », that is, fill all things with His gifts.

* Christ’s Passion is the cause of our ascending to Heaven, properly speaking, by removing the hindrance which is sin, and also by way of merit ;

* whereas Christ’s Ascension is the direct cause of our ascension, as by beginning it in Him Who is our Head, with Whom the members must be united.

Christ by once ascending into Heaven acquired for Himself and for us in perpetuity the right and worthiness of a heavenly home ; which worthiness suffers in no wise, if, from special dispensation, He sometimes come down in body to earth ; either in order to show Himself to the whole world, as at the judgment ; or else, to show Himself particularly to some individual ; for example in saint Paul’s case, as we read in the Acts, chapter 9.

And lest any man may think that Christ was not bodily present when this occurred, the contrary is proven from what the Apostle says in 1 Cor 15, 8 to confirm faith in the Resurrection : « Last of all He was seen by me, as by one born out of due time », which vision would not confirm the truth of the Resurrection except he had beheld Christ’s very body.

[From the book of Fr E. C. McENIRY O.P., Saint Thomas Aquinas Meditations for every day,  Columbus (Ohio), Long’s College Book Company, 1951, p. 255-256.]

Is there a conciliar church?

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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 church”, which has its dogmas, its liturgy, its new institutions, etc. The conciliar church is not the Catholic Church, but a counterfeit “church”. 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 1 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 2 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 Church”, 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 3.”

– 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 4). As for the magisterium it is only assisted if it has the intention to transmit the deposit of the faith and not profane novelties 5. 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 6 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”7 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 8 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 9?”

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 10.” 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.”11 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 12.

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 13. “

Until now, this pusillus grex has been missing its”Pope faithful to Jesus-Christ”! 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 pestilence14. “

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 15 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 church16, 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 17 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 18. 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 lodges19. “

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 20. 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 21.”

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 22, it’s new priesthood 23, it’s new institutions24, it’s new liturgy25, 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 Tradition26. “

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 part”, 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 27 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 ecumenism28. “

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” 29 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 keystone30 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 captivity31 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” 32. 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 33!

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 Church”:

“[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.”

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.”

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.”

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.”

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 Churches”, 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.”

Afterwards, the editorial answered the objection: “It is not possible that the same hierarchy direct two Churches”, 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.”

* 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?”

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.“

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.”

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!“

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).“

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.

Statement of position issued by Father Brendan King

admin The Fight for the Faith


Statement of position issued by Father Brendan King

Taken from:   http://www.therecusant.com/fr-king-may2015

This Statement was read out by Fr. King in the Mass Centres at Manchester, Liverpool and Tunstall on Sunday 26 April 2015. Printed copies of this Statement were released by Father King for distribution on Sunday, 03 May 2015.

INTRODUCTION AND STATUS QUESTIONIS

I would like to speak to you today about a very important matter which concerns us all. This matter is the question of what direction the Society is to take in the future. Do we have to follow the same path that we have followed since the Society was founded by the Archbishop in 1970, or is Providence guiding us now in a different direction? Should the Society and Catholic Tradition maintain the same course given by its founder, or must we now change our position to make us more acceptable to the modern world and to the post-conciliar and liberalized church? May I remind you of the stance and position of the Society since its inception which always was to take the middle course between sedevacantism on the right and liberalism and modernism on the left. This was always the prudent and wise choice of our holy founder, to avoid these two erroneous extremes. I believe and so do many others, clergy and laity, that for several years the Society leadership has been moving away from this prudent and safe middle course, to take a new direction towards some kind of rapprochement or reconciliation with modernist Rome. When did this new direction begin and what were the circumstances that favoured it? I would say its origin and cause was the very successful pilgrimage to Rome in the Holy Year of 2000.

BRIEF CHRONOLOGY OF EVENTS

Let us now go back in time to the year of the consecrations, 1988. On June 30th of that year, Archbishop Lefebvre consecrated four Bishops for tradition and was punished for this heroic act by a most unjust excommunication. This act the Society has always considered to be invalid. The Archbishop replied in his defence, “excommunicated by whom and from what?”. The following twelve years were like a cold war between the Society and the modernist Roman authorities. The Archbishop was called to his eternal reward in 1991 and Rome was hoping and expecting the Society to fall apart in the years that followed. In fact, the opposite happened as the Society by the grace of God developed and expanded throughout the world and the fruits of Tradition were rich and abundant. The Roman authorities recognized this and the remarkable progress and expansion of tradition was in sharp contrast to the parlous state of the post-conciliar church, victim of the poisoned fruits of Vatican II. The observation of Paul VI that the smoke of Satan had entered the church and that the church was destroying itself, was becoming more and more of a reality as the years progressed. The church was experiencing the greatest crisis in its history and the blind apostles of liberalism and modernism occupying Rome were calling it progress and renewal. This is surely what Sister Lucy described as the diabolical disorientation in the church and the most profound crisis of faith that was leading the church into apostasy. Against this background of disintegration, the Society and Tradition was flourishing simply because it was being faithful to tradition and THAT MIDDLE COURSE which was safe and secure.

This was more or less the state of affairs when in the year 2000 the Society organized a very successful pilgrimage to Rome in the August of that year. It was so successful that the Roman authorities began to take a deeper interest in the work of Tradition and new contacts were established. The Romans could clearly see that the Society was a serious and flourishing organization and they appeared to be well disposed towards us.

It is important to remember at this juncture that the Archbishop always looked to Rome as the centre of unity and took great pains to avoid the accusation of schism by maintaining contact with the Roman authorities. He was also very much aware that he was dealing with liberals and modernists who would use catholic terminology in a different sense. For this reason he would maintain a healthy detachment, keeping a safe distance from the modernist contagion, but always with respect for the office.

Following the success of this pilgrimage, friendly contacts continued through the final years of Pope John Paul’s pontificate who was succeeded by Joseph Ratzinger in 2005 as Pope Benedict XVI. This Pope began to take a great personal interest in the ‘problem’ of Tradition and the Society and began to work energetically towards granting the Society a proper canonical status in the church. Modernist Rome was becoming even more friendly and sympathetic towards the Society. Bishop Fellay petitioned Rome to grant full freedom for the Tridentine Rite of Mass and to lift or withdraw the excommunication of the four Bishops. For the Society this was necessary to establish genuine goodwill on the part of Rome towards Tradition and to foster an atmosphere of confidence and trust amongst the Priests and Laity. Rome acceded to this request as Pope Benedict published Summum Pontificorum and lifted the excommunications in January 2009. A major obstacle was now removed and the process of drawing closer to Rome was gaining momentum. Many in the Society remained unconvinced of Rome’s genuine goodwill given their obstinate attachment to the erroneous teachings and false principles of Vatican II. Still the momentum continued despite the high-level theological discussions which took place during this time between Society and Roman theologians. These talks, which Rome has never published, only served to further demonstrate how far from the Catholic Truth modernist Rome has fallen.

The situation was now developing rapidly to the point that Rome was now offering a concrete practical agreement in early June 2012 and it seems clear that Bishop Fellay was ready to sign it. It appears that the Society would have been granted a Personal Prelature rather like the status of Opus Dei, but the local Bishops would have to give their approval/permission for our apostolate in their dioceses. This was clearly going to be a major problem. At the last minute, inexplicably, Cardinal Muller insisted that the Society accept Vatican II and the New Mass. Bishop Fellay refused the agreement and the talks collapsed. Or so we thought!

You will remember that Bishop Fellay visited us in June 2013 and gave a conference in Liverpool explaining his actions and strategy in dealing with modernist Rome. He told all the Priests of the District in Preston that he engaged in this long and drawn-out process of negotiation with the Roman authorities because he wanted to find out what they really thought. He kept repeating that it was never a question of a purely practical agreement, but if that was the case, then what kind of agreement was it that he was on the point of signing? (We must bear in mind that the 2006 General Chapter had decided that there would be no practical agreement with Rome, without Rome’s clear and unequivocal return to Catholic Tradition). He told me privately that he felt it was his duty to engage the Society in these talks and negotiations. That is quite reasonable, of course, but didn’t we already have the overwhelming evidence of what the Roman authorities thought and believed, and this was emphatically demonstrated anew through these recent talks and their inevitable collapse. The Romans always want us to accept the New Mass and Vatican II–it always was like that in the time of Archbishop Lefebvre and it is even more so today under this revolutionary Pontificate of Francis! Why then we ask, are the negotiations ongoing, and they clearly are? The impression we had after the agreement collapsed was that we would withdraw now from these close contacts as the intention of the Romans had become crystal clear. However, contacts were maintained and this was confirmed recently by Archbishop Pozzo, Secretary of the Ecclesia Dei Commission.

Just to go back to June 2012. I was at Ecône for my Priestly Jubilee and the atmosphere was tense to say the least. I wanted to speak to Fr. Nély who as the Second Assistant is one of Bishop Fellay’s close advisors. He agreed to receive me and I expressed my concerns about a purely practical agreement with Rome without their genuine conversion to Tradition. I then put to him the question: Was it no longer possible for the Society to hold to the position laid out by the Archbishop, which is this MIDDLE COURSE? He did not answer the question directly but said that a whole generation of Catholics are growing up not knowing what it is to be in a normal relationship with Rome. That is not normal, he said, and if we don’t do something about our Canonical situation then we will become schismatic or sedevacantist. It was a very interesting revelation of what thinking lay behind this new strategy of negotiation with Rome on the part of Menzingen. It said it all, in fact. The problem was not with modernist Rome but with the Society which was in an abnormal situation. Who and what had caused the abnormal situation in the first place if not the Council and the modernist conciliar Popes? Did not the Archbishop often say (I heard it repeated with my own ears) “I have no personal views in matters of religion”. He used to say that, in the years following the Council, he found himself in an increasingly isolated position until he was finally alone. He hadn’t moved or changed at all but the church after the Council had abandoned him and rejected two thousand years of tradition to embrace modernist doctrines condemned by the Church. We all rallied to him because we all felt abandoned and betrayed, too, and we recognized in his voice and his actions the voice of Him Who is the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep.

Will there be a signed agreement? Many argue that nothing has been signed so there is nothing to worry about. This is to miss the whole point, as the facts all reveal that there is a tacit agreement already in place. If the marriage has not yet been consummated, the spouses are engaged and betrothed. Many have observed the lack of critical language coming from Menzingen with regard to the scandals and abuses in the Conciliar Church in the last few years and particularly during the present Pontificate. Silence for the most part and when there is a response, at best it is weak and half-hearted. Perhaps there will never be a signed agreement, deemed unnecessary because the Society is already well on the way to becoming another Society of St. Peter and is, to a certain extent, already under the control of the modernist authorities.

Let me give you a perfect example, which brings us up to the present day and clearly demonstrates to what extent the Society has changed and has come under the influence of modernist Rome. On the 19th March, the feast of St. Joseph, Bishop Williamson consecrated Michel Faure a Bishop in a Benedictine monastery in Brazil. Father Faure was ordained in 1977 at Ecône by Archbishop Lefebvre and was chosen by the Archbishop as his personal choice to be consecrated with the three other candidates at Ecône on 30th June 1988. Father Faure informed the Archbishop that Alphonso de Galaretta would be a more worthy choice and so it was the latter who was consecrated and not Father Faure. Had Father Faure remained silent, he would have been a Bishop of the Society for the past 27 years. It was therefore a wise choice and surely a necessary act in order to ensure the continuation of the Priesthood, the Sacraments, the Apostolic Succession and for the salvation of souls. Menzingen issued a statement the following day saying that the Society denounced the consecration: “The Society of St Pius X denounces this episcopal consecration of Father Faure, which despite the assertion of both clerics concerned, is not at all comparable to the consecrations of 1988”. The one thing that is necessary above all else for the life of the Church is the Priesthood and without Bishops there can be no Priests and the Faith will be destroyed. How can the Society denounce this action as the crisis in the Church is immeasurably worse than it was in 1988! I, as a Priest of the Society, do not denounce it but, on the contrary, I applaud it as a most necessary and heroic act. The only conclusion that can be drawn from this denunciation is that the authors no longer think that the crisis is very serious and that they have now a new-found confidence and trust in modernist Rome to provide Catholic Bishops for the future. Objectively considered, this consecration was a positive good for the church of the highest order and I personally cannot understand any reason for denouncing it. If one does, logically one denounces the consecrations of 1988 also. As long as the crisis of Faith continues, such consecrations must be necessary and performed to continue the life of the true Church of Christ. Bishop Fellay and Menzingen have denounced the very act necessary for the survival of the Church! Such an act is a most necessary part of Operation Survival and close cooperation and entente with conciliar and modernist Rome is Operation Suicide.

A Treatise on Prayer

admin Meditations, Writings of the Dominican Fathers


A treatise on prayer

by Fr. Wilberforce O.P.

– I –

Prayer in general

The whole spiritual life consists essentially in two grand duties, both of which, but especially the first, must be constant and unintermitting: prayer and mortification. These are the two wings by which we are to fly to Heaven, and without both, progress is IMPOSSIBLE.

Of these two, the first is now to be treated of and examined.

Prayer is the most noble and divine instrument of perfection or union with God, and by prayer alone we can attain to the end of our Creation and Redemption : union of spirit with God, our Creator and Redeemer.

The prayer chiefly to be discussed at present is that known as affective prayer, by which our souls offer and give and consecrate themselves and all they have and all they owe to God, giving him all love, obedience, submission, thanksgiving, etc.

What is prayer ?

Prayer is defined to be « an elevation of the mind to God ». By lifting or elevating the mind we mean making acts by which the soul moves and expresses, or at least implies :

1. An entire dependance on God as the Author and Fountain of all good.

2. A will and readiness to give Him His due, viz all love, obedience, adoration, glory and worship, by humbling an annihilating herself and all created things in His Presence.

3. A desire and intention to aspire to union of spirit with Him.

These things are included in all real prayer.

Prayer, then, is the most perfect and divine action of which man is capable. It is the only principal action the soul was created to accomplish, because the soul was created for union with God, and prayer is the only means to that union. Without prayer, no other means is effective. Therefore, of all other duties and good works that can be done, prayer is above all indispensably necessary.

The necessity of prayer

The following considerations, five in number, suffice to prove the necessity of prayer:

1. By prayer only, through which charity is aroused, strengthened and increased, can we be united to God. In this all good consists. Separated from God, we have only ourselves, viz, corruption, nothingness, misery.

2. By prayer only, all grace – our only good – is a) obtained, b) preserved, c) recovered if unhappily lost. The reason is: to obtain grace, we must have recourse to the Fountain of grace and good. God is that fountain. But recourse can only be had to Him by prayer.

3. By prayer alone can we make external things holy so as to render them means of uniting us to God. Works of zeal, charity, ordinary actions of daily life can only be made [supernaturally] good and acceptable to God so far as they are vivified by internal prayer. Because a good action is only meritorious inasmuch as it is raised and directed to God by an interior motion of the soul, and this interior motion is prayer. To be drawn interiorly to offer up an action to God by charity is therefore an act of prayer.

4. True prayer is incompatible with [mortal] sin in a way nothing else is or can be. A soul remaining with the will attached to sin may perform all other actions, e. g. fasting, almsgiving, joining in choral offices, keeping silence, visiting the sick, obeying superiors, hearing or saying Mass etc., but true prayer of the spirit and an affection to sin are absolutely incompatible and mutually destructive. The reason of this is that :

– internal prayer is the converting and uniting of the will to God;

– sin is averting and separating the will from God.

The two, therefore, being contradictory, cannot dwell together, but one must destroy the other.

5. Prayer is the one sovereign remedy and comfort in all kinds of miseries:

– wether of soul, as afflictions, guilt, remorse, fear, etc.,

– or of body, as pain, poverty, death, etc.

Because the only remedy and comfort for these ills is to rise above them, but this can only be done by union of spirit with God, a union brought by pure prayer.

Consequences

Three consequences follow from these truths:

1. Regarding God; 2. regarding the devil; 3. Regarding ourselves.

1. God gives us special commands about prayer in a way He does about no other duty except charity, which is the object of prayer. We are commanded always to pray as the one necessary thing. « We ought always to pray and not to faint » (Luke 18, 1).

2. The devil desiring our destruction directs all his efforts to make us undervalue prayer ; to disgust us with it ; to persuade us it is useless, too difficult, impossible, unnecessary – for if he can induce us to neglect and abandon internal prayer, by so much he does actually separate us from God.

3. We ourselves must see that prayer is the one thing that at all times and under all circumstances we must always cultivate, energetically pursue, determinately persevere in, because all our hope, all our good is found in prayer alone. We ought to have one aim and business in life, viz: to exercize and increase charity by internal prayer; or in other words to increase within ourselves the quiet but firm determination to please God by constantly an with ever increasing earnestness, raising our spirits to Him; will to will, mind to mind, heart to heart.

Prayer has been described by Father Baker as « an affectuous actuation of an intellective soul to God ».

From this two consequences follow :

1. Prayer of words only is not prayer. Prayer requires an inward attention and affection of soul, though by no means necessarily to the sense of the words uttered. In other words: vocal prayer that is not also mental is no prayer!

2. This most important consequence follows, that thinking, exercising the mind, reasoning, discoursing to oneself about a sacred truth, or meditation on a subject is not itself prayer but only a preparation for prayer, an incitement to pray: for prayer is only immediately exercised by the will, or affections adhering to, and being united to God.

There is, then, no such thing as merely vocal prayer, so that no one must be misled into this error by the division of prayer into vocal and mental. Merely vocal prayer is that pretence of prayer of which God says: « This people honoureth Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me. In vain do they honour Me » (Mt 15, 8).

But the distinction has a right meaning, for though all prayer must be mental to be prayer at all, some prayer is vocal also, some merely mental without any form of word, and, further than this, prayer may be made with blind elevation of the will to God without any express internal words or definite thoughts.

– 2 –

Vocal prayer

Sometimes vocal prayer can be an instrument conducting a soul to contemplation.

In ancient times many arrived at contemplation by means of vocal prayer, joining to it: 1) extreme abstraction and solitude, 2) rigorous abstinence, 3) immense diligence in prayer.

But we, not having these conditions, must supply them by daily set exercices of mental recollection, to bring about habitual recollectedness.

If God calls a soul to contemplation through vocal prayer, she must:

1. Practise still greater abstraction and mortification than is necessary by the road of mental prayer. Because vocal prayer is not so profound and inward, and does not give such light for regulating the affections.

2. Spend more time in it, for its efficacy is less.

3. If God draws her to internal prayer of aspirations, be ready to follow at once.

If a soul should be drawn (it is most uncommon) by the way of vocal prayer only, it is a secure way, less open to illusions, and less likely to hurt the head, etc.

But as this is a way nowadays almost unknown, mental prayer is necessary. Souls, therefore, must not be tempted to abandon mental prayer for vocal prayer, even if vocal prayers were « clear and undistracted », and the mentel recollections « painful and disturbed ». Persevere, and this will change. Little less than a miracle will make the vocal prayer of imperfect souls to become contemplation. Sudden apparent contemplation, then, must be vehemently suspected.

In the beginning of a spiritual course, vocal prayer is good :

1. For those who cannot manage discursive prayer.

2. For others, if it raise and better their attention to God, provided it yield to internal prayer when they are disposed for it.

3. Vocal prayer of obligation, public or private, must always be attended to.

– Three kinds of attention in vocal prayer

Some kind of attention is necessary for all prayer :

1. Attention of mind to the sense of the words uttered, varying with each verse, etc. This is the lowest kind ; and the more imperfect the soul is, the easier it is.

2. To come to vocal prayer – viz, the Divine Office – with some efficacious affection of soul to God, or letting the vocal prayer raise the heart, and remaining in it as deep recollection as possible, without reference to the changing sense. This is far more perfect, being attention to God and union of affection with Him, which is the object of all prayer. No one should quit this for the first attention.

3. Certain souls in close union with God are able to be profoundly recollected and united to God, and yet to follow the sense without injuring, nay, increasing and simplifying their internal union. This is not before the soul has arrived at contemplation and habitual close union. This is by far the most perfect and uncommon.

– 3 –

Internal affective prayer

Mental or internal prayer is either :

1. Imperfect and acquired ; or

2. Perfect and infused.

The perfect and infused prayer is contemplation ; the imperfect, acquired and active is the preparation for contemplation, which is the end and object of all spiritual exercises.

– Necessity of internal and affective prayer

Internal and affective prayer is the only efficacious instrument of perfect union of spirit with God, i.e. of contemplation.

Cardinal Bellarmine says: « This, I believe, I may most truly and confidently affirm, that without a diligent pursuit of internal prayer, none will ever become truly spiritual, nor attain to any degree of perfection. Many go often to the sacraments, and yet remain as imperfect as before. Nay, many religious and priests read Scripture, receive and celebrate often, perhaps daily, and yet are devoid of devotion and the Spirit of God, cold in love, earnest in love of vanities, full of impatience, envy and inordinate desires. Why ? Because they never seriously enter into their own hearts by exercises of introversion and true internal prayer. »

The same must be said of some religious who ought to be more contemplative, who, by profession, ought to aspire to contemplation, but who mistake the way. For they imagine, or act as if they imagined, that they can reach union by exact performance of outward observances, solemn offices, etc. joined to internal discursive prayer. These things are good as inferior and imperfect preparations to true prayer. But if religious rest in them, in external observance and meditation, or discursive prayer, little interior reformation or simplification of soul will result. For these active exercises shortly lose all power, if the soul does not go on from them to truly enlightening exercises of internal affective prayer. This prayer is a prayer of the heart and will, quietly and calmly produced, but by good affections, not by the understanding.

– Internal affective prayer excels vocal and discursively mental prayer in many ways

1. Because by it alone, is our union in spirit with God perfectly obtained ; because by it, the will, with all the powers and affections of the soul, is fixed on God.

2. Because by it, the soul enters far more deeply into God, and is far more enlightened by Him, the Fountain of Light. She thus detects her imperfections, impurities of intention, and inordinate affections.

3. Because grace and strength to practice all we see to be God’s Will is obtained by this kind of prayer:

* by way of impetration, according to God’s promises;

* by the direct efficacy of this prayer itself. For, rightly understood, this prayer includes the habits of all virtues. Why ? Because first the virtue and merit of all external things comes from the interior soul exercising herself in charity and purity of intention, and this is done by internal affective prayer : further all internal exercise of virtue is, and become direct prayer of the spirit, e.g., internal humility is the soul seeing its nothingness, and adhering to God, its only good. Thus, as habits are formed by repeated acts, so constant internal affection will form the habits of all virtues.

4. To persevere in this prayer is universal mortification of a profound and perfect kind. Fot the will forces nature and the iferior powers to leave whatever pleases them, and give the affections to God, whatever disgust they may feel in this exercise. Saint John Chrysostom says: « It is impossible that whoever with due care and diligence prays can ever sin. »

5. Because this internal affective prayer is the only exercise that cannot lack purity of intention. Fasting, obediences, choir, etc., may come from impulse of nature. In fact, then, all virtue comes from internal affective prayer, that is, the will being fixed on God by charity. Now if any oblique or selfish intention should intrude itself into prayer of the will, it woud be observed, and unless expelled, no progress could be made in that prayer.

6. Because internal affective prayer is what makes all other things to be prayer at all. For without it, vocal prayer is mere sound, and meditation a mere intellectual exercise. God desires our wills, affections, hearts, and without them neither our tongues or our brains are of any value in His sight: « Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, etc. »; « Son, give me thy heart »; « This people honoureth Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me. » The only profitable attention to prayer is that of the heart, taking the heart as the seat of love. The attention of the mind only is nothing, otherwise study of holy things would be prayer.

Attention cannot be wanting to internal affective prayer, for the attention itself is the very prayer. As soon as the mind wanders, prayer ceases.

Considering these six excellences of internal affective prayer, two things follow :

1. A right minded soul of good will must see that no exertion should be spared to acquire so invaluable treasure.

2. Religious superiors must acknowledge that nothing can more essentially belong to their office than to see that their subjects are thoroughly well instructed in it, and habituated to its use.

– Saint Bernard says: « Let beginners be taught to pray spiritually, and to withdraw as far as may be from all bodies and bodily images when they think of God. »

– So also Abbot Nilus, a disciple of saint John Chrysostom, says: « Happy is the soul who, when she prays, empties herself entirely of all images and forms; happy is the soul that prays fervently and without distractions; such a soul increases daily in the love and desire of God ; happy is the soul who, when praying, altogether quits the use and exercise of her senses, and loses interest in all things but God. »

But much struggle and long endeavour is necessary to attain this purity of prayer, to overcome the obstacles from the world, self, and the devil of whom Abbot Nilus says: « The whole war between us and the demons is about nothing else than prayer. »

Fruits of affective prayer

Many and various are the effects of affective prayer in the soul :

1. Great love of God, showing itself in many acts of love of preference, complacence and benevolence

– The love of preference is that by which we prefer God above all things. « What have I in heaven? and besides Thee what do I desire upon earth? … Thou art the God of my heart, and the God who is my portion for ever » (Psalm 72, 25-26).

– The love of complacence, by which we rejoice that God is what He is.

– The love of benevolence ; wishing all good to God. And as God is wanting in nothing, we can make acts of the love of benevolence :

* by desiring Him to be loved by all,

* by desiring all good in an infinite degree for Him, even if He had not it already.

But desires must be completed by deed; love must be effective as well as affective:

– Love of preference. If I would prefer God to all, I must not offend Him to please a friend, I must not despise His Will to do my own.

– If I possess the love of complacency, I shall devote myself to Him.

– If I desire good to Him, and rejoice by the love of benevolence that He is so great, I shall work for Him and try to promote His glory.

2. A true desire to do the will of God in all things

« But yet not my will, but Thine be done » (Luke 22, 42).

This makes us consult, not our own lights and inclinations, but God’s Will; act from a motive of pleasing God, not self.

But how are we to know God’s will?

It is expressed by the law of God, by the Church, of the Order, or of Superiors. In matters neither commanded nor forbidden, we must consider what is best in itself for us. If we doubt, then, in matters of importance, seek light; in matters of small importance, avoid two extremes : one extreme is to take no pains to think which would please God more, the other to be too long doubting. Enter into yourself and consult God, and then decide at once. We do not weigh the lesser coins, neither should we waste time in weighing small actions that present themselves to be done. We should not serve a master well if we took as much pains and time in considering what we were to do, as in doing what was necessary.

3. Burning zeal for God’s glory. This desire must show itself in acts as Saint Dominic, Saint Vincent Ferrer, Saint Teresa, who vowed always to do the better or more perfect thing.

4. Great desire of Holy Communion. Saint Catherine of Siena burned with this desire, and Blessed Imelda also.

5. Great desire to bear in body and soul the mortification of Jesus-Christ. Directors have to keep souls in prayer of affection back rather than urge them forward. Exterior and interior advantage. Mortification of life and not mere external religion.

6. A true and practical desire to be united with God for His sake and because He wills it. This desire, in order to be true, and not an illusion, must be practical, by taking the means of union, dying to self in order to live to God.

« As the hart panteth after the fountains of water, so my soul panteth after Thee, O God. When shall I come and appear before the Face of God? » (Psalm 41, 1-2)

But the hart runs actually towards the water.

Friends & Benefactors Letter #20, April 2015

admin Letters to Friends and Benefactors


Letter from the Dominicans of Avrille

No. 19, May 2015

Dominican Life: A Mixed Life

The Consecration at a Solemn Dominican High Mass.

Dear Friends, Family and Benefactors,

“Seeing how great is the evil nowadays and how no human strength will suffice to smother the fire kindled by heretics – even though attempts have been made to organize opposition against them – as if such a great and rapidly spreading evil could be resolved by the mere force of material weapons, it seems to me, nevertheless, that we should now conduct ourselves as in time of war : The sovereign of the country retires into a fortified city, out of which, from time to time, he attacks and wins the battle thanks to the courage of the city’s elite warriors. Since this little castle of ours, our castillo, is the home of good Christians, no one must be won to the enemy’s cause. Therefore, the captains of the castle, namely, the preachers and theologians, must be eminent. Hence, it is indispensable, as I have already said, that the ecclesiastical arm, and not the secular one, come to our help.”

The above citation from Saint Teresa of Avila’s work, The Way of Perfection, well describes Saint Dominic’s motives in founding the Order of Friar Preachers.

Religious life is distinguished as belonging to two categories. The first category consists of contemplative religious who continue the role of Saint Mary Madeleine “seated at the feet of Jesus to listen to His words,” loving Him exclusively.

The second category consists of active religious who continue the role of Saint Martha, drawing out of their love of God the zeal to serve their fellow men, in whom they serve Jesus Himself.

However, Dominican life does not belong to either category.

Our friary some years ago before the fourth wing and a bell tower were built.

In fact, Saint Dominic aspired to the apostolic life – the form of life of the Apostles themselves – in which the priests and religious would be “entirely consecrated to prayer and to the preaching of the Gospel” (Acts 6:4). Saint Thomas Aquinas, the most eminent son of Saint Dominic, summarized the apostolic life and spirit of the Order by the famous expression, “Contemplari, et contemplata aliis tradere – to contemplate and to give to others the fruits of one’s contemplation” (II-II, q.188, a.6).

Consequently, the friar preacher is neither a pure contemplative, nor a pure active – supposing that these two categories could exist in a pure state. Rather, Dominican life is a mixed life, which is not merely adding exterior action to contemplation. On one hand, after spending several hours at chapel, the hospital Sister, animated by the love of God, spends the rest of her day caring for the sick, yet her religious life remains active. On the other hand, for apostolic Orders, such as the Dominicans, the exterior action of preaching is the direct continuation of contemplation. Thus, the hospital Sister cares for the sick using medicine and bandages – and not what she had contemplated in prayer – whereas the friar preacher imparts to souls the truths and lights received from contemplation. In fact, the Dominican has the obligation to “shout from the housetops what he has heard in his ears” (Mt. 10:27).

Hence, the contemplation and exterior action of a Dominican are well united: firstly, due to the motive, which is divine charity; and secondly, due to the content: “the words which Thou gavest me, I have given to them” (John 17:8). Consequently, the Dominican preacher must be able to repeat the following words of Saint John: “We announce to you that which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and which our hands have handled, of the Word of life” (1 John 1:1).

The litany of the Blessed Virgin at the end of Compline on Saturdays.

Even theologians outside the Dominican Order consider apostolic life – or the “mixed” life – as the most perfect form of religious life, because priority is given to contemplation, and because exterior action is considered only as the continuation and fruit of contemplation. Here is a passage written by the Carmelite Fathers of Salamanca, Spain, cited in the work Une Journée à Saint-Maximin (A Day Spent at the Dominican Monastery of Saint-Maximin) by Bernadot O. P., Father Marie Vincent; Saint-Maximin, France, 1924, pp 11-12:

The mixed religious Order is more perfect than the other Orders, because it is similar to the life of Christ, the Apostles, and bishops. The mixed religious Order is not ordered firstly to preaching and teaching, but, rather, gives priority to contemplation, by principle, and, only afterwards, performs exterior works for the good of others as the overflow of contemplation. Without this principle, much perfection would be lacking in the preaching and teaching of doctrine… Therefore, it is wrong to teach that religious Orders dedicated firstly to preaching and teaching are apostolic. Their exterior activities do not come from the overflow of contemplation, but are, rather, works of the active life.

Thus, in order that our contemplation, preaching, and teaching of sacred doctrine may bear abundant fruit, the Constitutions of the Order provide four fundamental means to achieving the work:

  1. The religious state with the three vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience,
  2. The solemn recitation of the Divine Office,
  3. The life of regularity with its traditional monastic observances (silence, fasting, abstinence, chapter of faults, etc.), and
  4. The assiduous study of Sacred Truth.

These four means, according to the Constitutions, “have been given to us by our Holy Patriarch Saint Dominic to arrive at our goal, and, therefore, these four means cannot be suppressed nor modified substantially.”

From this general study of the basic principles of Dominican life, an important lesson for the spiritual life can be drawn out for the good of all.

We all have the tendency, unfortunately, to put action above, and before prayer, thus not only time-wise, but also in our esteem. Even if perhaps we do not have much time for prayer, we should nevertheless consider prayer as the most important work of the day. “Seek ye therefore first the kingdom of God, and His justice, and all these things shall be added unto you” (Matthew 6:33)

Hence, let us make a real effort – at least in our esteem – to give priority to prayer, like Saint Mary Magdalene. If, however, despite all our efforts, we are crushed with work, like Saint Martha, instead of being annoyed, let us humble ourselves at the feet of Jesus, at least for a little while, in order to listen to what He has to say.

Community Chronicle

January 9: One of our Fathers assists at part of the Chapter of the Knights of Our Lady at the school of the Hearts of Jesus and Mary in Vendée.

February 5-7: Exams for our scholastic Brothers.

February 12: Father Marie Dominique is at St. Nicolas du Chardonnet Church in Paris for the funeral of Miss Claudine Germinet (Sister Marie Madeleine of Jesus, in the Dominican Third Order). Next June she would have celebrated her twentieth anniversary of profession in the Third Order.

February 25: Our boys’ school has their first rugby game against one of the biggest clubs of the area.

Our boys’ school rugby team on the pitch.

 

March 1: Rev. Fr. Faure gives a conference to our community on the fight of Archbishop Lefebvre.

March 19: At the Monastery of Santa Cruz in Brazil, Father Emmanuel Marie represents the community at the Episcopal consecration of His Excellency Bishop Jean Michel Faure.

March 28: Father Marie Dominique and Father Hyacinth Mary speak to several nurses, students in medicine, etc. about the moral problems of the present evolution of medicine. There will be regular meetings to form these young Catholics of the new St. Raphael group.

April 4: At the Easter Vigil this year we have the joy of the Baptism of an adult.

April 15: A community hike to strengthen the fraternal charity among the Brothers and Fathers during Eastertide.

The work site

After several years passed without touching his chisel, our Brother sculptor made a Sacred Heart statue in order to get the feel again. Now he will be able to sculpt the Blessed Virgin destined for the entrance of our cemetery in the woods (to replace the one that fell and broke a few years a go).

The statue of Our Lady in the woods that fell and broke and that we must now replace.

 

As for our library, built from 2007-2009, it is not yet filled with all the books. The cataloging and classing of the books has advanced thanks to several friends that come to help regularly. However there are still many books to enter on our lists and many shelves to put up.

We confide these projects to your prayers and thank all those who can help us to finish up the library by purchasing the last equipment necessary.

New information:

-Please take notice of our new US address. The address in Huntington, Indiana is no longer to be used (and please make things out to “Dominicans of Avrille”).

-For more about our life and apostolate, as well as to have some doctrinal and spiritual reading, you can now go to www.dominicansavrille.us

FOR MORE INFORMATION

write to:

-Couvent de la Haye-aux-Bonshommes

49240 Avrillé, France

You may send donations to the address above, or:

— In the U.S.:

Dominicans of Avrille, Inc.
P.O. Box 23

Newman Lake, WA. 99025-9998

— In Canada:

The Association of St. Dominic

Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce

201-21 Street East

Saskatoon, Saskatchewan

S7K OB8 Canada

Please specify: CAN$:acc.#40-91531

— In the U.K.:

The Association of St. Dominic

The Royal Bank of Scotland plc, Edinburgh Comiston Branch

17 Comiston Road

Edinburgh EH10 6AA

Please specify: Acc # 00105564

The Risen Jesus

admin Apologetics


“It’s very simple: have your head cut off, rise from the dead the third day, and the whole world will believe in you!” This is the ironic counsel that the Emperor Napoleon gave to his Deputy La Revelliere who was upset about the failure of the cult of the god of reason (or of the humanitarian god) launched by the Revolution (1797).

The Risen Jesus

Only God can resurrect someone who has died. Therefore, if Jesus is risen, He is truly the Holy One sent by God. Now it is historically certain that:

1. Jesus died crucified,

2. His tomb was found empty,

3. Numerous witnesses assert they had seen Him alive (risen).

1. He died suspended

Jesus Christ in History

The life of Jesus is known by four contemporary accounts (the Gospels of Mathew, Mark, Luke and John), some letters (the epistles of Peter, Paul, etc.) and by:

* The Jewish Historian Flavius Josephus (37-97): Jewish Antiquities, 18,3 and 20,8;

* The Roman Historian Tacitus (55-118): Annals, 15,44;

* The Pagan Polemists Luke of Samosate (125-192) and Celsus (around 178);

* All the converts who up until the 2nd Century had been contemporaries of Christ or who were close to them; the historian Suetonius (69-125) signals their presence in Rome under Claudius (Life of Claudius, 25,11) and under Nero, who delivered them up to tortures in 64 (Life of Nero, 16,3); Pliny the Younger (61-114) recounted them in Bithynia (Letter to Trajan, in 112); several have left writings: Clement of Rome, (”  97), Ignatius of Antioch (35-107), Polycarp of Smyrna (69-155).

Jesus died suspended on a cross

* Crucifixion recounted in the Gospels (Matt. 27, Mk. 15, Lk.23, Jn. 19), the Acts (2.23); St. Paul (1 Col. 1.23), etc.

* Tacitus (who was proconsul of Asia): Jesus “was condemned in the reign of Tiberius, by the procurator Pontius Pilate”.

* Flavius Josephus: “Some chiefs of our nation, having accused him before Pilate, this one had him crucified.”* Luke of Samosate: “The crucified sophist”.

* Justin (who had lived both in Judea and in Rome): “You can be assured that the facts are accurate in consulting the Acts which were registered under Pontius Pilate.” (Apology addressed to the Emperor Antoninus around 150, paragraph 35.)

* Celsus (anti-Christian polemist, around 178): “You say he’s God, and he finishes by dying miserably”.

* The Shroud of Christ, conserved at Turin, attests in detail to all of the Passion (His image, resembling a photographic negative, remains unexplained by science).

2. His body disappeared

Friday evening: Jesus is placed in the tomb

Dying Friday (the eve of the Sabbath), Jesus was buried immediately:

* According to Jewish law, the burial must be accomplished before the beginning of the Sabbath (holy day of the Jews), meaning before sunset on Friday evening.

* This burial – authorized by Pilate – occurred in public, so it was easily verified by everyone. It has always been held as certain, including at Jerusalem, from the First Century, before numerous witnesses, without being able to find a single objection raised.

* The Four Evangelists relate it, each one making their sources clear (Matt. 27.61; Lk. 23.55; Jn. 19.35). – Their accounts are sober, without trace of embellishments (the pitiful absence of the Apostles at the sepulcher would be inexplicable if the story had been invented).

* This narrative is confirmed by archeology (the tomb carved out of the rock, the stone which was rolled), the Roman law (authorizing the deliverance of the body to near relatives), the customs of the Jews (their respect for the dead and the renown of Jesus requiring burial).

* The location of the sepulcher has always been known, according to the testimony of Eusebius of Caesarea (Construction of a Church towards the end of the persecutions, in 325).

* We even know the owner of the tomb: Joseph of Arimathea, member of the Sanhedrin (unexpected detail, too easy to verify to be invented).

Sunday, at daybreak: he’s no longer in the tomb

Sunday morning (the day following the Sabbath), the tomb is found empty:

* The fact was noticed as soon as it was dawn (Mk. 16. 2-4). It was necessarily verified by the authorities and by many of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, considering the controversy it sparked (the Apostles were arrested, Stephen was stoned, etc.).

* The disappearance was tacitly confirmed by the enemies of Christianity (if they had been able to, obviously they would have shown the body of Christ to silence the rumors of any Resurrection).

* The disappearance was confirmed factually by the development of Christianity in Judea (this would have been impossible if the tomb hadn’t been found empty).

* Finally, the disappearance was confirmed by the controversy with the Jews in which Matthew is visibly engaged (Matt. 27 and 28): 1. Accusation of the Jews: the Apostles took the body. 2. Response: the tomb was guarded. 3. Reply: the guards were sleeping. Etc. – this polemic would never have taken such a turn if the tomb had not been found empty.

False solutions:

The thesis that the body was stolen by the Apostles is untenable because it gives rise to the Apostles having:

1. Audacity, boldness, being coldblooded, and being organized. (But instead they were distraught, terrorized, without a leader);

2. A diabolical perfidy. (Directly contrary to the teachings of Christ);

3. Deliberately violated both a sepulcher and the Sabbath. (Things extremely sacred to the Jews);

4. Become extremely lucky. (Despite the guards, the stone that needed to be rolled, and the investigation of the authorities …);

5. And all that without it profiting them personally, but at the price of their own lives, with the sole end being to assume a hypothetical posthumous triumph of an impostor, of whom they would be, in reality, the first victims!

The other theses of the rationalists are just as absurd (They got the wrong tomb, the body was swallowed up in an earthquake, – taken by Mary Magdalene – or by the Jews, etc.).

What must unbelievers not come up with in order to justify their unbelief!

3. Witnesses saw Him

They saw, heard, touched, and accompanied Him. They gave their lives in order to testify to the same.

Firsthand witnesses

* Dozens of men and women categorically affirm they have seen the resurrected Jesus, several times and in divers manners, at Jerusalem and then in Galilee, during 40 days.

* On Pentecost (less than 2 months after the death of Christ) the Apostles testified publicly in Jerusalem: “This Jesus hath God raised again, whereof all we are witnesses.” (Acts 2.32). Which witness was asserted before the Sanhedrin as well (Acts 4.10 and 4.33).

* Towards the year 34, Paul, having been converted, received from the Apostles at Jerusalem a formula of Profession of Faith which he transcribed in the Epistle to the Corinthians: “For I delivered unto you first of all, which I also received: how that Christ died for our sins,…..and that he rose again the third day…..” (1 Cor. 15.3-5, etc.).

* In this same Epistle, written before 55, St. Paul mentions six apparitions of the Risen Christ, of which…. – One “with more than 500 brethren, of which most are still alive” (a clear invitation to get information from the witnesses). – And that which he himself had while he was persecuting the Christians (related in detail in the Acts of the Apostles, written before the year 64)

.* The Holy Gospels (written before the year 70) relate nine apparitions (7 at Jerusalem and 2 in Galilee), stating also that there had been others.

Truthful witnesses

* If they had made it up, would the Evangelists have: – resisted the urge to describe the Resurrection itself in detail? – given to the women the honorable role, at the expense of the Apostles? – reduced the apparitions to such banal and commonplace scenes? – delivered narrations that were hard to reconcile, like pieces of a puzzle (which in the end, actually reveals that they were independent witnesses of a complex event)?

* If they had made it up, would all the Apostles have maintained their false testimony even under torture, as much in Jerusalem (James), as at Rome (Peter), and at Madras in India (Thomas), etc.?

False solutions

1. Myth? – The Apostles never preached the Resurrection as if it were a myth (as an allegory), but rather as an historical fact. The word ‘myth’ doesn’t explain their conviction at all.

2. Legendary deformation? – The historian Sherwin-White showed that a story doesn’t disfigure the hard nut of an historical fact before 3 or 4 generations pass. Now, the Resurrection, central point of the Christian Faith, was preached immediately (Peter at Pentecost – the Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians, written before 55 – etc.)

3. Hallucination? Hallucination requires a mental weakness or nervousness that is not to be found in these fishermen of Galilee, and which would have prevented them from being believed. It can’t explain such varied apparitions during the space of 40 days (the disciples of Emmaus talking to him and walking with him for miles; Thomas who doubted his Resurrection, placing his fingers in his wounds; Jesus preparing a fire on the banks of the lake; etc.).

4. Autosuggestion? – “Expectation ordinarily creates its own object” (Renan, denying the apparitions). – Other than the fact that that is false (except for the mentally ill), the Apostles weren’t expecting anything! Mary Magdalene, not expecting to see Jesus at all, took Our Lord to be a gardener; the disciples of Emmaus thought at first that he was a stranger; Thomas refused to believe; etc.

4. The real solution is something higher!

Four facts

1. – The disappearance of the body of Christ.

2. – The testimony of dozens of witnesses who categorically affirm having seen him again alive (resurrected).

3. – The sudden metamorphosis of the Apostles: cowardly, fleeing, demoralized and disorganized due to the death of Jesus, and then all of a sudden proclaiming His Resurrection and heroically braving death so sure are they of rising with Him.

4. – Despite all the persecutions, the progressive conversion of the Roman Empire to the cult of a crucified Jew.

Considered individually, each one of the above facts is an enigma. But when we put them all together, they tend towards the same and unique rational solution: Jesus is truly resurrected.

If one refuses to believe in the Resurrection, then one has four insoluble enigmas. If one admits the truth of the Resurrection, everything comes together and receives a crystal clear explanation. This explanation imposes itself then on our reason, under pain of absurdity:He is Resurrected!

Objection: Wouldn’t it be lapsing into the irrational to admit the Resurrection?

Reply: Reason demands that the world has a first Cause: God. It’s logical that God can directly intervene in His own Creation (like a watchmaker can, with his finger, move the hands of the clock, independently of the mechanism). The miracle has then nothing irrational about it. – Here, it even becomes the only rational explanation.

Objection: But why this miracle?

Answer: If God sends messengers, it’s logical that He will guarantee their mission by incontestable signs (prophesies and miracles). – Now, Jesus has presented Himself as the great Messenger of God (the Messiah) and He announced that His Resurrection would be the great proof of His Mission.

Let us compare:

The legendary deformation requires:

1. Someone who is already well-known.

2. Some time (several generations).

Thus….

* Buddha already has the reputation of a master of wisdom while his philosophy transforms into a religion and a very late biography attributes miracles to him.

* Mohammed and his successors have already imposed themselves by the force of the sword when the Sira (biography of the ‘Prophet’) lends him (a century after his death) some curious wonders (the moon split in two, etc.), all the more surprising because, according to the Koran (13, 27-32; 17, 90-109; 29, 50), he refused to prove his mission by miracles.

* The cult of Jesus was already well spread when the Apocryphal Gospels (coming after the year 100, and not recognized by the Church) attribute extravagant miracles to Him.But the situation was quite different when the Apostles began to preach the Resurrection of the crucified Jesus who was nothing but one more false Messiah to the crowd (there had been a whole series of them who came and went ignominiously). It was precisely the affirmation of His Resurrection which rendered His name famous throughout the entire world! It was preached as the central and essential fact of Christianity from the very first sermon of Saint Peter (Acts 2) and the first Epistle of Saint Paul (1 Cor.), and cannot then in any manner be brought down to the level of developing legends affecting the lives of Buddha or Mohammed.

Of all these religious founders, only Jesus has confirmed His mission by a dazzling miracle, attested by eye-witnesses.

A Meditation on Easter

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A Meditation for Easter

with Saint Thomas Aquinas

Fra Angelico’s “Resurrection of Christ and Women at the Tomb”

The advantages of Our Lord’s Resurrection

From the mystery of Our Lord’s Resurrection, we can learn four things:

1. First of all, we learn that we should strive to rise spiritually from the death of the soul which we have caused by sin, and rise to a life of justice [holiness] which is acquired through penance.

«Rise thou that sleepest and arise from the dead, and Christ shall enlighten thee» (Eph514). «Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection [the one of the soul]. In these, the second death [eternal death in Hell] has no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with Him» (Apoc 20,16).

2. Secondly, [from Our Lord’s Resurrection we should learn] not to defer rising spiritually until death is upon us, but rise NOW AND PROMPTLY; for Christ rose for our example on the third day.

«Delay not to be converted to the Lord, and defer it not from day to day» (Eccl5,8), because:

– you will not be able even to think of those things pertaining to your salvation, when serious illness comes upon you;

– and also because by delaying your conversion, you lose part of all the good things which the Church accomplishes;

– and, what is worse, you incur many evils because of your perseverance in sin.

Likewise, inasmuch as the devil possesses you for a longer time, so much the more difficult it be for you to rid yourself of Satan.

3. Thirdly, we should learn to rise to an incorruptible life, so that we may not die again; that is: having firmly resolved to do penance, we may not sin again.

«Christ rising from the dead, dieth now no more, death shall no more have dominion over Him» (Rom6,9). «So you also reckon that you are dead to sin but alive to God in Jesus-Christ, Our Lord. Let not sin, therefore, reign in your mortal body, so as to obey the lusts of flesh. Neither yield ye your members as instruments of iniquity unto sin, but present yourselves to God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of justice [sanctification] unto God» (Rom6,11).

4. Fourthly, [from Our Lord’s Resurrection we should learn] to rise a new and glorious life, so that we may avoid everything which was before the occasion and cause of our spiritual death and of sin.

«That as Christ is risen from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we also may walk in newness of life» (Rom6,4). And this new life is a life of justice [holiness], which renews our souls and leads us unto a life of everlasting glory.